By Rhyan Warmerdam
Dream Jungle is a notoriously elusive text. Events are out of order. Plotlines begin and then end abruptly. Most chapters are only a few pages long. The point of view is constantly in a state of flux, jumping from one character to another. One character has a dream in which there is a “winding staircase” that “led to nowhere.” This staircase image captures the journey of reading into the world of Dream Jungle.
Dream Jungle by Jessica Hagedorn is a historical/political fiction novel set in the Philippines. The novel is divided into three parts. The first section, “Discovery and Conquest,” details a character named Zamora de Legazpi and his discovery of a supposed stone-age tribe, based on the actual discovery of the Tasaday tribe in the 1970s. The second section, “Napalm Sunset,” describes the production of an American film called Napalm Sunset, based on the1970s film Apocalypse Now, in the Philippines in the 1970s. The final section, “Requiem of a Prodigal Son,” depicts the funeral of Zamora, conflicting accounts on the authenticity of the Taobo tribe, as well as other miscellaneous scenes.
I argue that trying to come to a singular, cohesive understanding of the novel should not be the reader’s primary focus. The title is Dream Jungle: dreams rarely make cohesive sense.
My analysis utilizes elements of psychoanalytic dream theory to gain insight into the state of the Philippines. Sigmund Freud believed that when it comes to dreams, “even an interpretation that makes sense, is coherent and throws light on the dream may in due course be replaced by a different interpretation.” I read the story as a dream in itself, demonstrating similarities between dreams and the novel, as well as the implications of such a reading. This analysis provides a framework through which one can read Dream Jungle.
Most prominent dream theorists agree that “dreams depict an emotional truth about the dreamer’s relationship to self and others.” Dreams are revealing images of the dreamer’s preoccupations and the dreamer’s fantasies. Dreams reflect desires. They reflect fears. They reflect parts of the self that are subconscious.
With an understanding of this novel as a reflection of the dreamer, our focus no longer centers around determining what is real or what is fake. Instead, our focus shifts to what the scenes reveal about the psyche of the dreamer—the Philippines, which is the jungle itself. Despite the constant flickering between the points of view, the jungle is the primary source of consistency throughout the entire novel; therefore, the jungle is the lens through which we experience the events of the story.
I argue that the events that take place in the jungle work as a kind of dreamscape upon which the national consciousness of the Philippines manifests itself.
Undoubtedly, many aspects of this novel resemble dreams. One such aspect is the way that time flows in the novel. In dreams, there is often “a disregard for conventional categories of ‘time’ and ‘space.’” Accordingly, time is warped in Dream Jungle, just as time is warped in dreams. A character in the novel questions, “How I remember as if it were…what? Yesterday, today, tomorrow.” The conversion of the past, present, and future in the novel’s structure is reminiscent of a dream itself.
Now, a few notes on the form of the text: Dream Jungle is written from multiple perspectives, many of which contradict each other. Yet this doesn’t necessarily mean that the events are without meaning. Dream theorist Wilfred Bion understands that in dreams, “a fuller understanding is reached by considering a phenomenon from different perspectives.” Dream Jungle must be reframed in this context; rather than view the scattered perspectives as hiding the truth, one must explore these perspectives as an exploration of the splintered consciousness of the Philippines. I argue that exploring the perspectives of the characters in the novel can provide insight into the collective consciousness of the Philippines.
Freud explains how unconscious or repressed parts of a dreamer’s psyche can manifest themselves in dreams through, “the primary processes of ‘condensation’ (where figures are combined to form a single figure).” During the process of condensation, multiple people may be condensed together into one. In other words, “a figure in a dream may be constituted by the fusion of traits belonging to more than one actual person, and is then called a ‘collective person.’” The dreamlike ‘collective person’ that these theorists describe, which is the merging of multiple characters into one, is present in Dream Jungle.
An example of the merging of characters in the novel is on page 236, where: “The chunky, bespectacled man with Jesus Christ hair and the haughty, craggy face of a Spanish conquistador was introduced to Tony Pierce as Pepito Ponce de León.” The “Jesus Christ hair” is reminiscent of Zamora and all of the religious imagery that surrounds his character throughout the novel. It also bears resemblance to the “god complex” that Tony Pierce possesses, or “Tony God” as Tony is described by his wife Janet. Here, Pepito is described as having the face of a “Spanish conquistador” just as Zamora is described as the “conquistador of conquistadors” and also is of Spanish descent. This sentence blurs all three characters: Zamora, Tony Pierce, and Pepito–all types of people engaging in the conquest of the Philippines.
Additionally, in Dream Jungle, many characters are hard to discern from each other; they are warped and blurred together. An example from the text: “Moody thought he recognized Tony Pierce’s voice rising above the din. Or was it Mayor Fritz?”
Characters also act as mirrors for each other: “Her face—Lina who was not Lina now but something or someone else. A mirror to myriad other female faces—Lori, Sandy, and Marian.” Readers are left pondering who is who at times since characters are so oddly reminiscent of one another.
Just as characters blur into each other in the novel, places do as well. America and the Philippines merge together in the text: “One particular dream. He and his son, Alex, dangled upside down from a Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier…Moody woke in a pool of sweat. Where was he?…He was in Manila.” America is constantly on the mind of the Philippines and lies at the forefront of its consciousness. America’s presence is steeped into the makeup of the Philippines; America also is an invasive presence, exemplified by how Pierce’s film deeply alters the people and the landscape of the Philippines throughout the making of Napalm Sunset. Not only that, but America and the Philippines are directly, and metaphorically, linked to each other in the text as well: “It was warm and tropical as if San Francisco had been transformed into a Southeast Asian metropolis.”
