Bluest Eye

Bluest Eye

Psychoanalytic criticism
The unconscious, the desires, and the defenses:
-People’s behavior is affected by their unconscious.
-Unconscious influenced by childhood events
-“…Repression doesn't eliminate our painful experiences and emotions...we unconsciously behave in ways that will allow us to 'play out'...our conflicted feelings about the painful experiences and emotions we repress" (Tyson)
-We develop defenses: selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death, among others. (Freud)
**relates to Hamlet- begins to hate his mother because she’s married to Claudius, the man who her killed her original husband and Hamlet’s father.

Id, Ego, and Superego
+The Id
-Inherited components of personality, eros: including sex (life) instinct, and thanatos: aggressive (death) instinct.
-Impulsive and unconscious.
-Responds directly and immediately to instincts.
-Demands immediate satisfaction, which is why we experience pleasure when we get what we want, and pain when we don’t.
-Operates pleasure principle: the idea that every wishful impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of the consequences.

**Hamlet being hurt because he felt his mother picked Claudius over he and his father.
+Ego
-Develops in order to mediate between the unrealistic id and the external reality.
-Works by reason
-Operates according to reality principle working our realistic ways of satisfying the id’s demands by compromising/postponing satisfaction.
-Weak compares to the id, just points the id in the right direction.
-No concept of right or wrong. Something is good if it achieves its end of satisfying without causing harm to itself or the id.

**Decides to kill Claudius because he wants to avenge his father’s death. **His disgust with his mother starts to show.
+Superego
-Incorporates values and morals of society.
-Control id’s impulses, especially that...

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