Essay on A Study of Joe Christmas in Faulkner's Light in August

Freud included a cornucopia of various themes in this book. The first of these is the recurring theme of the primal father and his psychological heritage. This is one of Freud’s most controversial cultural speculations. Freud proposes that human societies were

Once again, there are no signs of emotion or grief to be found, and all that was driving him was his sexual instinctive impulses. Once again, this concept falls under Freud’s views of the human beings instinctual creatures driven by our sexual desires. According to Joan Riviere, Freud believes that one of our two Basic instincts is the sexual instinct, which is not only the inhibited sexual instinct, but it’s also the self-preservation instinct (37). According to James Strachey, Freud thinks the self-preservation instinct is appointed to our ego, which takes control over the Id’s demands/ instincts, by deciding whether they should be able to receive satisfaction (15). When making decisions though, the ego is a very submissive slave to the Id, and it is tempted by its needs often (Costigan 234). This to me says that the ego, more times than not, gives in to the Ids demand, which defines Meursault’s mannerisms perfectly.

After several days spent meticulously filtering and interpreting the poorly translated web of psychological theories, Katharine Cook Briggs finally decides to unwind on her recliner. She calls her daughter, Isabel, eager to hear about the newest rendition of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, test form D, but she is unavailable (“A Guide to…”). She turns on the television, interested to hear the latest news updates on the deteriorating geopolitics of the late 1950s. Instead, she receives an unappreciated surprise in the form of the perky, gleeful face of stereotypical housewife June Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver as she thoughtlessly cleans, cooks, and cares for the family, all the while indoctrinating the audience on domestic female roles that Katharine finds both diminutive and regressive. June Cleaver may not have been the news Katharine was anticipating, but it was equally informative. She very well could have been a June-type mother, or worse, her daughter could have been. This comedic television trope of the average housewife reinvigorates Katharine, a constant reminder of her good fortune growing up in an intellectually supportive environment. She turns off the television, opens Psychologische Typen von C.G. Jung, and continues to comb through the pages, endlessly searching for the key to unlock the complexities of personality (“Myers’ and…).

Freud’s theory of personality examined the interplay between the primitive, instinctual urges—the ‘id’; the practical and rational ‘ego’; and the morally attuned ‘superego’; ‘object relations’ refer to the "object" of an instinct”, which is “the agent through which the instinctual aim is achieved”—most often a person and, according to Freud, most often the mother (Ainsworth 1969, p. 1). The psychosexual development theory that Freud launched reduces our behaviour to mechanistic responses to an instinctive need for pleasure fueled by the ‘libido’ and barriers or distortions to the gratification of the libido at various delineated stages of development were responsible for later problems in life (Kail & Zolner 2012, p. 5). Erik Erikson later added depth to the approach by including more humanistic elements to Freud’s stages and including more periods of development (p.

Joe constantly felt the need to make Janie feel horrible about herself. He would take control of everything she would do and Janie couldn’t do anything but feel sad. Hurston says, “The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. No matter what Jody did she said nothing” Saying nothing showed her husband that she let this mistreatment happen to her without speaking up for her rights. Being gone from her sole shows that Janie didn’t even know who she was anymore because she couldn’t even make simple choices for herself. This becomes a problem because Janie couldn’t even find happiness in her relationship, which is far from self-actualizing. These two quotes both show Janie’s passivity through silence and the feeling of worthlessness. This may be an example from Janie’s life, but this became a problem for many women whose husbands follow gender hierarchies to feel like they have more power over their wife. Society always views men to have more power and to be a more powerful figure than women which causes uncomfort in relationships. This strive of power stops people from reaching self-actualization because they are always looking for others to be better than instead of looking to reach their fullest potential. Reaching self-actualization is a big goal for many people because you

In the beginning, Janie is captivated by a bee that associates with the blossom of a flower. She sees a “bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom” and meet with the “love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree” which was “creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight” (p 11). Hurston incorporates the bee and the blossom symbol to represent Janie’s desire for love’s pleasure. The author reveals to the audience of how she is taken away by the overwhelming desire and passion shown from the “creaming” of the tree and the bee. This marks her virginity as she is presented pleasingly to the desire of lovemaking, yet also conserve her purity through creating her expectations for her later affectionate lovers. Further, Hurston portrays the shattering of Janie’s bee and blossom dream when she is left to realize that being with Joe and his personality is an illusion as he slaps her. She “stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought” and saw that “her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered” causing her to have “no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man” (p 72). Hurston revealing Joe’s actual image to its reader depicts Janie’s apprehension of how he was never the man of her dreams and just persuaded herself to believe that he was just a better man than Logan. She is left with the

William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” describes a typical relationship between wealthy people and poor people during the Civil War.

actions to show that no one will own or control him. He has no regard

The birth of the modernist movement in American literature was the result of the post-World War I social breakdown. Writers adopted a disjointed fragmented style of writing that rebelled against traditional literature. One such writer is William Faulkner, whose individual style is characterized by his use of “stream of consciousness” and writing from multiple points of view.

We see how the main character is affected by the death of the wolf in a deep way because something horrible happened to it. For example,” his trousers were stiff with blood”. From this it can be determined that some violent or harsh event occurred that was tense. When violence occurs and blood is shed there are always negative feelings and it turns the world into an unfamiliar place. In addition,” he cradled the wolf in his arms”, in this scene there is a more intimate bond between them that is shown.

As the novel, Light in August, approaches the end, we are told that Joe Christmas and Miss Burden have officially become lovers. This relationship, at first, shows signs of feminism to a point where these lovers meet at night to have sex. As there relationship reaches a climax, their passion begins to become more intense which eventually leads to sex on the outside ground. The mark of fall, represents a change in their relationship. One can assume that their romance was based on the time of year as well as the time of day, summer representing their peak romance and night representing their sexual drive. This part of the affair demonstrates a part of feminism to the point where the affair shows, at this time, more dominantly on passion, love,

Freud’s theory is that dreaming is meaningful, unlike the activation synthesis theory. He believed that the mind had three sections, represented in a shape of an iceberg; the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious. The conscious is the tip of the iceberg above the water involves everything we are aware of right now such as our thoughts. The

Freud believed that dreams represent repressed desires, dears and conflicts. He distinguished two aspects of dreams: the manifest content (Actual event) and the latent content (symbolic meaning of the event). In Freud’s latent content all of the symbolic meanings had a sexual background. He viewed dreams as revealing conflicts in a condensed and intensified form.

People will move in and out of other another person’s life, and some effect that life more than others. In the life of Joe Christmas, every female he encounters changes him a little more, furthering his dislike for all women. Since he was a child in the orphanage women have mistreated him and fueled his bias against all women. Christmas sees all women as conniving, greedy, irrational, and puzzling. In William Faulkner’s book, Light In August, Joe Christmas’s life and personality were shaped by every encounter he had with women.

Freud was the oldest of eight children from his mother and father. However, he had two older brothers from his father’s previous marriage. “Young Freud became the focus of his mother's most extravagant hopes…”