In dreams sometimes it is like this. I am lying very still, my arms and legs are numb or paralyzed. There is a medical term-peripheral neuropathy. A tingling sensation in fingers and toes that moves upward bringing with it a loss of feeling, a spreading numbness, a kind of amnesia of the body.
In this excerpt from Joyce Carol Oates' "The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror," the narrator describes a haunting dream state characterized by a sense of stillness and physical paralysis. The experience echoes a medical condition known as peripheral neuropathy, where numbness and tingling in the limbs can create a surreal detachment from the body, akin to an amnesic state.
The dream conveys a profound sense of helplessness as the feeling of numbness spreads, creating an unsettling atmosphere. This transformation highlights the fragility of the human body and the mind's eerie connection to physical sensations, invoking fear of losing control over one's own form. Oates skillfully blends psychological horror with the body's physicality to explore deeper themes of vulnerability and fear.
