Requiem for a Dream: A Novel

Content Warning: This guide discusses explicit usage of illegal drugs, depictions of drug addiction, depictions of mental illness, depictions of violence (sexual, domestic, racial, and graphic), as well as stereotypes of racial and ethnic minorities. This guide references language from the text concerning race and addiction which may be considered offensive. This study guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

Requiem for a Dream demonstrates the pervasive impact of addiction on individual lives, relationships, and aspirations. It also demonstrates the way that addiction affects people across racial and socioeconomic divides, as is depicted in the diversity of the main characters. The novel serves as a harrowing exploration of the destructive force of substance abuse, illustrating how the pursuit of dreams and the escape from reality can lead to tragic consequences. In this way, the theme of addiction is closely related to the theme of The Unattainable American Dream: Selby Jr. argues that it is the unattainable nature of this dream that causes people to chase tempting distractions to fill voids in their lives. Selby Jr. himself was no stranger to the ravages of opioid addiction; consequently, his depiction of Harry, Tyrone, Marion, and Sara’s life-ruining downward spiral, while dark and brutal, is not judgmental. The novel is not concerned with litigating the morality of the drug trade, but with its effects on the individual. It is an unflinching look into the realities of a drug addict’s life and a cautionary tale of the ways that addiction can tear one’s life apart.

The first two-thirds of the novel is set up to illustrate the way that a drug addiction is a slippery slope from recreation to full addiction. Harry, Tyrone, and Marion all exist within a social sphere in which substance abuse—from relatively benign substances (cigarettes, smelling salts, marijuana) to destructive drugs (amphetamines and heroin)—is encouraged. Drug use is a communal activity, shared among friends; examples such as the morgue scene demonstrate the carefree attitude the characters exhibit when drug supplies are cheap and plentiful. Despite this, there is an undercurrent of petty theft and secrecy that mars the cheerful atmosphere. The opening scene of the novel, in which Harry bullies and berates his mother as he steals her television, illustrates this. Those with addictions and their families often tell themselves lies to cope with the trauma of their situation. Sara makes up excuses for Harry’s behavior, telling herself and others that he is a nice boy, and fixating on the past in order to not have to deal with the present. Harry and the others lie to themselves that they are in control of their drug habit; they think they can quit anytime they want: “Their disease made it possible for them to believe whatever lies it was necessary for them to believe to continue to pursue and indulge their disease, even to the point of them believing they were not enslaved by it, but were actually free” (146).

The power of these lies is the power of addiction to alter one’s habits, to justify increasingly dangerous behavior, and to place blame on anything but the drug itself. Throughout the late summer and early fall, the “good times” when strong heroin is plentiful and Harry and Tyrone begin dealing and making a lot of money, their casual heroin use progresses into a dependency that comes back to bite the protagonists when the supply dries up. They go from recreational use to getting high just to get out of bed. This dependency is illustrated by the he relief they feel from getting a fix during the heroin shortage:

[I]mmediately all the thoughts and nightmares and fears and terrors of the previous night, the inner battles during the short day […] were obliterated and dissolved and never existed, and the four of them sat around the rest of the day, listening to music, rapping, getting off, wrapped in the comforting warmth of their camaraderie (143).

The symptoms of heroin withdrawal can include intense cravings, pain, nausea, vomiting, insomnia, and anxiety as the brain desperately craves dopamine. To avoid this, some people with addictions resort to selling their possessions to feed their addiction, and when this income runs out, they may turn to crime.

Harry, Tyrone, and Marion’s addiction ultimately causes them to give up on their dreams, to sacrifice their ideals, and, in Harry’s case, causes permanent damage to his body. Leaving their usual setting also forces their condition into perspective: “They were strung out, a fact that they pussy footed around for a long time, but now it thrust itself right in their guts” (194). The sheer desperation that drove them to leave the city makes it impossible to deny the fact that they are “strung out,” severely addicted to and debilitated by heroin, any longer. They can no longer lie to themselves. This important realization comes too late. Harry’s arm is badly infected: “Around the hole in Harrys arm a huge greenish white lump had formed with red streaks spreading out toward his shoulder and wrist” (194). Harry kept injecting in the same spot over and over; long term heroin use can eventually make it difficult to inject due to repeated tissue damage, causing scarring and collapsed veins. Harry’s injection site becomes abscessed and gangrenous, causing his arm to have to be amputated. While Marion and Tyrone may still be able to turn their lives around, Harry’s recovery is uncertain. At the very least, his missing arm will be an enduring symbol of the price he paid for his addiction.