Abstract

The roots of such concepts as dream, reality, and illusion are as old as human history. The human being has dreamt of his/her existence, supernatural events, natural environment, society, and family since primitive ages. Dream might roughly stem from, or, be described as intuition, longing and in this context it is a vivid and enthusiastic emotion and/or sensation. Reality, however, reflects whatever independent from human subconscious, and expresses concrete and objective things in general. A person, mostly, takes refuge in the dreams when he/she makes a choice between reality and sensation, emotion and intuition in his/her memory. Thus, dream in this context comes to mean ‘escape from reality,’ or in other words, dreams are richer and more aesthetic productions than the existing world of human being. Yet, a person should acknowledge the difference between his/her colorful and vivid dream world and real life. Otherwise, a person might fall into dangerous dimensions, and American drama is full of such personalities who are guided by dreams, also called the ‘American dream of success.’ On the other hand, illusion is “the wrong image of reality” (Boorstin 239). Although the dreams sometimes come true, illusion is impossible to reach, in that it is a more dangerous dimension for a person. One cannot, thus, make a comparison between illusion and reality since he/she cannot acknowledge the difference between them. Then, illusion can be described as a real image in mind that does not exist in reality. Illusion carries a logical error or mistake in its context, and mistake is the oldest experience of human being. The aim of this study is to discuss the concepts of dream, reality, and illusion by giving certain impressive examples in American drama texts. Thus, we hope to clarify such concepts, at least in part for better understanding, in their usage by selected authors.