The secular angel in contemporary children's literature: David ...

Dreams in the text serve to problematize the relationship between innocence and
experience by setting up parallels between the adult and child characters, and reversing their
relationships. Wendy B. Faris writes that
magical realist narratives almost seem to bring up the possibility of
interpreting what they chronicle as a dream in order to forestall that
interpretation, after having first aided it as a possibility. That strategy, while
allaying the reader’s doubts, also calls them into being, causing the reader to
hesitate. (Faris, 2004, 18)
Faris’ statement seems to resonate throughout the novel, as in Skellig there are many
references to dreams whose role is to emphasize this ambiguity between dream and reality and
confuse both Michael and the reader. Although it may seem as if Michael’s dreams are simply
allegorical and serve as symbol of his thoughts and concerns, when looked at more closely, it
becomes evident that they also function as a means through which he processes what he has
just experienced in real life. Because the boundaries between dreams and reality are often
muddled in the story, they become all the more powerful in aiding Michael in his maturity.
Following Mina’s words and ‘teachings’, and the moments he spends with Skellig, Michael’s
dreams are a medium of contemplation, a vessel in which the day’s events coalesce in
seemingly peculiar combinations to reveal something that was there all along, but only existed
in his mind’s eye. The first dream Michael has is very early in the story, and is of Skellig, an
indication that he is still unsure about what it is that he saw and how real it truly was. In his
second symbolic dream, the baby is portrayed as a bird in the blackbird’s nest, and is fed by
the birds until she is strong enough to fly away; when she does leave she flies ‘over the
rooftops and on to the garage roof’ (Almond, 2007, 25), as if signaling Skellig’s location, as
well as his relation to the birds, an issue that will be discussed in greater detail later in this
chapter. The dreams that Michael has almost every night after his first encounter with Skellig
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