As previously mentioned, Mal combats any action Cobb does within this first dream. Symbolically, then, she represents the guilt that Cobb feels over her death. This guilt stops Cobb from completing the extraction task without hindrance. We also learn that Cobb’s position on a “dream team” was the architect, whose job is to create the landscape of the dream. He cannot do this anymore because Mal always finds away into the dream he creates. For instance, when Cobb teaches Ariadne how to construct dreams, Mal appears when Ariadne overly changes the dream landscape. Before this moment, Mal has already moved from the realm of being an actual person to a symbol. Her ability to become a symbol stems from the trauma surrounding her death. The moment of her …show more content…
Cobb enters a hotel room, the same room both him and Mal rent for their anniversary. However, the room Cobb enters has been ransacked; tipped over furniture and broken wine glasses litter the floor. After picking up Mal’s token, the spinning top, he makes his way over to an open window where Cobb sees her across the way, sitting on a window ledge. The moment when Cobb looks through the window reflects a line within Metamorphoses said by a narrator. “Concerned for her, /or not quite believing that it wasn’t a cruel delusion, / a dream, or a mirage, he turned” (Zimmerman, 43). Cobb halts briefly in order to fully comprehend that Mal sits across the street, precariously on a window ledge. The halting reflects the unbelievably found within the myth. Once Cobb makes the visual connection, the trauma begins. Mal makes the