Dreams come from the past, not from the future

“Dreams come from the past, not from the future” is the Ice Man’s answer to his wife’s repeated nightmare before their journey to the South Pole. The phrase offers a principle for separating dreams from foreknowledge, but it does not settle her fear: she accepts his words without becoming certain, and the couple travels onward into the cold landscape the dream has anticipated.

The Nightmare

As departure approaches, the wife dreams night after night that she falls into a deep hole, is never found, and freezes solid beneath the ice. She remains conscious but cannot move, while the past accumulates around her and the future disappears. The image makes time itself part of the terror: she is not simply afraid of dying, but of becoming a fixed remnant watched by others as she slips away.

The Ice Man’s Reply

She wakes beside the Ice Man, who sleeps without making a sound, like something frozen and dead. Though she loves him, his stillness sharpens the dream’s unease; she cries, wetting his cheeks, and tells him what she has seen. He holds her close and answers that it was only a dream. His distinction between past and future is paired with an instruction about agency: dreams should not control a person; the person should control them.

Doubt and Departure

The wife agrees, but admits that she is not at all certain. Her response leaves the saying suspended between reassurance and doubt: the Ice Man treats the nightmare as something that can be mastered, while she cannot dismiss its force. The couple nevertheless boards the plane for the South Pole. During the flight, thick clouds hide the scenery and ice films the windows; the wife feels none of the ordinary excitement of travel, only that they are carrying out what they had set out to do.

Meaning in the Journey

The journey gives the exchange an unresolved dramatic context. The wife’s dream places her helplessly inside ice, while the Ice Man’s words insist that a dream belongs to the past rather than predicting the future. Yet the destination is not abandoned, and on arrival the Ice Man visibly trembles before looking at the sky and his hands. The expression therefore functions both as comfort and as a claim whose certainty the scene does not confirm: the dream may not be a prophecy, but its imagery accompanies the couple into the very place that gives it such power.