Patrick White's chief interest throughout his novels has been on 'burnt ones', emotionally damaged people who lead a lonely existence without a lifeline to other lives. He is reluctant to portray his burnt ones as totally destroyed, but seeks to find for them a compensating value that might give their life some significance. Again and again, he portrays the force that supplements or transforms their blighted personal life as a richer life within the imagination. Those who do not or cannot attain a rewarding dream life, a life of conscious fantasy, White tends to endow with a visionary quality. (p. 152)

I use 'dreams' to designate the process of conscious fantasy…. Dreaming is a universal process, but when one's personal life is especially unsatisfactory, the dreams need to be richer, and they occupy a larger part of one's existence. Some form of dreaming—and mysticism itself can be seen...