Both women’s legs are crossed at the ankle with their weight supported on their right arm, tucked underneath. One can easily argue that this mimicry is no coincidence. Rousseau had become so familiar with rejection and ridicule by 1910, and Vallotton was “one of the first to write a favorable article on Rousseau” around this time (MoMA 251). Therefore, Rousseau would surely have noticed the work of a colleague who wished him well in the recent past and was influenced to perhaps pay tribute and thanks through painting. If this was truly Rousseau’s intention, consciously or not, this fact becomes a compelling piece of evidence showing how desperately Rousseau craved acceptance and praise for his work. As mentioned previously, he would go to any length to ensure that other artists and writers commended his work, and would also reward those who did in his own way of giving thanks. The woman in The Dream may thus very well be a subtle nod towards a man who commended his previous work.
	The other figure present in the work, a native who faces the viewer while playing a musical instrument, also reveals much about the artist’s struggle. Painted in almost pure black and wearing a traditional and colorful piece of clothing, he is almost not visible at first glance against the dark jungle background. The native locks eyes with the viewer, not at the woman or the animals, indicating that Rousseau was aware of the viewer while painting the work. One lion that looks towards the couch creeps calmly from behind the man while the second lion, also facing the viewer, waits low in the grass in front of the musician.
If the man were to be removed from this painting and taken out of context, the uneducated viewer could easily mistake this section of The Dream to be the work of Paul Gauguin, the Primitivist Post-Impressionism painter producing art only fifteen or so years earlier. The depiction of the man is overwhelmingly racist in a modern perspective, but even in the early 1900s as well. Throughout art history, Primitivism has been defined and classified as a “highly fluid phenomenon that, all in all, can be understood as an aesthetically spiritual, aristocratic, and escapist reaction against contemporary striving for scientifically defined facts and a scientifically produced optical truth” (Levitine 132).
The two lions within the painting too hold much significance in reflecting Rousseau’s aspirations of greatness. Many works prior to The Dream also contain jungle cats, but here they are depicted with a certain calm belonging to the composition; the first gazes at the woman nonchalantly and the second stares at the viewer intently yet without viciousness. Both evoke a sense of mystery, and while they are situated near one another, they appear to be lone creatures. Essentially, this may be Rousseau’s way to represent himself in the painting. As an artist, he was part of the art community by association, as these lions are companions by association as well, yet he never truly belonged in the way in which he desired. 