Once having read the book “Senselessness” by Horacio Castellanos Moya, understanding the way the protagonist feels is simple, the protagonist feels paranoid. Each and every little detail and or scenario leads the main protagonist to becoming this paranoid man that he soon fully develops into. For the protagonist, the task of editing and proofreading the one thousand one hundred pages of the indigenous testimonies was too much. Essentially what we see as the readers is a man slowly but surely become more and more paranoid, he begins to become tremendously involved in his work as oppose to his initial perspective on the whole job, and later begins to lose it. Within good reasoning too, as we later find out that his paranoia becomes justified …show more content…
Knowing so only adds to the paranoia in the back of his mind. Here is a sentence in which the protagonist explains his awareness to the whole dramatic situation he has now become a part of. “I was about to stick my snout into somebody else’s wasps’ nest, make sure that the Catholic hands about to touch the balls of the military tiger were clean and had even gotten a manicure,” What he means is that he is sticking his snout into the wasp nest by agreeing to do this job for his buddy Erick, He refers to the one thousand one hundred pages he has to edit as a wasp nest due to the sensitive content that they hold within them. Him saying that the Catholic hands needed to be clean and gotten a manicure is what he is referring to his job being, just a manicure, a simple edit of the testimonies to make sure they are nice and clean. As for the tigers balls, well you do not want to touch a tigers balls because they are dangerous animals and are more than likely going to try to kill you after having touched said balls, which is exactly what he thinks the Guatemalan military is going to do to him if he “touches their …show more content…
We hear of the effect from the protagonist himself when he says “the cost to cure me of the psychological and emotional trauma I was subjected to while reading over and over again the aforementioned report” So he is aware that he has suffered trauma from the report. Furthermore we begin to see evidence of this trauma when it seems he has stopped living in the present moment, but rather in the testimonies he has read. Here is a quote to prove so, “I felt my Cousin Quique’s hand on my shoulder, I saw his reflection approaching me in the mirror and asking me in my ear what was happening to me, if I was talking to him, to which I responded, turning around to look him in the eyes, They were people just like us we were afraid of, which of course unnerved him” As we can see from this example, he is caught up in all of the knowledge he was acquired from the testimonies and, at the moment nothing else matters to him. An even stranger event occurs when he is staring at himself in the mirror from the bar he is in and no longer recognizes who he is. “For my attention was focused on my own face reflected in the mirror,concentrating as I was on each and every one of my features, on the expression on my face, which suddenly looked different to me, as if he who was there wasn’t me, as if that face for an instant were
it shows the initial shock and the very quick denial of the situation that comes after the initial “deed”. he screamed it and he could not be sure if the scream awakened him or the pain in his stomach. Brian stood at the end of the long part of the lake and watched the water, smelled the water, listened to the water, was the water.” The first part of the quote shows how even in sleep you will have a desperation for someone to love and care about you and this book shows this feeling almost perfectly. The second part tells us that in depression you may resolve into isolation and emotional dullness.
In the case of Perry’s novel, we see this type of process directly written out. For Elizabeth, most of the issues and unresolved conflicts, stem from her memory of them. She finds the stories of her grandmother and great grandmother, from them she constructs a dream scape. In her waking state, she sorts through the dream material and primary sources of history left behind to her, which could have various effects on her. As the theory regarding trauma stated earlier, cultural trauma, or issues that are passed down like those in the novel can link the past to the present through representations and the imagination. Elizabeth’s way of sorting through the harsh truth and history of her family and her own identity is through her altered states and dreams. Elizabeth’s memory and the collective memory of those in her family then become tools for her developing identity and her coping
The concept of the uncanny can be a difficult one to comprehend; this is why Freud begins his essay with an analysis of the different definitions of the uncanny in various languages. Ultimately Freud rests that the German terms “heimlich” and “unheimlich” best match the definition of the uncanny because it is translated as familiar and unfamiliar. The uncanny can be defined as something that creates a feeling of familiarity but also unfamiliarity, and this unfamiliarity is what is fearful to the individual. Freud’s essay “The Uncanny” can be related to the field of literary criticism because he explains how the feeling of the uncanny relates to the author’s attempt to convey a certain response from their audience. This type of analysis bridges Freud’s work and Larsen’s novel in order to re-examine and debate certain moments in Passing that after a second look can be defined as uncanny. Passing is a short novel that centers on two mixed women who reunite in their adult lives and describe how they are trying to “pass” as white to society. Clare’s motive for passing is so that she can live a luxurious life with her white husband who is extremely racist. Whereas Irene is trying to pass when she goes out in society, her husband Brian is fully aware and is a black doctor. Irene and Clare’s childhoods and pasts are vague which allows there to be room for psychoanalysis, particularly with the character Irene and her feelings towards Clare. Through psychoanalytical criticism of the uncanny moments that occur in Larsen’s novel Passing build tension between Irene and Clare and it is argued that Irene pushed Clare from the window that caused her death in order for Irene to keep her secure life with her husband.
