"The Monkey's Paw": A Freudian Perspective Essay

"The Monkey's Paw" is a short story which moves around the edges of a ghost story and the uncanny. In general terms, the narration immerses the reader into a frightening atmosphere in which the reader can realise that there are certain elements that make the reading something more than a spooky tale; for example the way time is treated in the structure of the story. It is peculiar the way W.W. Jacobs manages to create a rather concrete story by making the reader fill so many gaps. In our opinion, that is due to the fact that there is a complete focus on the development of the story since the arrival of the monkey's paw, and that there are several omissions of facts in the beginning and in the end of the story, which is no coincidence. This

From this scene until the end of the sequence, Kubrick plays with different editing techniques. When this ape is observing skeleton, the shot cuts to a low angle shot of the monolith. This shows the audience that the ape is thinking about the monolith. When the ape smashes the skull with the bone, it cuts to a shot of a dead tapir. The quick-cuts of the crushed bones and another cut of a beaten tapir illustrates that the apes are no longer scared of tapirs or any other predatory creature. It gives the apes a sense of power and dominance over their so called predators. This method of editing not only becomes an insight to an ape’s thoughts but it also seen as a depiction of mankind’s predatory instincts. The music also invokes the feeling of power because it indicates a connection between the outskirts of space and this major breakthrough of human evolution. As a result of evolution, the apes have a newly-developed intelligence as well as a dietary change that primarily consists of

The essay by Freud begins with the essential factor proposed by Ernst Jentsch relating to the uncanny theory, which Freud later attempts to contradict. The theory proposed is that of ‘intellectual uncertainty’, and thus ‘something someone does not know one’s way about in’ as well as the uncertainty over whether an object is inanimate or alive. Although it appears that Freud agrees partially with these ideas proposed by Jentsch, he adds further to this with his own principles and those are that of the castration anxiety, which in its literal sense is the fear of the

When a person experiences chills or goose bumps as a reaction to something strange or unusual, they are being affected by a sense of uncanniness. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud endeavored to explain this feeling of uncanniness in his essay entitled “The Uncanny”. Freud’s theory focuses around two different causes for this reaction. Freud attributes the feeling of uncanniness to repressed infantile complexes that have been revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs that have been surmounted seem once more to be confirmed. The first point of his theory that Freud discusses in the essay is the repression of infantile complexes that cause an uncanny experience.

David Kherdian’s novel Monkey: A Journey to the West, begins with the creation story of Monkey. On the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, a magic stone is fertilized by the seeds of Heaven and Earth and is impregnated by divine inspiration. Following the embryonic stages of development, a stone egg is revealed. The stone egg instantly undergoes a physical transformation. “Once the egg was exposed to the elements, the wind soon transformed it into a stone monkey, complete in every way in all aspects of its being”(Kherdian 1). The stone monkey soon comes to life, explores his surroundings, and makes friends with other monkeys and other mammals. Monkey and his friends fool around in the forest and spot a curtain of water flowing from a waterfall.

Rice describes how these monkeys that are living in an artificial world and still remain detached from reality. The monkeys play and interact with each other in the exhibit as if they were in their natural habitat. These monkey continued to play on the fake hill oblivious to the fact that it was synthetic. Rice writes: “when out of the concrete slabs piled to resemble a hill/a splendidly squealing chaos of monkeys/ rushes, some trespass or crime in mokeydom.” These monkeys are unaware or carefree about the fact that they are being watched by many people. They act as they would anywhere else in the world with each other. Another part in the poem where Rice shows that these monkeys are oblivious to reality is when the mother is standing staring at nothing in particular. Rice writes: “The mother will stand on all fours and stare into space/and we will see by her eyes that all of this is beyond her.” The mother demeonstrates how unfased and unware she is by all of her surroundings. Rice uses imagery in this poem because he describes these monkeys playing on the “concrete slabs piled to resemble a hill” and helps the readers clearly visualize this fake hill and the fake life that these monkeys are living. He also describes how the mother monkey “stands on all fours” and “stares into space” in order to show the readers how unmindful the monkey is to her surroundings.

One reason that he states is that primates are able to understand humans and can communicate with them. They have the capacity to understand humans along with communicating with them. The strength of this reason is that it shows that primates can communicate with humans and can learn from them since they can understand humans. The weakness of this reason is that any animal can understand humans and some animals can speak languages, closer than what primates can do. There were three monkeys in the movie to show that primates have the capacity to

We as humans have our inner monkey to thank for much of the “human” characteristics that we enjoy today. The ways that we see the world, walk, and even think have been shaped by our primate ancestors. Though humans didn’t evolve from modern monkeys, it’s clearly evident that we do share an evolutionary relationship: a common ancestor. A particular creature called Notharctus, while perhaps not the exact common ancestor between humans and monkeys, played an important role in the development of one of the most defining primate features: the hand.

This text is centered on discussing how the choice of objects in men is primarily dominated by fetish. However, the choice of analyzing men is not caused by men’s account on fetish. Even though a fetish is often is deemed to have a close connection to abnormality, men rarely feel that it is a symptom of an ailment which eventually comes with a lot of suffering. For most men, they find themselves satisfied with fetishes to the extent of praising how they make their sexual and erotic life easier. Therefore, Freud’s text is centered on analyzing a fetish as a subsidiary finding in men.

In his drunken self-conscience the truth was released. He began to fathom the underlying details that he couldn’t pick up from his time with the monkeys earlier. Still trying to hold on to thoughts put into his mind, “He mistook each infant monkey for a beloved soul. In that way the nightmare was confusing” (Millet 314). As you can see it is still in his conception not to believe himself that what he was doing was wrong. This is a battle between his self-conscience and what he was taught to believe. Finally, actuality kicked in, “He saw each infant in the heart of its mother, precious, unique, held so close because the mother was willing to die for it.” (314). What Harlow saw was the absolute certainty of what his inner being was desperately attempting to communicate to him. It was that he was wrong. The test subjects before him were real living things just like himself.

Freud argued that an individual’s instinctual drive was sexually orientated. In the same way that “hunger seeks nutrition,

I went to the museum and was not aware of any different perspectives that were able to relate any art to psychology. As I was looking at the artworks, I finally saw a painting that correlated to psychology. I was astounded to know how this art relates to psychology. This art was made in 1902, and the depiction under the art was Reine Lefebvre holding a nude baby. When I witnessed this piece of art, I started processing the different manners in which this could relate to psychology, but at the end, I noticed how the baby was attached to the mother. This connects to psychology in terms of how babies get attached to their mothers, and the term in psychology that connects to the art is imprinting. In addition, this corroborates how many babies

Freud was always fascinated by just about any phenomenon, espacially of "unsuitable affect," its expression,

Freud’s concept of the “uncanny” is a highly influential and valued in psychoanalysis and literature. As Freud explains, it reveals much about his understanding of human beings as being essentially determined by their fears and unconscious desires. His interpretation of uncanny can be analyzed in two ways: linguistic and actual. In the beginning, he starts with the term “uncanny”, which is taken from German word “unheimlich”, literally meaning “un-home-like” – something unfamiliar and unknown, never experienced before. The problem is that the definition of the word and the linguistic peculiarities take half of the whole reading, so we get to the point after the second half.

that it is fear, but we miss it when we read the title. We find also