53 pages • 1 hour read
Hubert Selby Jr.Requiem for a Dream: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
The heroin shortage worsens, and the streets become more and more dangerous: Robberies and murders are rampant, and the police have increased their presence throughout the city. Harry and Tyrone stick together during the day, driven by their addictions, walking around town, searching for opportunities to score. They only find enough to support their own habits; unable to bring any back for Marion and Alice, they stay out longer and longer. Meanwhile, Ada notices that Sara has lost too much weight and is beginning to act erratic.
After many agonizing days, word gets out that a new supply of strong heroin will be hitting the streets, but the price will be $500 for a piece (a half ounce), and they are $300 short. Harry realizes Marion can get the money from Arnold, though he forces himself into denial about what she will have to do to get it.
Marion meets up with Arnold. He is immediately suspicious when she asks for money, but he agrees. After they get dinner, they go to an apartment he keeps in the city. It is hard for Marion to hide her nervousness and self-disgust. When she undresses, Arnold notices how gaunt she has become. Marion tries to go through the motions, trying to convince herself that sleeping with him is the same as it was before. Arnold questions Marion about the track marks on her arms, realizing that she has a heroin addiction. He is shocked and confused, but he gives Marion the money he promised, telling her that she earned it. Back outside, Marion vomits.
Chapter 8 Summary
Sara’s mental health steadily declines as she continues her abuse of diet pills and Valium. She hallucinates the presence of Seymour and young Harry in her apartment. She finally visits the McDick Corporation’s headquarters to confront someone about the lack of news about her television appearance. Soaked with sleet from the journey, she has a mental health crisis in the lobby; the employees try to comfort her until an ambulance arrives. She is admitted to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue hospital as a paranoid schizophrenic. She is sedated and moved to a locked ward. Dr. Reynolds, the doctor who admitted her, prescribes electroshock therapy. A younger doctor, Dr. Spencer, reads her chart and determines her problem is medical (due to the prescription drug abuse), not mental. He soothes Sara and vows to take care of her. Sara takes an immediate liking to him and mistakenly calls him Harry.
Meanwhile, Harry and Tyrone’s heroin distributor secures an entire city block, using henchmen armed with machine guns to keep the peace. After a tense wait in the cold, Harry and Tyrone purchase their piece and make their way back home, arming themselves with rocks in case anyone tries to attack them. At home, they shoot up, then cut the heroin and bag it to sell. Marion begs Harry not to sell the whole supply; she has a bad feeling that there will not be any more heroin available after it is gone.
At the hospital, Dr. Spencer is furious: Dr. Reynolds asserted his authority and re-slated Sara for electroshock therapy. Dr. Spencer complains to Dr. Harwood, the department director. However, Dr. Harwood sides with Dr. Reynolds. Dr. Spencer is shocked; Dr. Harwood would rather sacrifice Sara’s well-being for the smooth functioning of the hospital.
Harry, meanwhile, spends an agonizing evening trying not to think of Marion and Arnold together. When she returns, they make awkward small talk. Marion gives him the money and then shoots up. They attempt to be intimate but are paralyzed by mutual embarrassment.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
The real danger of the heroin shortage comes when those with addictions begin experiencing withdrawals en masse. The streets of New York City turn into a scene reminiscent of a “battleground of WWII, that gave it the pathetic and devastated look that froze on the faces of the people that inhabited them [who] tried to…survive long enough to get some dope…and make it through one more day so they could start the same routine again” (145). Harry and Tyrone must traverse this “battlefield” each day to score enough heroin for them (as well as Marion and Alice) to stave off withdrawal symptoms. Their addictions begin to form cracks in their camaraderie, resulting in the friends gradually losing trust in one another. At this point in the narrative, the earlier dreams of the café and escaping the cycle of drug dealing is far removed from the reality of their lives given The Effects of Drug Addiction.
When Arnold questions Marion about why she uses heroin, she responds, “Because it makes me feel whole…satisfied” (154). Heroin becomes the central theme of Harry and Marion’s relationship, replacing the sense of security that their love and dreams once gave them. When Marion sleeps with Arnold for money, it is the first time she has explicitly used sex to feed her addiction. Her internal thoughts upset her: “He didnt know. If he did, he wouldnt have” (152). After Arnold has already agreed to give her the money, he notices her track marks and learns that she has a heroin addiction. This is not enough to stop him from giving her the money or to lead him to end their exchange.
Harry and Marion also struggle with this arrangement, and their mutual recognition of their failure as a couple haunts them when Marion returns home. The damage that has been done to their relationship is painfully clear. Out of an unspoken, mutual sense of guilt, they attempt to make love, but “no matter how desperately they tried they couldnt get the physical motions to mean any more than motions and the harder they tried the more they withdrew into their own shells of embarrassment until they mutely agreed to stop trying” (158). This cooling of their relationship foreshadows the way that heroin will come to completely replace Marion’s need for Harry in Chapter 9.