When reading we often harness particular threads of thought or lenses of critique to gain entry into the implied historic or legendary nature of literature. To accurately process a tale in the light in which it is presented, one must consider the text from multiple viewpoints. Taking into consideration the psychological circumstances of the presenter/author/narrator, we can get a view into how our personal experiences can create bias in interpretation. By placing the elements of the story into the web of relationships used to interpret the external world, we bring a view of the text from the external perspective. All of these factors are at play in the relations between the perspective within a text, creating a form of reality with its own historic and mythic properties. Characters have their own histories and structures, expressed or not, and their perception in the fictional world they reside exerts influence outward to the reader of literature. This influence can create a sense of immersive reality that renders the reading experience to be mythic truth, based in facts but not emotion or direct perception, a somewhat distanced portrayal of events. However it can also be an expression of perceptive truth, events are experienced much they would be in real life – confusing and disjointed. To look into these problems of perspective, I will use examples from “The Red Convertible” by Lois Erdrich to demonstrate how Lyman’s narration style is representative of psychoanalytic concepts, showing how he deals with the situations presented in his life.
The medium of film, while relatively new and unexplored compared to other visual arts, has proven itself time and time again to be extremely versatile and fascinating with regard to aesthetic properties. At times, film can be used to enhance or respond to another piece of art—for instance, the adaptation of novels or other works that inspire or serve as the basis for a film. An adapter by nature, Alfred Hitchcock often used other works as inspirations for his films. Hitchcock’s filmography contains predominantly adapted works, though these adaptations are usually loose and edited to fit Hitchcock’s aesthetic and common themes. For his acclaimed film Vertigo, Hitchcock drew from Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s novel D’entre les morts (or
For example, the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” experiences immense paranoia due to his lack of mental balance. The narrator states in the following line, “How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story” (Poe 1). This quote reveals to us that the narrator is frustrated and paranoid to be considered a “mad man”. He shows this by acting innocent and explaining how mad people are not in tact with reality unlike him. However, he demonstrates the necessary symptoms of paranoia such as the need to put up a guard when he is near the vulture eye. As of result, he enters a state of denial within himself which is shown when he states, “True! --nervous -- very, very dreadfully neverous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe 1). The fact that the narrator is in denial, represents the narrator’s partial absence in reality. He then expresses his paranoia when he begins to “hear” the old man’s heart beat which is actually his own. His paranoia triggers this, causing him to feel anxiety and anxious throughout the story. Having paranoia will cause you, like the narrator, to live an unfulfilling life because of the amount of distress you will
The film, Vertigo (1958) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, is classified as a genre combination of mystery, romance, suspense and thriller about psychological obsession and murder. Filmed on location in San Francisco and on the Paramount lot in Hollywood, California in 1957, the cultural features of the late 1950’s America were depicted in the films mise en scène by costume and set designs current for that time period. The film was produced at the end of the golden age of Hollywood when the studio system was still in place. At the time Vertigo was produced, Hollywood studios were still very much in control of film production and of actor’s contracts. Hitchcock’s groundbreaking cinematic language and camera techniques has had great impact on film and American popular culture and created a cult following of his films to this day.
