The Godly Imitators Everyone wants to be God. All people, at one time or another, have wanted to possess the supernatural qualities that will enable them to perform supernatural deeds. Whether they wish to perform miracles, preside over the cosmos, or create anything they wish, at the end of it all, they ultimately want to act as God. Some desire godly ability more than others; they yearn for control, for superiority over what they have and what they can create- including people. A comparison of the Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea and the 1964 film My Fair Lady reveals the male “creator” figure trapped in a juvenile Id phase focusing on selfish desires and remaining arrogant and condescending towards the female creation. Psychoanalytic criticism reveals more than what the eye can see; it uncovers what lies between the lines, what is hidden beneath layers of subtlety and duality. Analyzing literature or film through a psychological lens divulges “the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author” (Delahoyde Web). Through characterization, storylines, and dialogue, the author expresses their thoughts and feelings vicariously through the characters they created. The author’s latent emotions reside within the Id, “the most primitive and instinctive component of personality” (McLeod Web). The Id is the first part of our psyche; it houses one’s deepest, dormant desires that climb to the surface and emerge through actions. It operates on what Freud coined as the “pleasure principle” which means that “every wishful impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of the consequences” (McLeod Web). These impulses can be multiple things: wealth, love, control. The unconscious desire for control can be attributed to what is known as the God Complex. Ernest Jones defines this psychological syndrome as, simply, “the belief that one is God” (Jones 244). In his book, Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis, Jones goes on to describe the many traits associated with the God Complex. The God Complex is comprised of multiple character traits. The most obvious characteristic of one who believes they are God is “the belief in their creative power” (Jones 260). Like the God who spoke worlds into existence, people
Throughout the play "Macbeth", by William Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth's character drastically changes from being sinister to feeble. Lady Macbeth was an evil, manipulative person whose greed and selfishness were eventually the downfall of her character and well being. During the beginning of "Macbeth", she used her twisted mind to convince her husband to murder, making him believe that it was the only way he could get what he wanted. But as the play developed and the murders started to increase, Lady Macbeth started to question whether or not they were necessary. Sadly, though possibly justifiably, she ended up committing suicide after her constant questioning of the murders drove her to insanity. Lady Macbeth was an unemotional person who only cared about what she could gain. She made her disconcern about other people well known when she said, "How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me I would, while it was smiling in my face Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this." (Act I, Scene VII, Lines 55-60). Lady Macbeth refers that she would have no problem taking the life of her son, if it meant getting what she wanted. The fact that she would even fathom the idea of killing her own child makes her morose and appalling. If only she knew that it would be her who would be taken out of this world so cruelly. Being able to manipulate her husband's mind and the minds of others was another one of Lady Macbeth's baneful traits. After Macbeth killed King Duncan, still reeling from the crime he had committed, he met up with his wife. Once again, she used her manipulative ways to make him think that she felt just as bad as he did. She said, "My hands are of your color, but I shame To wear a heart so white." (Act II, Scene II, Lines 63-64). Lady Macbeth appeared to her husband as if she felt just as guilty about the act of violence as he did, knowing that in reality she didn't care at all. Telling Macbeth that her hands were as bloody as his own was to try to give him comfort that he was not alone in his schemes. But Lady Macbeth had other ideas in mind. She couldn't care less about her husband's thoughts or worries. All she could think about was
2002 - Morally ambiguous characters -- characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good -- are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role. Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
The unconscious mind houses the preconscious, a small section that houses material that is non-threatening, and easily brought to mind. But deeper in the unconscious mind are the instinctual drives, the wishes, desires, demands, and needs that are kept hidden from out conscious selves because of the conflicts and pain they would cause if they were brought to bear every day. Psychoanalytic personality theory tells us that the personality consists of three separate, but forever intermingling elements, id, ego, and superego. The id section of a personality is by far the largest, the only section that we are born with, and the section that contains the unconscious thoughts, it is raw, unorganized, and from the time of birth it tries to reduce tension caused by our primary drives. The ego, a section that develops soon after birth, balances the instinctual desires of the id and the realities of the outside world. Last of course is the superego, the final personality structure that is developed in childhood, and represent the rights and wrongs of society, contained within the superego is the conscience, the part of us that prevents us from behaving in a morally deplorable way and is responsible for guilt. Psychoanalytic personality theory is not without its virtues; Freud’s proposed five psychosexual stages – oral, anal, phallic-oedipal, latency and genital – are all supported in life.
Macbeth, written by william shakespeare displays a diverse range of themes and topics throughout the play. These themes are represented through a wide range of characters throughout the dramatic text. One that is strongly underlined throughout the whole play is the theme of the connection between ambition and manipulation and one of the main characters; Lady Macbeth. Throughout the sequences of the play, lady macbeth is depicted as a head-strong ambitious woman who challenges her husband's masculinity in order for him to commit actions in order to gain power.
