Mysterious Stranger
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Mysterious Stranger
Mysterious Stranger
In the book Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain the book reflects on many theories that show some background of how Sigmund Freud presented some of his theories. In the story Mysterious Stranger two main points that I see that came up in relation to Freuds theories was the pleasure principle and also the fixation theory. These two points are mentioned threw out the whole story. Mark Twain also lived an important and interesting life as well as Freud.
Sigmund Freud raised great debate when it comes to the pleasure principle. In the book Beyond the Pleasure Principle the book goes into great depth about how Freud would say anything that feels good is pleasure. His main focus when he came to the pleasure principles was the fact that pleasure is sex. In the book Beyond Pleasure it states when he wrote the book he was sixty-four years olds so he was quite mature to hand the points and commits made about the pleasure principle (Gay 20). In the story Mysterious Stranger there are many things that can relate to the pleasure principle when he just gave them the fruit and he told them that you need not wish for more because “as long as I am with you, you have only one wish to find” (Twain 60). This is just the start of how Satan is trying to win the boys over with pleasing them. However it also could be look at in a sexual way of pleasing the boys. Threw out the story Satan is constantly show them new things that he can do and keeping the boys close so that they do not run and tell what all he has done for them. Then as the story goes on Satan begins to focus more one of the boys Theodor and getting ride of the others. This is showing how the pleasure principle is working for both the boys and also Satan, however Satan is the one who is seeking more of the pleasure because he is the one in control of what they are to think and they are looking up to him. At the end of the story Theodor started to feel for Satan the way Satan felt all along for him. Theodor in the story asked Satan what are you going to do for me and then Theodor told Satan to take off a little and what he meant by that was take off a little of your clothes (117). This is much related for what Freud is talking about in his theory about how pleasure is sexual and that shows that pleasure is sexual. The end of the story they have come in contact with the natives they tell them to “Please let them have their pleasure for an hour- sir only that, and no longer”(118). This part of the book the natives are talking about Theodor and Satan and how they just need an hour to have time to themselves. This also goes back to the pleasure principle, and how Freud stated that you can get pleasure from anything sexual and even the natives see that. In the very last part of the Mysterious Stranger when Satan started to not come around as much Theodor states that ” This always make him lonely and melancholy”(119). Then when Satan come back for the last time he told Theodor “We have comrade long together and it has been pleasant-pleasant for both”(120). That shows how the feeling of pleasure just was not one way that they both got what they wanted out of it, and that goes back to what Freud was saying about the pleasure principle. When Psychoanalyst try to say that Freudian was a pervert man, they may want to think again because what Freuds theory states has been very true in the story. This now leads us to talk about another one of Freuds theory and that is how Freud thought you could become fixated.
Freud had many factors that he looked at when it comes to becoming fixated on one of his stages. Freud also believed that there was more than one stage that you could become fixated in. Freud had five different stage of where he thought that someone could become fixated in or on. The five different stages are the oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital (Wollheim 50-53). In the story Mysterious Stranger the boys seem to become fixated at a young age due to the fact that the school that they went to was a paradise for boys (Twain 56) “We were not overmuch pestered with schooling” (56). That shows right there that the boys did not go to school to learn they went to school to see other boys. This could result in the fact of becoming fixated at the Phallic stage were they learn toe identify with the same gender parent by acting as much like that parent as possible ( Wollheim 60). In the story it seems to me that Theodor could have been fixated in the Latency stage because that happens around puberty and that was the age that he was around when Satan started to come around. The fact that he became interested in Satan might have to do with that