Some people seem confused about the John dreams, so I wanted to spell out what I think is happening.
In the dreams, there are two characters: he and she. While he is obviously John, she is somehow both Harrow and Alecto. When he directly addresses herâas youâhe seems to be talking to the planet Earth, to Alecto. The only way out was to dump the population on an exoplanet, he says. It was about giving you breathing room, you know? But when he names her, her name is Harrowhark. She, for her part, speaks very little, but in the last dream she speaks blatantly as Harrow: âTeacher, what does it mean for a child of the Ninth to love God?â
The dreams are in a River bubble. This is pretty obvious: the bubble parts at end of the last dream, and sheâHarrowâwalks in the direction of the tower. How exactly they both end up in a bubble remains to be seen, but this isn't a first for Harrow; the Canaan House bubble in HTN happened while she was dreaming or unconscious.
In the last dream, he asks, âDo you remember what happens now?â And she says, âYes. Through her, I've seen it.â She's talking about the Resurrection and the Eightfold Word, but if we retroactively apply this lens to the dreamsâto his account of the extinction eventâit resolves the contradiction of her. Harrow is seeing, learning, through Alecto's eyes. More specifically, they have swapped dreams (just as they have swapped bodies): Nona dreams of Gideonâs forgiveness, and Harrow dreams of crawling with John through the wreckage of the planet he destroyed only yesterday.
In the dream bubblesâin 2011âlittle pockets of pseudo-reality within the maddening horror and nonsensical spacetime of the Furthest Ring, the dead and dreaming reenact old memories; at least once, a character (Aranea) pretends to be someone else (AG) for the sake of a reenactment. Likewise, Harrow and John are acting out one of Alecto's memories. They sometimes break character to talk as their present-day selves, but they are otherwise passive observers in this dream-memory. Thus, Johnâs account is not (as I've seen some people claim) filtered through a myriad of self-denial. This isn't the John from HTN with a perfect lie ten thousand years in the making. It's John in the wake of his very recent omnicide, scrambling to explain himself to Alecto.
Direct dialogue in the dreams usually forgoes quotation marks. But sometimes it uses them, including but not limited to: every time he calls her Harrowhark or Harrow, every time she calls him Lord or Teacher, and the entirety of the final dream. We can infer that quotation marks are used when, and only when, the speaker breaks character. This clears up some things. Like how Then they were goneâŠlost it time to me forever (past John) becomes âThey are still out there. There can be no forgivenessâ (present John). However, we've reintroduced an old problem.
In the dream, he says, âThis is the part where I hurt you. Are you ready?â (With quotation marks.) In the dream, he says, âDo you remember what you said to me once I had done it? When we stood here together?â (With quotation marks.) In the dream, he calls her âbelovedâ and âloveâ (With quotation marks.) In the dream, he makes a pothookâJâthen the finned spine of E. He wipes that E clean, and replaces it with A. He wipes that clean, and he draws the prison bars of H. This J and H he bars around with an uneven heart. Johnâour John, present-day Johnâis conflating his old love with his new student. Harrow plays along, and in doing so gains answers from him.
In the dreams, she says, ÂâI still love you.â (With quotation marks.)
