Broad arrow in a dream: what does it mean?
The mark stamped on prison clothing and government property, which made a garment into a label anybody could read at a distance.
How do the four traditions read it?
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream. The four often disagree, and that is the point: a symbol rarely means one fixed thing, and the distance between Freud, Jung, modern research and myth tells you more than any single verdict could.
How did Freud read this symbol?
Freud would attend to the marking of the person. The clothing announces the status to everybody who sees it, and he would ask what the dreamer wears that speaks before they do.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note the shared use. The same mark went on stores, timber and equipment, so the person and the property carried an identical stamp.
Our summary of a Jungian reading, in our own words, not Jung's. See Jung, ed., Man and His Symbols (1964).What does modern dream research say?
Being identified and marked appear in dream reports, and content analysis records such content among ordinary reported dream material.
Our summary of the content-analysis findings. See Hall and Van de Castle, The Content Analysis of Dreams (1966).What do myth and folklore say?
It was a property mark for the Crown before it was used on prison clothing, so the sign meant belonging to the government rather than anything about crime.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.How can writers use this symbol?
The same symbol, read as craft material rather than as a dream. What it does on the page, how genres use it differently, and what happens when you turn it inside out. Written for novelists, screenwriters and poets who need the symbol to actually work, and it ends with something to try.
Where does this appear in literature?
The same mark went on a rope, a barrel and a man's jacket. It meant government property, and it was used for all three without any change.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
A mark that made a person into a category.
What are the genre conventions?
An arrow printed in a repeating pattern, visible from the end of a corridor.
How to subvert it
Write the broad arrow on nothing.
Try this
Two hundred words about wearing a label anybody can read.
Only the first of these names a source. What a symbol does in a story, how genres treat it, how to invert it and what to try are our editorial judgement as writers and editors, not findings from a body of research. They are offered as craft opinion and should be argued with.
The books behind these readings
These are the books this entry actually draws on, not a general reading list. Where a text is in the public domain we link the free copy first, because you should not have to pay for something you can read for nothing. Every edition listed has been checked to exist and to be the right one.
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The Interpretation of Dreams
The source behind every Freud reading in the dictionary. This is the 1913 Brill translation we adapt from, and it is free to read online.
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Man and His Symbols
The accessible Jung, and the honest place to start for the archetype material our Jung readings summarise.
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