The number one rule for reading any stories nowadays (and in the past): if the protag gets it too well off for their life, then expect it to be serverely inverted two stanzas below. This story was a contemporary version of this sudfen but appropriate inversion of what actually was happening. The inversion, the literal defecation of the progress he “made” in the story, provides that literal confirmation that the Dialectic was complete: that he can dream and have a self-Consciousness. Of course, he “lived” beforehand but life, the Economy and the ruling ideology robbed him of that. Yet with his laboring and seeing the ruling class above him, he began, little by little, thinking and developing his own independent and anti-Slavish thoughts. The thoughts to have the best of it all and not be sunken in the Hellhole he lived in. Thus the dreaming state provided his Social being to strengthen but it has yet to provide an adequate class consciousness that would actually relate to his relationship to the Means of Production. And with the story disrupted and “stolen” from him, he gets reminded of his class position and, if there ever would be a sequel to this post, now a new journey, where the eyes spots grow darker and he develops a class consciousness that’ll show him his class interests. Such a tale I would love to read.
