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Freudian Personality Of Lord Of The Flies By William Golding

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Dmitri Van Duine
Jr English
Mr. Nelson November 4th

Freudian personality of Lord of flies
When writing Lord of the flies William Golding as an author set out not to tell a story of boys stranded on an island during a war, but to tell a story that illustrates how society on a whole functions; interacting with the personality of people. Sigmund Freud’s theory on the levels of consciousness can be used to analyses Lord of the Flies. Freud proposed that the thoughts of people can be broken down into three categories called levels of consciousness. He claimed that the subconscious is composed of three connected levels, or agencies, known as Id, Ego and Super-Ego. The Id is the primal instincts which everyone is born with that “seeks only satisfaction of instinctual needs, and is the source of much psychic conflict” (Erwin 271). The Super Ego being the internalization of societal culture or the morality that develops over time out of the ego “However, in many of the ways it operates, the superego gives the appearance of being more closely related to the Id than to the ego” (Erwin 551). Finally, Ego is the “executive organ of the mind. It negotiates the demands of the outside world it negotiates demands from the other mental agencies (the Id and the superego)” (Erwin 168). William Golding shows Freudian Personality Theory in his book Lord of the Flies with balance of the Super-Ego and the Id at the beginning of the story; however as the story progresses, the Id gains a

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