Semiotics of the Landscape

1021 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The importance of dreams to freud

The secrets that are held within our hearts always find a way to express themselves. This is true of every individual. Our secret desires and experiences show themselves little by little through our dreams, our personalities, and even through our hobbies. This is a partial description of Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious mind. What secrets are being expressed in Margaret Atwood's short story which is called Death by Landscape? How are these secrets manifesting themselves through the story? The answer to that question is how the presence of landscape is portrayed throughout the short story. This paper will discuss how the inner secrets and thoughts of the main character, who is named Lois, are expressed throughout the short story in the depiction of the Canadian wilderness, particularly the landscape portraits. A Freudian psychoanalytical analysis will be used in order to better understand not only the concept of the unconscious mind, but in order to reach a better understanding of the character Lois and the story as a whole.

First, let us analyze Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method to help recover and deal with memories. Psychoanalysis deals heavily with the concepts of the unconscious minds, repressed memories and other Freudian thoughts, because it is a primarily personal experience. Psychoanalysis is also related to Freud's interpretation of dreams. Freud felt that each individual dream could be understood as the unconscious mind projecting thoughts and secret desires in a form that could trick the censoring system of the brain. In a way, dream analysis can be understood as trying to decipher the clues to a mystery that you already know, but have forgotten ...

... middle of paper ...

...f Lucy and all the associations she had with her for a long time.

The content of a painting of the Canadian wilderness is hardly warm. They are harsh climates with harsher realities behind them. This is the attitude within herself that Lois is unconsciously collecting. The distance that she keeps others, including her now dead or grown family, is represented in the pictures that she collects. She is, in a way, still collecting these pieces of the wilderness to hold on to Lucy; yet she is also doing it to hold on to herself. She's blaming herself, pushing herself with constant reminders in such a subtle manner that she barely notices it until they're all placed directly in front of her. This is the power of the unconscious mind. This is how our true selves, our true desires and thoughts can be pushed forward and expressed without our even having realized it.

Show More
Related

  • Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong

    1213 Words  | 3 Pages

    Duong Thu Huong’s novel, ‘Paradise of the Blind’ creates a reflective, often bittersweet atmosphere through the narrator Hang’s expressive descriptions of the landscapes she remembers through her life. Huong’s protagonist emphasises the emotional effects these landscapes have on her, acknowledging, “many landscapes have left their mark on me.”

    Read More

  • The Setting of Blood Meridian

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    Apart from the novel's thematic development, McCarthy's setting and his detailed description of the ornate beauty of the desert southwest is deserving of praise. A lyrical quality and refined beauty are apparent in the novel's description. McCarthy's extended accounts of the pristine beauty of the desert can be seen as an artistic and visually appealing piece work apart from the plot of the novel. Such memorable accounts seem to be a lone highlight in a shockingly disturbing book (Moran 37).

    Read More

  • Freud Personality Theory

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first foundation is the unconscious mind. Freud emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind, and a primary assumption of Freudian theory is that the unconscious mind governs behavior to a greater degree than people suspect. The goal of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious. Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind. On the surface is consciousness, which consists of those thoughts that are the focus of our attention now, and this is seen as the tip of the iceberg. The preconscious consists of all which can be retrieved from memory. The third and most significant region is the unconscious. Here lie the processes that are the real cause of most behavior. Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part you cannot see. Freud found that some events and desires were often too frightening or painful for his patients to acknowledge, and believed such information was locked away in the unconscious mind. This can happen through the process of

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud Theory

    1633 Words  | 4 Pages

    Of the copious number of topics in the world today, nothing captivated Sigmund Freud’s attention like psychology did. Known as the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud laid the foundations for comprehending the inner workings that determine human behavior (1). Through his involvement with the hypnosis, dream analysis, psychosexual stages, and the unconscious as a whole, Freud began a new revolution that faced its own conflict but eventually brought the harvest of new knowledge and clarity to the concept of the mind.

    Read More

  • Mental Illness In Hamlet Essay

    1037 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1900 , an Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud produced a work entitled The Interpretation of Dreams, reviewing the idea that dreams allow psychic examination, that the dreams that are happening contain some sort of psychological meaning which can be brought on by interpretation. Freud says that every dream will release itself as a emotional structure, full of importance, and one which may be assigned to a designated place in the psychic activities. According to Freud's original thoughts dreams have two contents, a manifest content which is the dream that one actually experiences and a hidden content which is the meaning of the dream as discovered by interpretation.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Nirvana Principle

    1434 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The Nirvana Principle by Lisa Bird-Wilson, the narrator often describes a particular image of a body in the river that is used to help her work towards this healing process with self-therapy. Throughout the story Hanna gradually reveals more in her narrative as the reader’s progress further to the truth. As the story advances, the reader’s can identify a development with the narrators healing process by the imagery used of the body in the ravine. In the end, it is revealed the true representation and meaning behind this imagery. Ultimately, this discovery exhibits alleviation in the narrator distress from her trauma

