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Usage of dreams in literature according to Freudian theories
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Freud's theory of human nature
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The Rocking- Horse Winner Psychoanalytic Essay Psychoanalytic criticism focuses on the patterns of behaviours of people, the notion that human beings are motivated, by desires,fears,needs,and conflict which they are unaware. The Rocking-Horse Winner portrayed Psychoanalytic attributes, Characters in the story show signs of being motivated through sexual desires , characteristics of Id, Ego, and Superego and the power of deep hypnosis and analysis through the act of a “dream”. Psychoanalytic criticism analysis that all actions have motivation and reason, even if the mind is not completely aware of it. According, to Freudian theory “the unconscious aspects of the human psyche and that all behaviour is motivated by sexuality.” (class …show more content…
In the story, The Rocking Horse- Winner, Paul uses his rocking horse to daydream about winning real money for his mother. Paul is unsatisfied with his father and mothers luck with money so he uses his rocking horse to daydream about which horse will come first in the derby. In the text Paul says “Now! He would silently command the snorting steed. Now take me to where is luck!” In order of getting the answer of which horse would come first, Paul would subconsciously daydream of the race and convince himself that whatever he “saw” was the winning horse. Addition to the concept of a dream as only the symbols of the unsatisfied, are the young children who hear the house whispering “ There must be more money” from the subconscious mind of the anxiety build up from their parents not being able to manage their money rightfully and putting unnecessary pressure on their young kids. The house would whisper rarely but once the parents started foolishly spending more money on unnecessary items the whispering got worse. In the text it says, “The house had been ‘whispering’ worse than every lately, and even in spite of his luck, paul could not bear against it.” this is a metaphor for Paul’s anxiety towards the financial problems of their family, his mind with create illusions making him think the house was whispering to
“The Rocking-Horse Winner” is a short story about a young boy, Paul, who has the supernatural ability to choose a winning race horse. It is not clear how the boy has this ability but he hears his mother’s voice echo in his mind saying that they are poor and so he sets out to change that. Paul takes on the stress of his mother’s greed. This short story relates to the obsession of wealth which what motivates the characters aside of neglect, faulty sense of value, opportunism and deceit. Paul believes that there is more money to be made and thus goes on a frenzy to win more, but consequently dies after falling off his rocking horse due to convulsions of a fever.
Paul has the most motivation, although innocent at first, he grows more vulnerable with age, as his desire to satisfy his mother increases. Throughout the story, Lawrence notes the demonic spirit with statements acknowledging its presence, for example; “Paul’s eyes were dark and his voice changed as he rode,” “Paul rode unaware of anything around him, and fell off the horse in the end,” “the house whispered louder, “There must be more money.” The horse is symbolic of the risk of gambling with sin, loss, and death.... ... middle of paper ...
Paul, the child, knew that his family wanted money, and he knew that he was lucky, betting on the horses. Paul became partners with the gardener. He picked the horse, and the gardener placed the bet. Paul had started out with five shillings but his winnings kept adding up. When he had made 10,000 pounds he decided to give his mother 1000 pounds a year for five years. He wanted his winnings to be a secret so a lawyer handled the money. Paul saw the envelope from the lawyer and asked his mother if she had received anything good in the mail. She said "Quite moderately nice" (p. 168) in a cold voice. She liked getting the money, but she wasn't happy. She wanted more.
In both William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” and D. H. Lawrence’s “ The Rocking Horse Winner”, the authors give us a glimpse of two poor families who suffer through similar problems in different ways and situations. The comparison shows how in “Barn Burning” because of Abner’s recklessness and cruelty, his son Sartoris Snopes and family are unable to get into the larger society. In “The Rocking Horse Winner,” the mother’s greed for money and her behavior with her children and husband forces her son, Paul, to find a way to get more money. It shows how the behavior of Abner in “Barn Burning” and that of Paul’s mother in “The Rocking Horse Winner” affects their families
When reading “The Rocking Horse Winner,” you quickly notice the introduction sets a tone carried throughout the story. Sadly, you quickly notice that the tone of this story is rather depressing. Both of these stories share an interesting similarity; the generational curse. Paul claims that God had told him he was in fact lucky. Coisendenlly even though Paul makes this statement he continues to gamble on horses to make money. Gambling is a true sin, something Paul seems to ignore. The house in the story whispers throughout the day, this is the author’s means of portraying personification. Paul continues to rid...
