The rainbows seem bright enough, but they bring in another disquieting group
of associations. The rainbow is almost, if not quite, a universal symbol of
failure. We all know the old story of going to the end of the rainbow for a
pot of gold, and if we want to belittle any effort we say that the
individual is chasing the rainbow. So here I am again on the downhill road
between two failures, following the rainbow to a hopeless condition of muddy
uselessness. And if it were not bad enough to be following one rainbow, I am
following a great number which must mean that I shall always end in failure
whatever I undertake.
But, besides this, the rainbow has special associations for me. The first of
these associations which came into consciousness was a little booklet made
by a Latin student and handed her professor. I had several years of Greek
and Latin under this teacher and at a certain place in the course, he asked
each student to make a little booklet of some kind, using as much
originality as possible, copy some favorite quotations from De Senectute and
hand in the finished product. Every year he gets these out and exhibits them
as a kind of inspiration. One of them had a rainbow and a pot of gold on the
cover. I spent a great deal of time and work on mine and made a more
elaborate booklet than any other that had been made, but I purposely left it
unfinished and inscribed a statement that this was to typify the kind of
work I did in that department. Of course it was a joke, but I have often
thought that there was method in this madness, and that it really
approximated the true state of affairs. This seeming chance association,
then, is closely connected with my fear of making a failure which is so
clearly dramatized in this dream.
The fact that the dream is placed in Colorado is also important. Two years
ago, I spent the summer in Colorado and had a very delightful time, as was
natural, being on a wedding trip. But during this stay, I did make a total
failure at fishing. I had been a fairly successful trout fisher a few years
before, but I had forgotten the art and did not do enough fishing to
relearn. In other words, my dream gives me to understand that I cannot be
successful even in fishing. One evening my bride and I witnessed a most
beautiful sunset, a rainbow figuring largely in the scene. At this time we
were debating whether or not to go on farther West as I had originally
planned; but circumstances prevented this and instead of going on farther,
we came back East or toward the rainbow. This is just one more place where
the dream so clearly symbolizes a failure to do what I undertake. I will
not carry the analysis any further, though I could find associations by the
hundred which would strengthen the meaning given.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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