Psychoanalysis and The Heart of Darkness
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, telling stories is essential to the analysand's (re)cognition of trauma. Julia Kristeva refers to the analysand's narrative as an instance of "'borderline' [neurotic] discourse" which "gives the analyst the impression of something alogical, unstitched, and chaotic" (42). She then explores the pleasure (jouissance) that the analysand experiences in the course of Lacan's talking cure. For the analysand, the pleasure is in the telling: "[T]he analyst is struck by a certain maniacal eroticization of speech, as if the patient were clinging to it, gulping it down, sucking on it, delighting in all the aspects of an oral eroticization and a narcissistic safety belt which this kind of non-communicative, exhibitionistic, and fortifying use of speech entails" (42). This notion of pleasure-in-telling serves both as a point of departure in my reading of Marlow's narrative--his own talking cure--and as a means of interrogating the pleasure-in-reading within the narratological economy of desire.
In his Freudian interpretation of the Heart of Darkness, Peter Brooks asserts that "we must ask what motivates Marlow's retellings--of his own and Kurtz's mortal adventures" (239). Brooks concludes that the primary motivation is Marlow's search for some kernel of essential meaning at the core of Kurtz's tale. Reading in a Lacanian register, I argue instead that the search for meaning plays a secondary role to the telling of the tale itself. Indeed, as Slavoj Zizek notes, symptoms have no meaning outside the context of the recreated scene of trauma: "The analysis produces the truth, i.e., the signifying frame which gives to the symptoms their symbolic place and meaning...
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...tial meaning of being in the world were revealed and every trauma were laid bare, there would be no questions left to ask and no stories left to tell. By not revealing the heart of darkness--which Lacan would argue can never be revealed--Conrad leaves the necessary space for desire in the narrative. Thus, the narratological economy of desire is maintained.
Works Cited
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Dover, 1990.
Kristeva, Julia. "Within the Microcosm of 'The Talking Cure.'" Interpreting Lacan. Eds. Joseph Smith and William Kerrigan. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983.
Zizek, Slavoj. "The Truth Arises from Misrecognition." Lacan and the Subject of Language. Eds. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan and Mark Bracher. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Charles Dickens is a famous novelist who was born on February 7TH 1812, Portsmouth England. His novel ‘Oliver Twist’ had been serialized and to also show Dickens purposes, which was to show the powerful links between poverty and crime. The novel is based on a young boy called Oliver Twist; the plot is about how the underprivileged misunderstood orphan, Oliver the son of Edwin Leeford and Agnes Fleming, he is generally quiet and shy rather than being aggressive, after his parents past away he is forced to work in a workhouse and then forced to work with criminals. The novel reveals a lot of different aspects of poverty, crime and cruelty which Dickens had experienced himself as a young boy in his disturbing and unsupportive childhood, due to his parents sent to prison so therefore Charles, who was already filled with misery, melancholy and deprivation had started working at the age of twelve at a factory to repay their debt.
Kristeva, Julia. "Within the Microcosm of 'The Talking Cure.'" Interpreting Lacan. Eds. Joseph Smith and William Kerrigan. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983.
Tell Tale Heart is a short horror story by E.A. Poe that is told from the first person perspective and describes the murder of an old man. The main character plots the crime because he (supposing the narrator is male) is irritated by the old man’s “evil eye”. The narrator kills the old man in his sleep, dismembers the body and hides the corpse parts under the floorboards. The main character is not suspected until he confesses the murder to the police believing everyone can hear the beating of the dead man’s heart from under the floor. Tell-Tale Heart is not a confession but an apology. The murderer tries to prove that the hideous crime, no mater how irrational it might seem to the readers, was planned and carried out in the calculated and premeditated manner. The narrator tries to convince the readers that he was conscious of his motives, actions, and intentions. What is more, he stresses that there was no trace of permanent or temporary mental disorder, let alone insanity. However, the choice of the point of view, tone and mood of the Tell-Tale Heart allow Poe to create the opposite effect and convince the readers that the story is an account of a madman. The psychological effect of the first-person narrative, the tone and symbolism let Poe enhance the gruesome effect of the story. The point of view chosen by Poe also makes readers feel as if the insane narrator addresses every reader personally. A vide range of stylistic devices is employed to make the story frightening from the very beginning.
Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” depicts the human mind through the struggle of distinguishing reality and imaginary. Poe utilizes the narrator/agonist to demonstrate how the suffering of one’s perceived acuteness of senses, in relation to anxiety, leads to an unwanted culmination. The narrator labels his own nervous behavior as “disease” that has “sharpened [his] senses” (691). Poe’s use of “disease,” indicates disorder and destruction, and also foreshadows the spread and consumption of the narrator’s fear. The confidence that results from the narrator’s justified senses proves to draw him further from his own morality. By example, he states, Moreover, his senses stem from his overarching obsession and hatred for the old man’s eye. This is demonstrated by his continued distinct characteristics he places on the eye—“eye of a vulture,” “pale blue eye,” “Evil Eye,” and “damned spot” (691-693). The collection of descriptions throughout his efforts to kill the old man shows the torment he suffers from his psychosis. The narrator’s statement, “it haunted me day and night,” displays his motivation for killing the old man. However, the significance of the narrator actually committing the murderous act demonstrates the definitive loss of his rationality and morality. Poe displays, that the dark side of the mind is a result of this los...
