56 pages • 1-hour read
Dream Count
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Themes
The Pursuit of Lasting Happiness
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to sexual assault and sexual violence.
One of the novel’s primary themes is the pursuit of lasting happiness. Dream Count explores this theme within all four of the main characters’ storylines. Throughout the novel, the four protagonists’ ongoing quests for happiness are backgrounded by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Forced into lockdown as a result of the global virus, Chiamaka, Zikora, Kadiatou, and Omelogor are compelled into deep reflection; in particular, the characters’ isolation compels them to meditate on what experiences and relationships have made their lives meaningful. The novel uses the temporal setting to inspire Chia’s, Zikora’s, Kadi’s, and Omelogor’s longing for contentment; their unprecedented circumstances make them value the lives they did have and fear for the happiness they might never find again.
Chia, Zikora, Kadi, and Omelogor look to the past to make sense of their discontentment in the present because they’re experiencing protracted bouts of isolation and loneliness. In Parts 1 and 5, Chia has “no choice but to stay indoors”; she feels “assailed by anxiety” and desperately attempts to quell her restlessness with Zoom calls that only exacerbate “the distance between” her and her loved ones (4, 5). Chia in turn delves into recollections of her past, which she comes to deem her dream count. In reviewing her memories, she is looking for the moment when she had the chance to embrace happiness and didn’t. In Part 2, Zikora feels similarly caught in the past while giving birth to her son. She can’t stop reviewing everything that happened between her and Kwame because she wants to understand whether she sabotaged her chances at happiness with him. In Part 3, Kadi’s narrative is also preoccupied with the past because in the present, Kadi’s life is defined by helplessness and despair. She’s not only dealing with the aftermath of her recent sexual assault, but the lockdown renders her powerless to take control of her situation. She therefore retreats into her memories of her early life in Nigeria—a private pastime which enacts her unarticulated fear that she gave up her chances at a happy life when she moved to America. In Part 4, Omelogor’s account similarly toggles between the past and the present as Omelogor tries to determine whether she does in fact like her life—a question inspired by her aunt’s declaration that she is merely pretending to be happy.
Ultimately, all four women become so preoccupied with mining their past lives for evidence of their forsaken happiness that they limit their chances at finding contentment in the present. In Omelogor’s section, Omelogor eventually realizes that “Your true experience is the only proof” that your life means something and has fulfilled you (252). Her assessment provides insight into Chia’s, Zikora’s, and Kadi’s experiences, too. Like Omelogor, the other main characters must deem their lives valuable on their own terms in order to feel happy in the present. Once they stop meditating on the past, they are better able to appreciate the goodness they do have in the present.
The Impact of Love and Relationships on Personal Development
Chia’s, Zikora’s, Kadi’s, and Omelogor’s romantic entanglements convey the lasting impact that love and relationships have on the individual’s development. Just like all four main characters are on a quest for lasting happiness, they are all seeking self-actualization via love and connection. For Chia, finding true love is integral to finding contentment. For as long as she can remember, she has wanted to be truly known by another person. She believes in romantic love and has prioritized finding a deep intimate relationship throughout her adult life. In the narrative present, she starts to mine her memories of her relationships, convinced that “there was someone out there who had passed me by, who might not just have loved me but truly known me” (12). Throughout Parts 1 and 5—both of which are written from Chia’s first-person point of view and depict her story—Chia reflects on her experiences with partners including Darnell, Chuka, the Englishman, Luuk, and Johan. While all of these relationships brought something to Chia’s life, in the end none of these men truly fulfilled her. Instead, these relationships undermined Chia’s self-worth and caused her to manipulate her identity to please her respective partners. The novel uses Chia’s storyline to show how imbalanced romantic and sexual relationships might endanger the individual’s sense of self and impede her personal growth.
