A Psychoanalytic Reading in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Trauma, Hysteria and Electra Complex (Published)
Psychoanalysis seems to be the most suitable approach to analyze and interpret Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Freud is the founder of this theory in which he was able to explain human behavior through dreams and unconscious symptoms. Beloved is recognized as one of the most modern novels to apply psychoanalysis theories. In this research, I am going to explain these theories in the novel through characters and some important incidents that occurred in a great part of the novel. Sethe is the central character in the novel , she was influenced by her actions, especially killing her innocent daughter. It was evident that she had experienced a harsh treatment in her past. She suffers from slavery, oppression and raping in Mr.Garner Sweet Home in Kentucky. Trauma, hysteria, Oedipal complex are very clear to readers as psychological symptoms in Beloved. Many critics have written and discussed the theories of psychoanalysis in the novel such as Kristin Boudreau in her article “Pain and the unmaking of self in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”. She asserted that” People attempted to find an outlet to help them to clear out their painful experiences and hurtful past”. Sethe released her negative emotions and her stored desires by killing her innocent daughter. In the end, Many readers believe Morrison’s novels are the establishment of her envisioned tradition. She challenges and requires the reader to accept her on her own terms.
Keywords: Holocaust, Hysteria, Psychoanalysis, Sethe, Slavery, oedipal complex
Arevenge Endeavor (And) Unconscious Desire: Psychoanalytic Study on Mustafa Saeed in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (Published)
Season of Migration to the North is first written in Arabic language by the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih and later translated into more than fourteen languages. As postcolonial novel it reflected the conflict between the West and East. Despite Sudan is an Africa country, East stands for the Arab culture that dominates the Sudanese Muslim Majority nation. Many studies endeavored to explain the ambiguity that usually dominates this novel especially the main character Mustafa Saeed. This study aims at analyzing the main character by adopting psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud and later theorist like Carl Jung to explore Mustafa Saeed’s interracial sexual relations with western women. It is also attempted to find out why did Mustafa behaved differently in Sudan and London? To test whether his childhood wormless upbringing impacted his sexual relations as defense mechanism as claimed by Freud that childhood experiences crucially contribute to adulthood personality or he deliberately seduced Western women sexually as a revenge for the Western exploitation for Africa. Through the critical analysis it’s apparent that Mustafa exploited English women sexually as a means of revengeful reaction to Western exploitation of Africa; but it’s also his loss of maternal care and love in state of sexual fixation towards all women especially his feeling of a vague sexual yearning when Mrs. Robinson embraced him for the first time despite he was only being a boy of twelve years old.
Keywords: Colonialism, Psychoanalytic criticism, interracial sexuality, oedipal complex