...nts changes, that person’s self changes. The victim of the trauma must regain control over their life through the cooperation of others. In this way, the autonomy connects to the dependence of the victim on those around them. The dependence on others to be autonomous gets destroyed when the victim is traumatized; they lose their trust in those around them and they lose their ability to connect with humanity. Related to the idea of the narrative self, the autonomous person that existed before the trauma dies and the new self must become autonomous through narration to others. In this way, the self as an independent, the self as dependent on others, and the self as the physical being are integrated with one another and cannot be divided. Just as a self cannot exist without the context of its society, society cannot be without the selves that constitute its existence.
The participants were not isolated for very long, and those were the results. Similarly, the same threats of results could pose for the narrator because she did exhibit some of these symptoms.
For instance, the narrator realizes that whenever he and his wife are alone, she becomes sheltered in her own sphere. This comes to mind, though with uncertainty, where he questions “whether the person I saw tinkering at the window was opening the latches or sealing the cracks” (32). What he doesn’t realize, and is oblivious to, is that the person she’s shutting herself away from was not just any person but himself. What’s more, the narrator is unaware of the changes happening to the world around him as the “ceiling” becomes visible upon his town. Even though he goes out day by day, as several months passed by, he was not conscious of the fact that the birds and insects had disappeared. He even claims that, “I did not notice they were gone though…until I read Joshua’s essay” (34). He’s blind to the world changing beneath his eyes, so how would he be aware of the status of his relationship if he can’t see what’s right in front of him? Even while getting his hair trimmed, and Wesson the barber asks him, “How’s the pretty lady?” the narrator replies, “‘She hasn’t been feeling to well,’ I said. ‘But I think she’s coming out of it” (34). He assumes that her abnormal behaviour lately is only a sort of phase that will simply pass by on its own, as time goes by. As a result, his incapability to recognize not only his wife’s change of demeanour but also
Trauma is a disturbing experience that causes deep stress and possible anxiety. Traumatic incidents are thought to involve victimization. Examples of traumatic events range from witness, physical attack, emotional or sexual child abuse, to the sudden death or disabling illness of a loved one. Traumatic events in particular, possibly leads to a multitude of symptoms, including depression, guilt and obsessive thought about the victimization experience. Trauma and the body can be perceived in a literary context in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Jean Rhys’s, Wide Sargasso Sea and Danticat’s, The Farming of Bones.
When this story is viewed through Sigmund Freud’s “psychoanalytic lens” the novel reveals itself as much more than just another gory war novel. According to Sigmund Freud psychology there are three parts of the mind that control a person’s actions which are the id, ego, and superego. Psychoanalysis states that there are three parts of the human mind, both conscious and subconscious, that control a person’s actions. The Id, ego, and
The creation of a stressful psychological state of mind is prevalent in the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Ophelia’s struggles in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, and the self-inflicted sickness seen in William Blake’s “Mad Song”. All the characters, in these stories and poems, are subjected to external forces that plant the seed of irrationality into their minds; thus, creating an adverse intellectual reaction, that from an outsider’s point of view, could be misconstrued as being in an altered state due to the introduction of a drug, prescribed or otherwise, furthering the percep...
In Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” , there is a re-occurring theme of the uncanny that is commented on by both Sigmund Freud and Ernst Jentsch, who try to explain the uncanny in different ways by highlighting events and imagery that they believe to play a key role in creating it. I however, would argue that the uncanny is a more universal theme in the story and likewise, it’s source will be much more general. In the course of this paper, I intend to prove that the source of the uncanny is the fact that the reader doubts the reality they are presented within the text in the same way that one would doubt the reality that is perceived by a schizophrenic. This is due to the fact that the narrator suffers from schizophrenia and a possible dissociative personality disorder. Furthermore, the events of the short story only occur within the twisted mind of the narrator and represent a series of psychical manifestations that were most likely imagined as a defense mechanism to deal with the traumatic loss of his father and siblings.
Pynchon’s views on paranoia are threefold: they serve to understand power and the relationship between the powerful and the weak, spirituality, and why paranoia may not be a bad trait in moderation. In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon writes five “proverbs for paranoids” out of context within the scene in which it is written. These proverbs serve as a fourth wall break, allowing Pynchon to communicate directly to the audience—another postmodern technique—and to comment, in generality, on his own beliefs about paranoia. After Pynchon explains the state of Slothrop’s image, he writes, “Proverbs for Paranoids, 1: You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures” (237). There are two interpretations of this quote.