In Zikora’s, Kadi’s, and Omelogor’s respective sections, romantic love similarly complicates how the three women perceive themselves. For Zikora, her relationship with Kwame initially feels like a proverbial godsend. She is thrilled to find Kwame, because when she was 31 years old, she was single and despairing: “cast out in the wilderness of her mind” and convinced that she would never have the marriage and family she’d dreamed of since her youth (101). Kwame temporarily assuages these fears until he abandons her immediately after she gets pregnant. Her relationship with Kwame thus precludes her from investing in her newborn son’s life, and initially from recognizing the love she and her mother share. Kadi and Omelogor have similarly complicated romantic entanglements, all of which challenge how they perceive themselves and their own lives. Kadi indeed loves Amadou, but this relationship does not ultimately self-actualize her. It is rather her relationship with her daughter that brings her the purest joy and the truest intimacy. For Omelogor, her fleeting relationships with men ultimately come second to her close bonds with loved ones like Jide and Chia.
The novel thus suggests that true love is balanced, holistic, and selfless; all four protagonists find this love in their relationships with their friends and family members. While some of their romantic relationships help them to grow and change, it is ultimately their connections with each other that prove most transformative. The novel’s overarching narrative structure—which braids the four main characters’ storylines together—enacts the true depth and significance of their distinct love for each other.
The Intersection of Personal Desire and Social Expectations
Another of the novel’s primary themes is the intersection of personal desire and social expectations. While Chia, Zikora, Kadi, and Omelogor are distinct characters with unique lives, they all struggle to identify and claim their desires in light of their family’s and society’s expectations for them. Because they are all Nigerian or Nigerian American women, Chia, Zikora, Kadi, and Omelogor particularly live under the shadow of their cultural traditions. In Nigerian society, women are expected to pursue marriage and motherhood as soon as they come of age. Because Chia, Zikora, Kadi, and Omelogor either don’t value what their families value or have lived atypical lives, in the narrative present their circumstances don’t align with their society’s wishes. Chia is unmarried and doesn’t have children in her late 30s. Zikora is having her first child but is unmarried and her partner has disappeared. Kadi did marry, but her husband died and she has been raising her daughter Binta alone ever since while working to support her family. Omelogor is in her early 40s, has never had a serious relationship, and has framed her life around her vocational ambitions and relationships with friends rather than around finding a husband, marrying, and having children.
The four main characters’ unconventional lifestyles put them in conflict with their families and their sociocultural spheres. They receive constant pressure from their parents, extended families, or friends back home because they have “failed” to abide by the life prescribed for them. While the “heavens [have] turned a key and marriages [have been] raining down for everybody else,” Chia, Zikora, Kadi, and Omelogor remain unattached (101). At times, they feel burdened by their unattachment, while at other times they actively resist their friends’ and families’ pressures to embrace a more traditional lifestyle. For example, when Chia returns home in January 2019, her aunt insists that she’s “running out of time” to have a child and must start IVF immediately” (57). Despite her aunt’s insistence, Chia stands up for what she wants, saying she is “still praying for a husband” (58). Her desires clash with her family’s expectations, but Chia refuses to give in to their nagging because she values her dreams too much. The same is true of Zikora. She wants a marriage and family, but she doesn’t alter her lifestyle to secure these things simply because her family expects her to. The same is true of Omelogor. When her aunt insists she can’t be happy because she isn’t married and doesn’t have children, Omelogor reminds herself of all the good she does have in her life. Kadi’s life similarly hasn’t played out the way her parents, village, and society expected it to, but Kadi doesn’t abandon her hopes and dreams merely to satisfy others.
The protagonists’ resilience in the face of social pressures illustrates the importance of defending one’s desires and needs. In Dream Count, all of the main characters are women. Because of their gender, they are culturally expected to be demure, compliant, and obedient, but none of them is. Even though characters like Zikora and Kadi have more traditional desires, they resist compromising what they want merely for the sake of others. The author thus underscores the importance of female empowerment. Her characters’ stories highlight women’s strength and independence.
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