The psychoanalytic theory says that our childhood experiences and unconscious desires influence behavior (Sigelman & Rider, 2009; pg.36). Our personalities have memories, beliefs, urges, drives, and instincts that we are not always aware of, and make up the unconscious. The major driving force behind Freud’s instinctual theory is the concept of Libido. Libido is a natural energy source that fuels the mechanisms of the mind. When this libidinal energy is stuck or fixated at various stages of psychosexual development, conflicts can occur that have lifelong effects.
{It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: “There must be more money!” Yet no body ever said it out aloud. The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it. Just as no one ever says: “We are breathing!” in spite of the fact that breath is coming and going all the time.} Pg 236 paragraph 6.
He grows up in the family which is haunted by an evil whisper “There must be more money! There must be more money” (Laurence 1). There haunted house with a whisper asking for money symbolized the greed of the mother, who cares for nothing rather than money. She desires to have a luxury life and never expresses her love for the kids. Paul always wants to have his mother’s attention. He wants to be claimed as a lucky man, who can satisfy his mother. He takes the responsibility of a financial provider although it is too much for a little boy to handle it. The luck comes to him. Somehow, he can figure out the winner by riding his horse and earn money from the bet. Even when he brings a lot of money for his mother, he always feels anxiety and scares that this ability will be taken from him. The evil voice keeps whispering in every corner of the house "There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there must be more money. Oh, now, now-w! Now-w-w - there must be more money! - More than ever! More than ever! (Laurence 10) Paul is too young to handle all of these stresses. The materialistic life drives him crazy. It haunts him and forces him to work harder and harder. Daniel P. Watkins analyzes the life of Paul in his journal “Labor and Religion in D. H. Laurence’s The Rocking Horse Winner” that “He is never satisfied with what he produces because it is no way relieve the pressure that his world place on him, and thus his
In Sigmund Freud’s “Sexual Morality and Modern Nervousness”, contained in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, the writer presents separate roles for men and women as it relates to sexuality, even referring to a “double code of morality” (22) for the genders. In his paper the former often takes the role of the subject while the former becomes the object. In fact, women are described as the “true sexual guardians of the race” glorified, it seems, instead of truly studied. However, in one particular section of the essay, Freud turns his focus onto the female sexuality. In specific he references the various factors that, in his eyes, can influence the female sexual formation. The primary influences being that of the society, primarily the institution of marriage, and that of the family, which would include both a woman’s parents and children. After discussing these elements, Freud then
The story "The Rocking-Horse Winner" written by D. H. Lawrence tells of a young boy named Paul who tries to win his mother's affection by giving her that which she seems to want more than anything else, MONEY. The house in which the family lives is haunted by a voice that speaks the phrase, "There must be more money!" Everyone in the house can hear the voice but nobody ever acknowledges it. Paul and the family gardener, Bassett, begin to talk about horse races one day and they soon begin to bet on them. Paul's uncle, Oscar, learns of this and becomes a partner with Paul and Bassett. They are quite successful in their endeavor, because Paul is the one who chooses the horses that they bet on. They always seem to win. He goes about finding the winner by riding his rocking horse until the name of the winning horse becomes clear in his head. This method has never the team. Paul decides to give his mother, Hester, 5,000 pounds of his winnings, which is to be paid out one thousand pounds at a time on her birthday for the next five years. While Paul was trying to figure out the winner of the Derby, his mother went to check on him because she had heard a strange noise coming from his room. She opened the door and saw Paul rocking his horse like a madman. Paul screamed, "It's Malabar! It's Malabar!" and then collapsed onto the floor. Paul died a few nights later. This is obviously a story about family and the feelings of shame that we acquire from our parents that could have disastrous consequences for the whole family as was the case with Paul's. We will look at Paul's mother's obsession with money, Paul's plan to please his mother, and the price the family paid for wanting more money.
