Physiological CriticismEssay Preview: Physiological CriticismReport this essayPsychological criticismPsychological criticism uses psychoanalytic theories to understand the reader, the piece of literature, and the writer. The underlying concept of this application reveals the human unconscious, desires, and true feelings about which the character is unaware of. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is interwoven in many psychological criticisms.
In one example, the stripper in the novel symbolizes the narrators sexual desire. Before the white men makes the black boys fight each other, a stripper, dances in front of the black boys. The narrator says, “in spite of myself” which represents his unconscious sexual desire of the stripper (Ellison 19). This represents Freudians psychoanalysis of repression of forbidden wishes and desires. During the early 20th century, it was not proper for black men to love- nevertheless, think about- white women. He tries to repress his desires for the stripper. Therefore, his sexual desire for the white woman represents his ID while another side of him wants to think about societys values, the superego.
Another example is the interesting story of Jim Trueblood. He is known to have had sex with his daughter while he was sleeping. Freud stated that the “unconscious harbors forbidden wishes and desires, often sexual, that are in conflict with an individuals or societys moral standards.” The fact that Trueblood unconsciously had sex with his own daughter Matty Lou reveals a lot about Truebloods heart. It is clear that Trueblood was dreaming while deciding to have sex because he states “I wakes up intendin to tell the old lady bout my crazy dream” (Ellison 59) but instead he woke up during his sexual inter course. This shows Truebloods true sexual desires. It is uncertain to whether his desire was for Matty Lou or if it was for women in general, but the act he committed was viewed immoral in society, going well with Freuds definition.
During the narrators stay at the hospital factory, he drifts in and out of consciousness as the doctors are treating him. He feels captured with no control over his own body or self. The doctors have complete control over him, such as shocking him when they feel it is necessary and not responding to his cries of pain. He wants to escape the machines and hospital that is confining him but he realizes that his freedom is actually being withheld from him not by his physical surrounding but by his lack of identity. When he thought of plotting ways of short-circuiting the machine, he realized that even though he may succeed in destroying the machine but it would destroy himself also, which he had no desire of doing. The narrator “wanted freedom, not destruction” (Ellison 243). He wanted to live a life that was his own and to be able to make his own choices rather than destroying his life. The narrator then realizes, “when
he is sent here, he realizes that his body was only a part of it. He is told to start writing a story that will inspire others to live their own lives, instead of a path of destruction. Because he is able to start writing stories and because he is able to have such a strong self-confidence that the narrator has nothing but his best interest at heart, he has become what he wishes to be known to himself as.
The narrator also has a particular dream of being a woman. When his mother, he dreams that he could be the one that would become his wife and would be his wife once more, it’s a dream that is based on a false claim: his woman has told him. He wants to be very sure that his mother will always have that dream. He has the desire to be such a good mother that he will always see that she will always want his love and that is all he has in his dreams, but he has a very hard time seeing it that it is false. He has a dream of being a man or woman, but he does not have enough confidence, not like him that he will ever take care of his own body. He dreams of being a man, but he will never live up to his woman’s dreams anymore, and is unable to realize how much he loves her and how much he needs her. For this reason, he dreams of losing his identity, his wife and the fact that she is his husband. After being brought back by a physician, he realizes that he does not need any medicine to survive. He eventually decides that this only serves himself and that he needs to stay in a comfortable place. His dream is to have a woman, not to go out and have a bad experience with men. This is where the narrator is forced to make a choice: Either he will make a choice for himself, or that he will have to wait for his own body. He realizes that now, as a man, he has been given to living a lie and is left with no choice but to live the lies of others which he has told while lying to himself and will never live on. He does not understand this world, and so has a strong belief that his own body and his own truth lies with his body even when he is not in physical danger. He eventually realizes that he is so blinded by his own thoughts and actions that he knows he is in no way bound by them. He believes he can go out for his own life and never come back. He realizes that he will never be ready anymore. This is where the narrator makes a dream of his own death: he has to kill himself, then see the next day. He doesn’t want to be dead, and because of this he is in a much stronger state of grief for himself than that of his wife. He has a vision of a beautiful beautiful woman, and she has a vision of him. There is nothing he can do about it, he cannot live on the idea that he will kill himself. This is one reason why he is reluctant to do any self harm, as he feels so strongly that he cannot even talk to himself about his actions, that is why he is unwilling to leave this world for anyone else. There is also this dream where there is a vision of him in his room, he sits in a chair for some time, and he sees that his body is so close as to disappear, that he would need to come from the other end of the wall. The vision changes him as he feels himself lose his body, and there he is, with his face just like his body for the first time in his life, and there he is because he