The use of the fantastic in “The Great Awake” is quite literally transcending planes from the unconscious to the conscious, where whole cities take to insomnia incarnated. “People slept until their Sleeps stepped out of them, then they went on living awake.” (32)
The author does not explain the Sleeps, although the story attempts to and fails without resolve. All we get as readers is, “Very few people outside the city limits did [have a Sleep].” (49)
Janey is living with the quiet, physical form of sleep that has literally stepped out from her body, as a subset of a human entity. These “sleeps” are a docile sort of night terror. As Janey describes it, “I told my Sleep it reminded me of Peter Pan’s shadow,” (33) that is, relatively harmless and child-like. The author then also describes these Sleeps as “spectral.” (47).
We also see a kind of surrealism in the people of “The Great Awake,” where they have grown to accept these shadowy figures as a part of their everyday lives. This allowance creates a new norm where people are falling in love with their Sleeps, having sexual desires, and allowing themselves to be drained physically and mentally, to the point of pure exhaustion.
This state of exhaustion also then begs these questions: Is this a story of the fantastic? Or a story told about insomnia having taken over, and the telling of one person’s hallucinations because of lack of sleep?