In another, the woman found herself surrounded by workers, including a milkman, a gasman, a newsagent, and a plumber. She felt calm, until she spied among them a chimney sweep. (In her family, the German word for “chimney sweep” was code for the S.S., a nod to the trade’s blackened clothing.)
Terrific example of how dreams are an idiolect (a dialect of one person).
(Edit) In case it's not clear:
The point I am trying to make is that you wouldn't know why a chimney sweep would be an upsetting image without the part in parentheses clarifying what that meant to her. Dream imagery is a symbolic language drawn from our life experiences and much of it will not be obviously meaningful to an outsider who doesn't know the backstory.
Terrific example of how dreams are an idiolect (a dialect of one person).
(Edit) In case it's not clear:
The point I am trying to make is that you wouldn't know why a chimney sweep would be an upsetting image without the part in parentheses clarifying what that meant to her. Dream imagery is a symbolic language drawn from our life experiences and much of it will not be obviously meaningful to an outsider who doesn't know the backstory.