# Lobster Salad explained — Fifty-One Tales

> Chapter companion for Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany.

## What happens

The narrator describes a harrowing dream in which they climb the perilous outer wall of the Palace of Colquonhombros, pursued by sable apes with tigerish teeth. With their strength failing and the apes closing in, they remember a pin left on a chest of drawers in another world, reach for it through an effort of will, and stab themselves in the arm to wake from the dream.

## Themes in this chapter

### The Power of Myth and Imagination

The dream world is treated as real and consequential, with the narrator's life at stake and a pin from the waking world serving as the means of escape.

### Death and the Human Condition

The narrator faces the constant threat of death from falling or the pursuing apes, and the dream's danger is taken seriously despite its unreality.

## Character check-ins

### Unknown

The narrator recounts a vivid dream of climbing a palace wall and escaping apes by waking with a pin.

## Key lines

> That the thing was all a dream is beside the point. We have fallen in dreams before, but it is well known that if in one of those falls you ever hit the ground⁠—you die

Even though it's a dream, falling to the ground in a dream is fatal.

_The narrator asserts the real stakes of the dream, dismissing its unreality as irrelevant._

> I reached out with a desperate effort of will towards where the pin lay on the chest of drawers. I groped about. I found it! I ran it into my arm. Saved!

I stretched my mind toward the pin, found it, and stabbed my arm to wake up.

_The narrator uses a physical object from the waking world to escape the dream's danger._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/lobster-salad
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/fifty_one_tales_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters