Sons And Lovers Analysis

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D.H Laurence’s Sons and Lovers has never ceased to spill ink ever since its publication in 1930. The reader enters the inner and complex world of characters whom in their conduct and fate seem to bear a resemblance to mythological figures. The present paper is an endeavour to study Sons and Lovers from a mythological psychological standpoint. Freud, in his model of the psyche, distinguishes between two drives: the death drive (Thanatos) and the life drive (Eros). While the life drive includes the survival instinct and stimulates creativity, the death drive is the stimulator of self-destructive impulses, violence, and the wishes for death (Carel, Born to be Bad: Is Freud’s Death Drive the Source of Human Evilness?). The life drive and the death…show more content…
There is a dichotomy between William who was once successful and the present self-destroyer one. He foresees that his fiancée will never pay his grave a visit once he bids the world farewell (207). The technique of foreshadowing used in the talk of William emphasizes an eldritch doom, which will be reinforced by the succeeding events starting from his sickness (207). Paul engages himself with destructive acts too, that of which burning the bread in the oven (315). Bread in the bible is a metonymy for the “manna”, life, the divinely love and clemency (Swedenborg, "Spiritual Meaning of Bread", Bible Meanings). Metaphorically speaking, Paul is about to destroy his life with his own hands. And since Miriam is the epitome of religion, especially with her name being associated with the Virgin Mary, in the story, it is possible that this act denotes his inner and unconscious desire to destroy her. Among the defense mechanisms that Freud enlisted, Paul makes use of the displacement mechanism. By displacement, Freud refers to the negative, often hostile desires that a person redirects onto a defenseless object or person (McLeod, Defense Mechanism, Simply

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