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Sometimes the Bible is 100% literal, and sometimes it's allegorical, poetic and just as true. In Revelation John even tells us he is writing about a dream. So to look for literal meaning in a dream doesn't seem to be the optimum method of study.

You mean a vision not a dream, and a vision that God gave him and told him to write down literally what he saw.

Anything recorded in words, be it poetry, fiction, prophecy, allegory, vision or dream recorded in words must first be interpreted literally before one can understand what the author meant by those words, right. If you symbolize what the author meant to be taken literally, then you will not understand what the author is saying, right. And if you assign to the symbol a meaning different from that of the author, then you're off course again, right. That is why the hermeneutical rule of interpretation is to seek the literal meaning first, and if the literal meaning makes sense then seek no other sense.

Unless you get the literal meaning of words that describe what John saw right, you won't get the meaning of those words right, and the meaning of those strange things that John saw right.

Unless of course, you ascribe to the philosophy of the one who gave rise to more of the forces of apostasy than any other in early church history, Father Origen, who wrote: "The scriptures are of little use to those who understand them as they are written". Read some of his expositions of scripture some time -- one wonders if he was reading the same words that everyone else was.