Standard bearer in a dream: what does it mean?
The man carrying the flag, which makes him the most visible person on a field and the one everybody aims at.
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 exchange. He carries the thing everybody must be able to see, and being visible is exactly what endangers him, and he would ask what the dreamer held up.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note the replacement. When one fell another picked it up, so a role guaranteed to kill its holder never lacked somebody willing to take it.
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 conspicuous and exposed recurs in dream reports, and the typical-dreams literature records being watched among common themes.
Our summary of the typical-dreams literature. See Nielsen et al., Dreaming 13(4), 2003, 211-235.What do myth and folklore say?
Losing the colours was the worst thing that could happen to a regiment and mattered more than casualties, which is a great deal of weight for a piece of cloth.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer; Brewer).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 role reliably killed whoever held it and never once lacked a volunteer, because when one fell another picked it up.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
Made visible on purpose, and endangered by exactly that.
What are the genre conventions?
Cloth above smoke, and men looking for it.
How to subvert it
Write the standard bearer as safe.
Try this
Two hundred words about carrying the thing that marks you.
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.
-
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.
-
Man and His Symbols
The accessible Jung, and the honest place to start for the archetype material our Jung readings summarise.
-
The Golden Bough
Cross-cultural context for the myth readings. Public domain and free to read online.
Rosmerta Publishing is a member of the Bookshop.org and Amazon Associates affiliate programs. If you buy a book through these links we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. The public-domain texts are always free to read online.