    Read More

  • The Valley of the Ashes in the Great Gatsby

    1155 Words  | 3 Pages

    The valley is described as a “desolate” place where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens”. (21) Ashes that dominate the area take the shape of natural greenery. The term “grotesque gardens” uses alliteration, with juxtaposition; to highlight the odd pairing of ashes and greenery. Ashes are associated with death while ridges and “gardens” represent the potential to flourish and grow in the promise and ideal of equality as in “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” (143) The trees that once stood here were able to speak to man’s dreams, which allude to America, the land able to speak to man’s dreams and capacity for wonder. All this is replaced by grey ash that suffocates the inhabitants, restricting them to their social class. This presents a bleak image of hopelessness that surrounds the valley.

    Read More

  • Freud's Theory of Dreaming and Repression

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is universally known that dreams are full of meanings and emotions. In Freud’s theory, all dreams are wish fulfillments or at least attempts at wish fulfillment. The dreams are usually presented in an unrecognizable form because the wishes are repressed. Freud proposes there are two levels in the structure of dreams, the manifest contents and the latent dream-thoughts. The manifest dream, a dream with understandable contents, is a substitute-formation that hides latent dream-thoughts, which are the abstract ideas in dreams. This translation of latent dream-thoughts to the manifest dream-content is defined by Freud as “dream-work”. Dream-work consists of certain types of transformation.

    Read More

  • Tennyson's Use of Landscape as an Indication of Mood

    2085 Words  | 5 Pages

    Although Tennyson’s use of landscape indeed creates a strong vivid impression, I feel that it also serves a higher purpose: namely, to express the psychological state and mood depicted in the protagonists of the poems.

    Read More

  • Death of a Bird: Trifles by Susan Glaspell

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    The psychoanalytic perspective was first discovered by Sigmund Freud which uncovers the nature of the mind and leads to the discovery of the unconscious. The unconscious is layered underneath as the proprietary element of the individuals mind, it is built over time and is only revealed through dreams, and slips. The development of the unconscious can be built at an early stage, as it shapes our personality. The individual does not have access to the unconscious as it’s deep in the mind and we find these events and feelings unacceptable for our conscious.

    Read More

  • Unraveling the Intricacies of Dreams

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    Psychology, neuroscience try to explain them, 2012). He studied dreams to better understand aspects of personality as they relate to pathology. Freud believed that every action is motivated by the unconscious at a certain level. In order to be successful in a civilized society, the urges and desires of the unconscious mind must be repressed. Freud believed that dreams are manifestations of urges and desires that are suppressed in the unconscious. Freud categorized the mind into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. When one is awake, the impulses if the id are suppressed by the superego, but during dreams, one may get a glimpse into the unconscious mind, or the id. The unconscious has the opportunity to express hidden desires of the id during dreaming. Freud believed that the id can be so disturbing at times that the id’s content can be translated into a more acceptable form. This censor leads to a sometimes confusing and strange dream image. According to Freud, the reason one may struggle to remember a dream is because the superego protects the conscious mind from the disturbance of the unconscious mind (Dream Theories,

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams

    1185 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, a psychologist named Sigmund Freud welcomed the new age with his socially unacceptable yet undoubtedly intriguing ideologies; one of many was his Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams. Freud believed that dreams are the gateway into a person’s unconscious mind and repressed desires. He was also determined to prove his theory and the structure, mechanism, and symbolism behind it through a study of his patients’ as well as his own dreams. He contended that all dreams had meaning and were the representation of a person’s repressed wish. While the weaknesses of his theory allowed many people to deem it as merely wishful thinking, he was a brilliant man, and his theory on dreams also had many strengths. Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind enabled him to go down in history as the prominent creator of Psychoanalysis.

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud: The Psychoathology Of Everyday Life

    1161 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sigmund Freud is one of the most influential people of the twentieth century for exploring the human mind more thoroughly than anyone before his time. His contributions have become embedded within the vocabulary of western society not only influencing psychology, as well as literature, art, and the parenting mechanisms of everyday people. He is the founding father of psychoanalysis which is often known as the talking cure, a method for treating mental illness and a theory which is intended to explain human behavior. He articulated and refined the concepts of the unconscious, infantile sexuality and repression, and he proposed a theory of the minds structure. Freud’s innovative treatment of human actions, dreams, and cultural artifacts has had

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud's Theory Of Psychoanalytic Theory

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    3. Psychoanalysis Theory assumes that psychological issues are found in the unconscious mind and surfaced symptoms, like anxiety, are the result of hidden disturbances. Freud contended that understanding the feelings and behaviors of an adult means looking at childhood experiences. The claim is that those experiences are the cause of one repressing certain memories and emotions. The theory also assumes that we are born with impulses which drive and motivate us unconsciously. These instincts

    Read More

  • Character Analysis of Mrs. Mallard in The Story of an Hour

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...

    Read More

More about Semiotics of the Landscape

Open Document