Sometimes we go to strange places when we dream, often unfamiliar worlds and we still can associate our lives to the similarities, as if we have seen a place before. “I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid” Lowry says in The Giver. Automatically our brains think of real-world associations to make our minds comfortable with a  new place. Instead of feeling “strange and stupid” like Lowry suggests, our dreams are another comfort zone entirely, a surreal world where everything is our way. Everything in a dream become familiar in either a good or bad way, and most everything we see in a dream we see again in either real life, or a successive dream. The “real life” and the “physical” world as Espen Aarseth describes are perceived differently by different people (64). When we perceive games to be more real than they really are, they tend to be correct. With every game, dream, story, folk tale, myth, legend, etc that is told or played or sung there is an overall theme or lesson to be learned. Stories are to readers as games are to gamers. Through the game of Skyrim, even in the opening the main two characters are introduced, Ulfric and General Tullius. From the beginning the gamer is given a choice of who to side with to escape. Although either way leads to freedom, whichever path is chosen gives the character in the story a better advantage on the side they chose in Helgen. Other quests and problems that arise from the main quest seem a bit trivial but instill morals within the character. Does the character want to side with Sven and be a do-gooder, or side with Faendal to exploit his training in the arts of Archery. Usually the smaller quests tend to have a lesser impact, but still produce an effect that lasts a lifetime. Whatever is done within time cannot be undone and the consequences enacted from a split second decision carry into the future for both benefit and detriment. Louis Lowry in The Giver says “It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?” which pretty much sums up the importance of decisions we make, even in dreams that help us to understand what is happening and why it is happening.

As with William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night the situation between the love-triangle of Sven, Faendal and Camilla contrasted with that of Cesario, Viola, and the Duke. The Duke becomes jealous of Cesario who is Viola in disguise. This classic example of jealousy is prevalent today as love is sometimes unrequited. Faendal becomes jealous of Sven to the point of ruining his entire life. Man always wants what man cannot have. William Shakespeare amplifies this trait in his tragic play Othello when Iago becomes jealous of a position that the Barbarian Othello holds that he did not get. The cross of these two plays’ is shown through the love-triangle in the opening scenes of Skyrim where Faendal is jealous of Sven’s ability to woe Camilla and therefore decides to destroy his chances with the character as the medium. 

Few dreams continue where they left off, but the best dreams continue where a person leaves them and also makes them want to come back to the dream. Because dreams have a deeper meaning that just the skin of what we see, the people, places, and things appeal to a dreamer or frighten a dreamer in a way that makes them wish they were either there all the time or not present for the worst of situations. There is always a “familiar wide river” that with every time passed reveals something “differently” in the “slow moving water” (Lowry).  As Jung points out, “Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious(Qtd)(Taveras)(Jungian)”. As with Skyrim, when traveling to a place that you have already visited, nothing is ever the same, even when you start a new character. In the Day 4 dream the character returned to Helgen, the starting place for the story and found its inhabitants had changed into a short nuisance to be dealt with by the new skill. In order to overcome the past, a visit to and the reconciliation of whatever happened in the past must occur, much like how the character dealt with the bandits and continued on to reach his final destination, Ivarstead.

The reason the character must travel to Ivarstead is due to the old Nord legend of the Dragonborn. The symbol of the Dragonborn to the Nords is a great hero destined to do many great things and defeat the new threat of old times, the dragon. Questing, or following destiny is as Arngeir said “ We can show you the way, but not your destination”. The hero must essentially chose the destination. A dream is how a dreamer interprets it, but the dream only shows the way to realization. The dreamer themselves must realize the true meaning behind “the dragon” that is “attacking”. Thus, the trek up the 7000 steps to meet the Greybeards is not only a summons, but the characters curiosity satisfied about the dragons that have somehow awakened from death. But before questions may be answered the tests must be passed. As in all great stories, a hero must have proven himself/herself to be worthy of the task at hand, whether that be slaying dragons and protecting the people or finding a lost item for a distraught couple.