“ Worry wasn’t an emotion to which he was particularly accustomed—and it worried him. ”
The evidence never seemed to matter to those in power, who had already made up their minds and did what people typically do when their worldview is threatened by new data: they attacked the messenger.
~ Sol Luckman
In his mother’s honor, vowing not to commit the “fashionable stupidity” of ignoring things he didn’t understand, Max performed a brave act of nonconformity by accepting the possibility that his dreams might be exactly what they seemed: real.
The beauty of a metaphor is it doesn't have to be real to ring true. The instant a metaphor becomes true it ceases to be a metaphor, which suggests a disconnect between truth and what's commonly referred to as reality.
The Adventure called and I followed with my thumb like a character being written by an intractable author. Which, of course, I was.