Another aspect of dream theory that may help audiences read the novel surrounds Freud’s idea that dreams can represent repressed wishes. So, if the jungle can be read as a dream, aspects of the story can represent the hidden desires of the jungle, or the Philippines itself.
One such example of this in the text is journalist Paz’s obsession with discovering the truth about whether or not the Taobo was a hoax. Using Freud’s dream theory, this can be understood as a manifestation of a desire of the Philippines: a nation trying to find itself underneath centuries of colonization and imperialism. It aims to find itself by returning to the very beginning of time, in the beginning, before colonizers and foreigners entered the land —hence the focus on whether or not the tribe was truly from the ‘Stone Age.’
The focus on the paleolithic authenticity of the tribe is not just Paz’s obsession, as we already understand that these characters represent a figurative type, a ‘collective person,’ rather than an individual. This can be read as insight into the collective consciousness of the Philippines, which has been heavily influenced by both Spanish and American imperialism and colonization.
Another way of reading into the dreams of the novel is explained by Freud, who believes that dreams can depict the disguised fulfillment of a repressed desire. In Dream Jungle, characters take on disguises, masking their identities. Zamora once “dressed in drag, putting on makeup…he pretended to be Imelda and made us all laugh.” And in the making of Napalm Sunset, Moody’s face can be seen “transforming…into a mask of forest green camouflage.” And in death, onto Zamora, the mortician “slathers on pancake makeup as thick as cement…an obscene doll laid out in the coffin.”
These images of characters in costume, or wearing makeup, recur throughout the novel. It appears that the manifested dream is literally masking some kind of truth, even from itself. What truth has been repressed in the dream? Why these disguises? What lies underneath?
In the specific quote about Zamora being covered in “pancake makeup,” the light-colored makeup is used to conceal the dark skin underneath. Utilizing Freud’s dream theory, this scene can be read to illustrate a subconscious desire of Zamora to escape the non-whiteness that is his heritage—a kind of racism that has been internalized within himself, embedded into his consciousness, and therefore into the Philippines.
Yet another aspect of Dream Jungle that lends itself to dream analysis is the phenomenon of forgetting: the haziness of memory that follows waking.
Dream theorists explain that a “dream cannot be fully recalled by the dreamer, who relies on the memory of a fleeting experience if it is remembered at all.” The forgetfulness of dreams happens in the novel as well, when Forbes questions, was “my memory dependable? Who else was actually present that wondrous day?”
It may not be the truth of the memory that readers should try to discern; instead, what is perhaps more fascinating, is the way that characters choose to remember, like when “Paz listened and tried to make sense of his precious memories.” How do these characters construct their own memories or the memories of others? And what does this reveal about the Philippines?
Finally, Carl Jung “argued that the value of dreams lies not only in what they reveal about the past but also in what they reveal about the future.” Therefore, dreams can be read as suggestive of possible futures.
In the final part of the novel, the chapter, “The Shark’s Lament,” provides insight into the Philippines’ possible future. This chapter portrays Pepito on the set of his new film, which is described as “a combination of Jaws and Deep Blue Sea, Filipino style.” Both Jaws and Deep Blue Sea are American films. Once again, America is still entrenched in the Philippines.
But even once Pierce has left the Philippines, a new filmmaker Pepito Ponce de León enters the region and perpetuates the exact same kind of imperialistic American-style filmmaking as Pierce did while making Napalm Sunset. Pepito actually enrolls in the same film program at UCLA that Pierce had attended for a semester and a half, which foreshadows how Pepito would follow in Pierce’s footsteps. Pepito even told Pierce, “‘Your movies are my inspiration.”’ Additionally, when Pepito directs movies, he is depicted as a temperamental director, taking after Pierce, as Pepito is introduced as: “Director Pepito Ponce de León, he of the hissy fits.”
Pepito’s filming style also mirrors Pierce’s: Pepito “figures it out as he goes along…likes to work fast, hates wasting money,” just like Pierce). These similarities between Pierce and Pepito demonstrate how Pepito will continue to re-enact Pierce’s legacy of American imperialism in the Philippines. The dominating forces in the Philippines are not disappearing, they are simply being swapped out for a new one that upholds the same style of rule.
A final aspect of the chapter, “The Shark’s Lament,” to note, is that in Pepito’s film, the only character that represents the Philippines is Rainbow Reyes, who is literally disembodied, ripped in half by a shark, “only one lovely half of her exists and she is dead.” The physical dismemberment of this character is yet another representation of the nation of the Philippines that has been shattered by foreign rule, suggesting that the nation has been ripped apart by foreign powers.
A final quote from Dream Jungle, which is a quote from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, represents the end of this dream, and the forgetting that happens after a dream ends: “‘We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign—and no memories.’”
Accordingly, the final line of the novel demonstrates the forgetting that occurs after a dream ends as well: “Not once does my name come up. Not once.”
The dream is over, and it’s time to wake up.
Dream Jungle is available from Bookshop, City Lights Bookstore, Loyalty Bookstore, Vroman’s Bookstore, Waucoma Bookstore, and 27th Letter Books.
Rhyan Warmerdam is an English M.A. student at Chapman University. When he’s not reading or writing, he can be found surfing, swimming, or camping in his free time.