59 pages • 1 hour read
Matthew BlakeAnna O
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Significance of Sleep and Dreams
Content Warning: The source material features discussions of psychosomatic disorders and trauma.
Anna O tracks the significance of sleep (or lack of sleep) and dreams. This theme is fundamental to the premise, plotline, and mystery. Blake uses sleep as a relatable, vulnerable state that everyone experiences and then amplifies it into a situation of horror: Anna’s alleged murders while sleepwalking. The effects of sleep disorders are heightened to create life-and-death stakes, introduce the question of Anna’s culpability, and offer scientific insight into sleep and dreams. By employing the knowledge of Ben as a sleep expert, Blake uses this theme to ascertain meaning and truth. Countless times, Ben offers insight into sleep with factual evidence, including that people spend 33 years of their lives asleep, that sleep is a second life, that sleepwalkers do complex things like drive, etc. All of Ben’s points complicate the topic of sleep. The whole text tries to answer what sleep, lack of sleep, and dreams convey, and if Anna’s sleepwalking episodes and dreams reveal the objective truth of the murder mystery.
Along with Ben’s expertise on sleep and dreams, Anna defines the importance of sleep and the effects of the lack of it. As a lifelong sleepwalker with frightening episodes, Anna has an unhealthy relationship with sleep that leads to self-imposed insomnia. Ironically, insomnia and drinking are common causes of sleepwalking, so her fear-based actions lead to more extreme episodes. That Anna doesn’t sleep conveys a larger message about how the mind requires rest to function; with little sleep, Anna becomes more obsessive, anxious, irritated, and deranged. She turns so vengeful that she thinks she can use sleep as a weapon: “They won’t survive this. I will have my revenge… [...] Sleep doesn’t have to be a weakness; it’s a superpower” (352). Anna irrationally believes she can control her sleepwalking to confront others, which is in contrast to Ben’s scientific tone and her own research on sleep disorders. Her ongoing insomnia also shows the darker effects of not letting one’s mind rest, which hints at her resignation syndrome because her body and mind needed to withdraw and recharge. Anna’s thematic fear of sleep is contrasted well with the fact that sleep keeps Anna safe from trial for four years, showing sleep’s many operations.
By working through resignation syndrome and Anna’s dreams, the novel also questions whether one’s dream life unlocks subconscious truth. This theme is most evident when Ben asks Anna about her dreams, and she describes the same one running through a forest with a knife and blood, feeling deranged. Anna’s response means her mind was processing the traumatic events around the murder. Although she has amnesia, Anna’s subconscious gives her meaningful clues to the night’s events. Her dream life connects dots her conscious mind couldn’t—including the fire-breathing reflection of being on the drug scopolamine. This repeated, symbolic dream could have led her to Clara, the real antagonist. The secret meaning of Anna’s dreams adds a rich layer to the narrative, one that can be connected to Clara when she knows of scopolamine.
The Complexities of the Human Mind
As a psychologist, Ben exemplifies this theme through his career and intellectual dialogue. Ben is well-versed in the complexities of the mind, and though he admits no one can ever understand the psyche, he offers numerous words of wisdom. For instance, he explains the rational versus irrational mind, how sleep helps people function, how psychologists need to treat the mind over the brain, etc. Ben knows the mind is a highly complex place, one where dreams, sleep, and the subconscious live. Throughout the novel, he strives to understand Anna’s mind, which he clarifies is different from the brain: “There is the rational side of homo sapiens and the animal side. People think the animal side is the body and the rational side is the brain. But it’s often the other way round” (73). By realizing this contrast, Ben focuses on the spiritual, emotional, and instinctive side of the mind over the rational, physical brain that controls one’s body. Because Anna’s brain is functioning fine—keeping her alive with bodily functions—her mind is what needs help. Most other psychologists would concentrate on Anna’s brain, but Ben’s methods are different, making him an embodiment of this theme. The concentration on the human mind and its scientific theories are consistent threads that motivate Ben to awaken Anna and later Anna to accuse Ben of having dissociative identity disorder.
