“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” is a narrative with multiple frames. It’s a short story framed as a movie within a dream. In other words, the story’s narrator is asleep and dreaming about an imaginary film that shows the story of his parents’ engagement. Occasionally, the movie is interrupted by technical glitches or the narrator’s emotional outbursts, during which he interacts with other people in the movie theater. Only at the end does he wake to real life, on the morning of his 21st birthday.

These framing devices call into question the “reality” of almost all the story’s events. For example, the text doesn’t reveal whether the dream/movie depicts the parents’ actual experience or just the way the narrator imagines their experience. The significance of the characters in the movie theater and whether they cross into different frames beyond the limitations of this short story is also in question. Within these destabilizing frames, however, the story conveys a clear emotional truth. The narrator is deeply unhappy with his life, especially his family life, and he’s scared to face the bleak reality of adulthood.