by Adriana Disano

Created on: August 26, 2010

Let me ask you something: Are you dreaming?

This is the question the ending of the movie Inception forces us to ask ourselves. It can be a painful question. We all have childhood memories of waking up from a horrible nightmare and being relieved to finally be awake, to be out of that horrific dream world. But the movie Inception suggests something far more dangerous-that we may be in that same horrific dream world that we remember from our childhood.

In the movie Inception, main character Dom Cobb is faced with the reality of his dream world. After years of studying dream science, he becomes trapped when in his own dreams by his subconscious "projection" of his dead wife. While dreaming was never peaceful for him, he had one special object that allowed him peace: his totem.

A totem, in this case, is a special object designed to be known inside and out by its owner-and only its owner. For when a person lapses into the dream state, there are sure to be inconsistancies in the object which the owner would notice. They would then realize the fact that they were dreaming. Their totem was off balance or missing a number on one side-this would never happen in a real world, their brain calculates.

At multiple times in the movie the totem is used as a device to show Dom's increasing instability while in the waking state. His totem is a spinning top which, in the dream state, never topples. On several occasions he spins it and watches it fall just in an attempt to assure himself that what he is witnessing is real.

After being in a state of "limbo" for around fifty years, trapped inside his and his wife's subconscious minds, it's understandable why Dom would want to reassure himself of the reality of his world. For fifty years, they built and built city upon city, they played God to a world that was all their own. But none of it mattered because none of it was real. Eventually, it had to end.

His wife began to question reality because of an idea that Dom planted in her mind-that "her world wasn't real-"and that she had to kill herself in order to return to the "real world." Eventually, she did kill herself in order to wake up from the state of limbo. However, the idea persisted like a virus, and she committed suicide in the waking world.

Or was it the waking world?

During the final scene of the movie, when Dom has finished his last job and was able to reunite with his father and children, he spins his top for one last time. After being shown a shot of the reunion, the

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