In order to give their family the best and retain their illicit status, both parents embezzle all of their resources to -1- purchase materialistic things. The Rocking Horse Winner depicts how greed and the need possessions and money drives a member of this upper class family to resort to drastic measures. (Lawrence; The Rocking Horse Winner Study Guide) The second obvious moral to The Rocking Horse Winner is that often one does not realize what they have and how they we feel about it until it is gone. Early on within the story we learned that Paul’s mother had attractive, bonny children.
Hester, Paul’s rocking horse and the whispering of the house represent greed, selfishness, and love. They also reveal the character’s real feelings and thoughts of neglect, detachment, greed and selfishness. These symbols convey a theme and make the characters in the short story. The Rocking-Horse Winner is a tragic story where Paul dies trying to gain his mother’s love and compassion. The mother was just interested in the money he was winning in the derbies. The story conveys a major them of materialism and shapes the characters through the symbols.
Freud believed that humans develop through stages based on particular erogenous zones. Freud theorized that to gain a healthy personality as an adult, a person would have to successfully complete a certain sequence of five stages. Within the five stages of Freud’s psychosexual development theory, Freud assumed there would be major consequences if any stage was not completed successfully. The stages, in order, were the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency stage, and the genital stage. In general, Freud believed that an unsuccessful completion of any stage would make a person become fixated on that particular stage. The outcome would lead the person to either over indulge or under indulge the failed stage during adulthood. Freud truly believed that the outcomes of the psychosexual stages played a major part in the development of the human personality. Eventually, these outcomes would become different driving forces in every human being’s personality. The driving forces would determine how a person would interact with the world around them. The results from Freud’s theory about the stages of psychosexual development led Freud to create the concept of the human psyche; Freud’s biggest contribution to
Long regarded as the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) lives on today as an incredibly influential and powerful figure in the applied discipline of psychology. For Freud, it was his intense study of dialogue and interplay of involuntary human communication that ultimately led to his conclusions concerning the human unconscious. In contemporary studies, these conclusions have evolved into many of the distinguished, and more importantly controversial theories we associate with his name: the Oedipus complex; castration anxiety; penis envy; repetition compulsion; repression; etc. Much of the contention surrounding Freud is grounded in the belief that his works instituted notions that cannot be proven scientifically, such as personality development in infantile stages; sexuality in unconscious desire; and the unconscious drives behind human mannerism. Yet, despite the fact that many of Freud’s theories have not withstood the test of scientific scrutiny, few can argue against the fact that Freudianism is still impactful and has permeated other branches of modern theory. To prove this point, we can bring to attention the names of two modern theorists that have not only built upon Freud’s ideas in their work, but have consequently expanded his influence into other realms of literature, and other spheres of study. Harold Bloom (1930 – present) and Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) are only two notable thinkers that extend Freud’s ideas and have gained far-reaching influence in intellectual life. In response to this revival however, new opponents of Freud have found the opportunity to retaliate with their concerns and arguments. Nevertheless, the presentation of human identity and unconscious by Freud’s opponents and successors c...
Personality is an individual’s characteristic pattern of feeling, thinking and acting. Psychodynamic theories of personality view human behavior as a dynamic interaction between the conscious mind and unconscious mind, including associated motives and conflicts (Myers & Dewall, pg# 572, 2015). These theories focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences. Psychodynamic theories are descended from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, which is his ideology of personality and the associated treatment techniques. Psychoanalysis attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. This theory also includes the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. He proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality. Freud’s historically significant psychoanalytic theory became part of the human cultural legacy.