By using resignation syndrome, the author establishes a prime conflict to display this theme and push the boundaries of science. Resignation syndrome occurs when people experience a “living death,” for they’ve seen something so terrible that their mind causes them to withdraw. Ben explains to Harriet that those with the syndrome in concentration camps were called “Muselmänner” which is “translated quite literally as people who lost the will to live. They endured something worse than death. A living death” (73). Although Anna isn’t the only one with resignation syndrome, her four years of sleep are the longest on record, and her upcoming trial acts as a ticking clock to increase the tension. Though he’s under pressure, Ben’s hands-on therapies with Anna are testing his theories, not giving certain cures. His proposed therapies and hard work of sensory stimuli with Anna again display that the mind is complicated, and he can’t guarantee he’ll be successful.
Ben using “hope” as his defining method in Anna’s treatment links back to the mind being more powerful than the brain. Ben explains that Anna needs to return to her hopeful past, to a time before her living death. Because Anna lost hope, a necessary feeling, her mind is the cause of her resignation. By giving Anna a safe, stable, and happy environment with the sensory stimuli of her favorite things, Ben proves the mind can be coaxed back into consciousness when it feels free of danger or negative emotions/experiences. Because Ben is successful with Anna, the text conveys messages about trusting one’s instincts, experimenting with ideas, and hope and happiness as the greatest medicines to alleviate even the toughest of trauma.
Defining and Pursuing Justice
This theme is linked to the central dramatic questions of the novel: “Are any of us aware of what we do while sleeping? Can we be held criminally responsible? When does sleep take over and consciousness end?” (15). Countless other questions pop into Ben’s head throughout the novel, such as: If Anna was asleep and murdered her friends, could she claim insanity? How can Douglas and Indira be brought to justice if the crime itself had no intent? Whether she was conscious or not, is Anna liable for their deaths? Like in the other cases Anna researches, her lawyers would have argued that she wasn’t in control and thus can’t be held at fault. In fact, when Anna researches other crimes, most sleepwalkers are found innocent, including those who committed sexual assaults or murders. These cases foreshadow Anna’s criminal actions—though she was drugged—and show how sleepwalking crimes balance a fine line between guilt and innocence.
This theme is also inherent to Anna’s character and Ben’s ongoing questions about the murders. Ben has nagging questions that portray this theme well: “...perhaps most importantly, who is Patient X? Are they still the key to unlocking this entire mystery? Is Harriet Patient X or merely X’s accomplice?” (307). As the plot thickens, Harriet takes the blame for the murders first, and then Ben is wrongfully accused by Anna—all in the name of justice. Like Ben trying to decipher the mystery, Anna exemplifies this theme when she defines and pursues justice against Ben. Because she believes all her accusations about Ben being Patient X and wanting revenge on her family, Anna is his judge, jury, and executioner. In the end, readers learn Ben was innocent, and Anna gets away with the premeditated, conscious murder of Ben in a twist that subverts tropes of objective justice and fits the thriller genre.
Sally Turner’s case offers another angle to analyze this theme and poses the question of whether she was treated justly. Sally wasn’t found guilty because she died before trial, but everyone labeled her as a “monster” and believed she murdered her stepsons. Unlike Anna, Sally was forced into punishment through the MEDEA therapies, which used sensory overload, social isolation, 24/7 surveillance, and sleep deprivation—again highlighting the significance of sleep as a theme. According to Clara/X, her mother Sally wasn’t mentally ill before the inhumane MEDEA interventions, but she became mentally unstable due to them. Like Ben, Bloom believed in her methods, but she misinterpreted the complexities of the mind, and her therapies did more harm than good. Most importantly, Sally endured this “justice” when she wasn’t the killer; Clara killed her stepbrothers to save Sally and her from their violence as her own form of justice. Pursuing justice against Sally came in the form of MEDEA treatments and provided a harsh backstory that was Clara’s catalyst for more evil.