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theory of personality argues that human behavior is the result of the interactions among three component parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego. The Id (Anger), is concerned with satisfaction of basic and physical needs and urges.
Freud proposed the psychological structure of personality to include three systems called the id, the ego, and the superego. At birth, the id is the original system of personality and is ruled by the pleasure principle. It is driven towards satisfying instinctual needs. The ego can be described as a mediator between ones instincts and their surrounding environment. The ego is ruled by the reality principle, using realistic and logical thinking to formulate action plans for satisfying needs. The superego includes a person’s moral code and strives for perfection, not pleasure. Psychic energy is distributed between these three systems creating dynamics of personality. This psychic energy is what determines behavior (Day, 2008).
In The Princess Bride, the storytellers introduce the plotline to suggest that how we as humans fight for what we believe in because it makes us happy.
In the novel Fair and Tender Ladies, the character Garnie is one of interest. As a child, he is full of wonder and easily excitable. Garnie is the younger brother of Ivy Rowe, the main protagonist. Garnie is a major character because of how frequently he and Ivy interact and with how she reveals more about her character from talking about him in her letters. When they were little, Garnie refused to play with his sisters Ivy and Silvaney unless he could preach. They would often play funeral and Garnie would deliver a sermon about God. After the family moves to the town of Majestic, Garnie immediately takes a liking to the preacher Sam Russell, as shown by how he goes to get saved on a nightly basis, only to be scolded by Sam for doing so on
Lady Macbeth progresses throughout the play from a seemingly savage and heartless creature to a very delicate and fragile woman. In the beginning of the play, she is very ambitious and hungry for power. She pushes Macbeth to kill Duncan in order to fulfill the witches’ prophecy. In Act I, Scene 6, she asks the gods to make her emotionally strong like a man in order to help her husband go through with the murder plot. She says, “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty!” Also, she does everything in her power to convince Macbeth that he would be wrong not to kill Duncan. In Act I,
Over time the music industry has seen many varieties of artists, genres and songs. With each era that comes and goes so does the kind of music that is popular during that time period. Even popular musicians become less popular over time. Unfortunately sometimes an artist will not receive their fame until they are dead and gone. Although they may no longer be the rage of right now an artist will always be famous for the music they sang and played during their times.
Lady Macbeth can be said to be one of Shakespeare's most famous and frightening female characters. She fulfills her role among the nobility and is well respected, like Macbeth. She is loving, yet very determined that her husband will be king. At the beginning of the play, when she is first seen, she is already plotting the murder of Duncan, showing more strength, ruthlessness, and ambition than Macbeth. She lusts after power and position and then pressures her husband into killing Duncan. Upon receiving the letter with the witches' prophecies from her husband, she begins to think and knowing that Macbeth lacks the courage for something like this, she calls upon the forces of evil to help her do what must be
Character development within novels with complex plot structures proves to be a difficult task necessitating the author to add their own inner thoughts and experiences to weave a more realistic story. The historical background of a writer helps glean on information about that person’s unconscious and subconscious processes that become apparent within an author’s literature. As the author develops their thoughts throughout a novel attempting to paint a clearer picture of their purpose, their own persona becomes a part of the literature. Psychoanalytic theory attempts to further this claim by taking information from one’s childhood, inner taboo thoughts and hidden motivations, and synthesizing them for a better picture of the author’s
Introduction Like many of his theories, such as the Oedipus- and the Elektra-Complex, Freud named the two main components of his drive theory after figures of Greek mythology. Eros, the god of sexual desire and attraction (his better known counterpart in Roman mythology – Cupid) and Thanatos the daemon personification of death. These two namesakes could not be more befitting for their respective drives. They already tell the interested reader the essence of, what Freud believed, keeps the mind in balance. Nevertheless, while being linked to psychoanalytic therapy in the general mind, the theory of the drives can also be used to interpret literature and its characters.
In the textbook, the authors discuss Freud’s psychoanalytic theory in which, according to Freud, individuals acted out their desires and behaviors in response to a mental system made up of the ego, superego, and id (Cervone & Pervin, 2013). The ego seeks reality. On one hand the ego wants to meet the desires of the id, but at the same time the ego also wants to satisfy the demands of the superego. The superego controls the moral and social acceptable aspects of an individual’s behavior. The id is the part of the system that functions under the pleasure principle. Simply put, the id wants to achieve pleasure and it wants to avoid pain. Individuals entered states were they would seek to relive tension and to achieve pleasure. These states are called instincts or drives.
The psychoanalytic lens provides a method for interpreting text from a view of understanding a story’s dynamics, underlying thoughts, fascinations, or images that explain a character’s motives. When reading literature through the psychoanalytic lens, one searches for how structure and images explain psychoanalytic concepts that help determine the psychological stance of a character. We look at these allusions through the psychoanalytic lens, we see that the allusions unveil the underlying emotions the characters feel.