Comparing Shelley's 'And Frankenstein'

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Maria Abeyta P. 2 AP Lit Chapman 9/15/15 Freud and Frankenstein In 1920, Sigmund Freud published a theory that the human psyche was split into three parts, the id the ego and the superego. Freud defined the id as the part of the personality that relies almost entirely on instinctual desires. The superego is the part that abides by societal expectations and generally avoids anything taboo, while the ego is the conscious self that negotiates between the superego and the id; which are always at war with each other. The id of one’s personality is generally inaccessible because it resides within the primal part of our brains. This is a part that has been phased out of our conscious thought yet still controls our urges and desires. The ego continually…show more content…
Evidence of Victor being consumed by his id are referenced while he is creating the monster, “I pursued nature to her hiding-places… My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.”(Pg. 40) Indeed, it appears that he was possibly creating his own alter ego. By not being able to resist the unknown urge within him to finish what he was creating, it was as if Victor wasn’t doing all this work to bring the dead back to life - it was something unseen,…show more content…
127) He was overcome with his primal desires and finally submitted to them. As the story progresses, he actually becomes the id by breaking down and causing as much mindless havoc upon Victor Frankenstein as he could. Furthermore, Victor Frankenstein demonstrated subconscious anger issues with all of the people that the wretch had murdered. William, for acquiring the attention and admiration that was less present when Victor was small; Clerval, with his incessant perfection and giddy attitude, Victor’s father, because of his failure to educate him; and Elizabeth, for giving his mother scarlet fever and taking away someone for whom he had held a borderline oedipal complex towards. Exploring the concept that the wretch indeed is a psychological extension of Dr. Frankenstein, it would be normal for the wretch (an unchecked and primal part of Frankenstein’s psyche) to pick up on theses signals and subconsciously seek out people who Frankenstein has felt threatened by his entire
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