New York is a setting in Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of how dreams can imitate waking certainty without becoming perceptions of reality. The pleasure of walking through the city, and even the dream-self’s confidence that it is awake, belong to the imaginary world; they do not establish that the dreaming consciousness has returned to the real one.

New York as a Dream Setting

Sartre describes dreams in which he walks in New York and takes great pleasure in being there. The city functions as the setting of an experience that can feel satisfying while it lasts, not as evidence that the dreamer is perceiving an actual place. The dream presents its events through an imaginary self: the person who walks through New York within the dream is not thereby carrying out a waking act of reflection.

The awakening that follows is not invariably a sharp disappointment. Sartre compares it instead to the disenchantment of leaving a theatre. That comparison marks a change in relation to the experience: the dream’s world had sustained its own attraction, but waking brings the dreamer out of it.

The Dream Self’s Certainty

Within one such dream, the dream-self tells itself that this time it is not dreaming. This seems to be reflection, but Sartre argues that it is only an imagined reflective act performed by the self represented inside the dream. The apparent certainty therefore does not prove that the dreaming consciousness has recognized its condition or reached wakefulness.

Sartre compares this moment to a fictional character rubbing their eyes and concluding that they are awake. In both cases, the assurance occurs within the representation. The dream-self’s confidence remains part of the dream’s imaginary course, rather than becoming a real judgment that separates the sleeper from it.

Desire and Imaginary Fulfillment

The wish not to be dreaming is likewise represented within the dream. Sartre describes the dream-self as wanting to remain in New York, while the dreamer’s own desire is expressed through that imagined self. Within the fiction, the self is consequently presented as being in New York in the flesh and not dreaming. This apparent fulfillment does not make the experience real; it shows how a desire can find satisfaction inside the imaginary world without ending it.

The New York episode thus distinguishes imagined reflection from the reflection that can actually interrupt a dream. For Sartre, becoming conscious that one is dreaming can help bring the dream to an end, but the dream-self’s assertion of wakefulness is not that act. New York matters here as the place where the dream’s wish and simulated certainty converge, while the boundary between the dream and waking remains intact.