Out of My Dreams

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses ableism.

Throughout the novel, Draper explores the challenge of understanding another person’s interiority, focusing on the barriers that prevent people from fully accessing each other’s inner lives. This theme is particularly evident Draper’s portrayal of Melody’s struggles to communicate her thoughts and emotions despite her disability, and Draper provides a positive outlook on these challenges when Melody enjoys multiple successes in bridging these communication gaps, spending quality time with new friends like Sky and Miss Gertie. By describing Melody’s journey and her interactions with others, Draper delves into the complexities of empathy, connection, and the human need to be understood.

Melody’s perspective is the primary lens through which Draper examines the theme of understanding others’ interiority. As a girl with cerebral palsy, Melody faces significant challenges in expressing the intricacies of her thoughts due to her limited physical ability to communicate. She laments the fact that people often see her as little more than the girl whose “mouth hangs open” or whose “arms fling out unexpectedly” (12), and she is frustrated by the knowledge that they fail to acknowledge the reality of how “supersmart” she really is. By employing first-person narration, Draper provides Melody with a powerful

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