Questions About The Palace of Dreams

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**Spoiler ahead** I assume the ending is intentionally left vague, but I wonder what Mark’s tears mean when he’s riding in the carriage and sees the blooming trees? My interpretation is that the sight (which signals the arrival of spring) makes him finally break free from the palace's influence, but at the same time he's aware that he cannot leave, as that would put his family in danger.

George Peros Yes. You are right, plot wise, that’s the most logical interpretation but I think that the ending has another deeper philosophical meaning So, in my o…moreYes. You are right, plot wise, that’s the most logical interpretation but I think that the ending has another deeper philosophical meaning So, in my opinion, Mark at the end realizes that his “prison” is not a foreign system called symbolically the Palace of Dreams, but his own self because now he has become the system itself (acquiring the highest role) hence the tears on his conduct with spring (life) which are an effect of him realizing that he now has no chance of ever escaping the system, never escaping himself. That’s why he has the most desperate of thoughts, wanting to have an almond branch on his grave, meaning that his only escape is death, and he is waiting for death to bring spring.
Now on why I wrote above “called symbolically the Palace of Dreams” is because particularly at the end of the book, we can interpret the final scene and the whole idea of a so called system itself as mans own self, arguing that Kadare expressed there: man's inescapable state of being trapped in his own passive imagination, an alternate reality which only interprets the world and never truly experiences it; in other words each one of us lives imprisoned in his own palace of dreams and Mark just represents the one who realizes that and can do nothing more than suffer in his realization until death.(less)

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