Requiem for a Dream: A Novel

Marion is one of the protagonists of Requiem for a Dream. Unlike Harry and Tyrone, Marion comes from a middle-class background. Her family lives in Upstate New York, and they unknowingly support her lifestyle. Marion is a cultured, artistic young woman. She has traveled through Europe, and often tries to adopt European (especially Italian) sensibilities in her everyday life. Marion loves classical music and Jazz, especially Mahler and John Coltrane. Marion falls in love with Harry early on in the novel, and they quickly dream up a future together. Marion wants to emulate the European art scene she so admires, and she and Harry plan to open a café that will function as a community art space. This dream is eventually eclipsed by her drug addiction.

At the beginning of the novel, Marion lives as a free spirit, trying to emulate a bohemian lifestyle. From the outset, she has little qualms about sleeping with men to get what she wants; she does not consciously view it as sex work until she falls in love with Harry and is pushed to do it to maintain their drug supply. Marion has had several therapists, and she has an affair with her current therapist, Arnold, who is able to take her expensive dates and give her the taste of high society that she craves. On the inside, Marion has little sense of her own identity. Harry is the first person to make her feel like a human being rather than an object or just a pretty face. However, this sense of stability she derives from their relationship is gradually usurped by her heroin addiction. By the end of the novel, Marion cares more for the growing stash of heroin she collects as payment for sex work than she does for her dreams or her relationship with Harry. In this way, Marion represents the gradual degradation of one’s values and aspirations in response to addiction. While the novel does not approach sex work as inherently problematic, the author is clear that Marion doesn’t personally feel comfortable with the extent that she must engage in sex work to support her substance abuse disorder. This positions Marion as a character who undergoes traumatic sexual experiences in the course of the narrative, compromising her own self-worth and beliefs in order to score more heroin.

Tyrone, who likes to go by Tyrone C., is Harry’s best friend and one of the protagonists of Requiem for a Dream. Tyrone is a light-hearted Black man in his early twenties; he likes to joke around, often exchanging one-liners with Harry. Tyrone is Harry’s connection to the “Black part” of the Bronx and the New York heroin scene, and his contacts are the main source of the heroin the protagonists use and deal throughout the novel. Tyrone grew up with six other siblings, but he was sent to live with his aunt at a young age after his mother’s death. Tyrone has lived a tough life on the streets of New York and now longs for a life free of hassles.

Though many of their larger plans are Harry’s ideas, it is Tyrone’s connections to the Black drug scene in New York City that allow them to execute them. Tyrone’s supplier, Brody, is their main source for dynamite heroin that initially makes them a lot of money—until Brody is murdered. As a Black man, Tyrone is more vulnerable to profiling by the police and often thematically introduces The Complexity of Racial Dynamics; consequently, he is the first one arrested midway through the novel, and he is treated terribly by the racist Southern police when he and Harry are arrested on their way to Miami. Tyrone is a loyal friend to Harry, even attempting to intervene when the police harass Harry over his infected arm. By the end of the novel, Tyrone is sentenced to work in a Southern prison work gang, suffering from heroin withdrawals, with no escape except in his dreams of his deceased mother.