ENGC70H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Call It Sleep, Family Values, Reductionism
Document Summary
David is ruled by more of his unconscious because he"s a child; the adult suppresses the unconscious, which feeds into our dreams. The force of the book is that it"s tapping into a more universal conscious (freudian concept) Concept is a little reductionist because everything boils down to sex and death. But freud"s theory is important to literature because it"s drenched in symbolism. Bourgeois middle-class family ties close to the theory - david also suffers trauma in the novel. The novel also came out around a time when freudian theory was very popular. The child loves it"s mother - but sometimes feels separation anxiety. But the son sees the father as a rival for the mother, and wants to kill him. Desire is repressed, son learns to feel guilt - this is a rivalry that the son is losing. Son comes to identify with the father as voice of superego saying thou shalt not .