Dreamland

Sarah Dessen

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2000

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 2, Chapter 7

Part 2, Chapters 8-10

Part 2, Chapters 11-12

Part 3, Chapters 13-15

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Background

Authorial Context: Sarah Dessen

The author of over a dozen young adult books, Sarah Dessen has become an impactful contributor to the genre, including winning several awards and having two of her books adapted into a film. Several of Dessen’s novels have been included in the American Library Association’s “Best Fiction for Young Adults,” including Dreamland. Additionally, Dessen has won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for several novels. Born in Illinois, Dessen often focuses on teenaged characters who experience events similar to those of her own adolescence; this is consistent with interviews about Dreamland in which she references her own troubled youth. Dessen lives in North Carolina with her husband and daughter.

As an author, Dessen is intent on portraying real-life scenarios for teen audiences and supporting them as they make life choices. This is an important contextual piece of Dreamland’s narrative; the purpose of the text is not just to create emotion but also to help readers understand the complexities of teenage dating violence and abuse. The use of the first person and multiple clear examples of abusive patterns shape Dreamland as a text that seeks to make young readers aware of abuse and demonstrate that it is possible for them to escape it.

Genre Context: Young Adult Novels

Within the larger fiction umbrella, young adult novels serve a particular purpose and have several common features. In general, young adult novels feature protagonists who are young adolescents or teenagers; through the course of the novels, these protagonists typically set out to solve a problem of identity while experiencing societally relevant conflicts. Young adult novels thus serve as a mirror to the larger cultural issues of the time in which they are written. For example, in the 1990s and 2000s, many popular young adult texts dealt with issues related to the emergence of the internet and social media as these became mainstream. As a young adult novel, Dreamland’s genre is an important facet of the text’s structure.

Dreamland is a young adult text in that it is centered around a teenage protagonist who is figuring out her identity and explicitly deals with a topic that has specific relevance for teen readers. Throughout the novel, Caitlin experiments with different parts of her identity: She makes new friends, dates different people, struggles with her parents, and signs up for different activities. In each of these attempts to define her identity, Caitlin reflects on the process and how she feels about each. She eventually rejects some—cheerleading and dating Rogerson—and embraces others like photography and Rina, a common evolution in young adult novels. Additionally, Dreamland is structured around teen dating violence and drug use. The novel is entirely framed around topics and conflicts teens might experience and shows a peer navigating these issues.

Sociohistorical Context

Dreamland is set in the early 2000s in a wealthy suburban small town with a university. Each character’s desires and motivations can be traced to this particular setting. For example, the O’Korens are interested in academic success, presenting a positive image within their social circles and to the wider community. Similarly, Rogerson’s parents are portrayed as hyperfocused on creating a perfect image using their wealth and resources.

Dessen’s choice of setting shapes the plot and meaning of the novel. The time period for Dreamland, in addition to the social and geographical setting, has an important impact on the way the novel’s plot unfolds. The late 1990s and early 2000s, for wealthy teenagers in the US, was a time where young people could go out with one another and engage in risky behavior with limited parental control. Cell phones and the internet were just emerging, so Caitlin and her friends rely on landline phones to get in touch with one another; this makes it more difficult to find one another or get together without advance planning, as it predates social media mapping that provides contemporary teens the option of constant access to each other’s locations. Many of the timing conflicts that spur Rogerson’s abuse rely on the miscommunication that existed in a time when people did not have instant access to communication as they do in the present day via smartphones.