Personalities in the novels became cut off physically or spiritually from human companionship. Oliver suffers from a sense of estrangement. He fears being abandoned by foster parents and friends, even though the relationships are not healthy for him.
Oliver Twist mainly revolves around the mistreatment of orphans and how they were ranked low in society. The story teaches us a lot about how growing up in poverty and being ranked lowly in society makes people do things to harm others when they grow up by becoming thieves, pick-pocketers, or murderers. Oliver Twist takes us to England and while telling us the story of the fictional character Oliver Twist, who was an orphan, Charles Dickens also shows us the hard life for the people who faced poverty in old England. England,...
Madness is relative. The sanity of the narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is best approached from two sides. One of which are from the narrator’s point of view, and the other is a neutral perspective. This is a man who stalked another, murdered him, and covered his traces only to be harassed by his victim’s heartbeat. With the narrator’s consistent denial of his madness, his homicide and overwhelming guilt is what induced his severe paranoia and apparent insanity. However, his actions were committed through fear, while his story affected by false memory and trauma. The narrator’s experience shows how a truly traumatic event can prove to completely destroy and alter any man’s sanity.
Without personal access to authors, readers are left to themselves to interpret literature. This can become challenging with more difficult texts, such as Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Fortunately, literary audiences are not abandoned to flounder in pieces such as this; active readers may look through many different lenses to see possible meanings in a work. For example, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may be deciphered with a post-colonial, feminist, or archetypal mindset, or analyzed with Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The latter two would effectively reveal the greater roles of Kurtz and Marlow as the id and the ego, respectively, and offer the opportunity to draw a conclusion about the work as a whole.
Heart of Darkness is not only the title of Joseph Conrad’s novella, it is also a main theme. This is portrayed through different images of darkness, black and evil throughout his story. The setting is often used with images of darkness; even as Marlow tells his tale, it is night. This ‘darkness’ is inside many concepts of the novella such as Africa, women, black people, maps, the ivory trade corporation and Kurtz. Through these images on his journey, Marlow has a realization about the inner darkness of man, and thus brings out the theme, and title, Heart Of Darkness.
Charles Dickens was a man who suffered from poverty, which led him to expose the cruelty, injustice, and disadvantages that the poor encounter on a daily basis. Dickens was born into a low class family as many other authors of his time were. Ironically enough the restrictions that he faced living a hard and cruel life with his family, encouraged him to think outside the box of social norms. He began his career by doing some journalistic work and then worked his way up to becoming a newspaper reporter. The main focus of his works were the ignorance of the poor and child labor, both topics seemed to effect him on a personal note. Dickens’ attitude toward child labor and the poverty of the masses was exposed through his writings, which awakened the s...
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe aims to reach into the stratosphere of mythological patricidal figures. Even though the main character of this story isn’t as ill-fated as Oedipus, or as godly as Cronus, his inner conflict is just as epic. The main character’s inner conflict is just as interesting as Poe’s actual life is. In particular, Poe’s relationship with his foster father may shed some light on the reason why the main character’s disposition is so hostile, murderous, and yet, oddly loving towards is father. Psychoanalytical criticism will help shed light on the repression, denial, and intellectualization of the main character and how it corresponds with Poe himself.
Heart of Darkness, is not only an intense tale of pursuit, but also a psychological roller coaster as, through the characters of the story, Joseph Conrad shows us a powerful struggle between the Freudian personalities of id, ego and superego. The main characters of the novel, Marlow and Kurtz are mainly identified with the id and the super-ego type of personalities, and throughout the novel, these characters are placed in intense situations which makes them question their own beliefs and reactions, and ultimately their human personality. Hence, in between the characters, not only is there a battle in the physical sense, but also on the meta-physical level. This leads to a psychological imbalance between the human personalities of both the characters, and while one character is already dominated by his id to a large extent, the other character grapples with the struggle of his id with his super-ego.
Throughout his lifetime, Dickens appeared to have acquired a fondness for "the bleak, the sordid, and the austere."5 Most of Oliver Twist, for example, takes place in London's worst slums.6 The city is described as a maze which involves a "mystery of darkness, anonymity, and peril."7 Many of the settings, such as the pickpocket's hideout, the surrounding streets, and the bars, are also described as dark, gloomy, and bland.8
"Heart of Darkness" is Conrad's journey to the Self/Autobiographical elements in the "Heart of Darkness"
can be seen in Oliver Twist, a novel about an orphan, brought up in a workhouse and poverty to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the upper class people. Oliver Twist shows Dickens' perspective of society in a realistic, original manner, which hope to change society's views by "combining a survey of the actual social scene with a metaphoric fiction designed to reveal the nature of such a society when exposed to a moral overview" (Gold 26). Dickens uses satire, humorous and biting, through pathos, and stock characters in Oliver Twist to pr...