PSYCHO CRIT WORKSHEET: Freudian Analysis
Name ______
Please type your responses to each item below. (You can put each response just under its question.) Please use a distinct font, font size, or color.
When finished, re-save this file as a Word document, and post to Blackboard Discussion Board, "Freudian Analysis Worksheet."
- Working closely with Tyson and the Power Point presentation, sketch out a Freudian reading of White Oleander, analyzing 3 characters through the psychoanalytic lens. Support your assertions with evidence as well as terminology from Tyson. About 2 paragraphs per character.
E.g., what repressed wounds, fears, unresolved conflicts, or guilty desires are
operating in the main characters? LOOK FOR PATTERNS OF DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR. That is, what destructive behaviors keep getting REPEATED? What CORE ISSUES are thereby illustrated? How do those core issues structure or inform the story and the characters’ roles in the story?
- Read this poem by Ai:
The Anniversary
You raise the ax,
the block of wood screams in half,
while I lift the sack of flour
and carry it into the house.
I'm not afraid of the blade
you've just pointed at my head.
If I were dead, you could take the boy,
hunt, kiss gnats, instead of my moist lips.
Take it easy, squabs are roasting,
corn, still in husks, crackles,
as the boy dances around the table:
old guest at a wedding party for two sad-faced clowns,
who together, never won a round of anything but hard times.
Come in, sheets are clean,
fall down on me for one more year
and we can blast another hole in ourselves without a sound.
Now sketch out an analysis of the poem. You can either
a) analyze the speaker/narrator of the poem, or
b) analyze the author herself, using her poems as evidence of her core issues and psychology.
Provide details and support your assertions with evidence as well as terminology from Tyson. E.g., How might the poems represent unresolved conflicts, guilty desires, or repressed wounds in its author, Ai? Or what repressed wounds, fears, unresolved conflicts, or guilty desires are operating in the speakers of the different poems? What core issues are thereby illustrated? How do those core issues structure or inform each piece?
3. Sketch out a psychoanalytic reading of one character in Flannery O'Connor's, "Everything that Rises Must Converge."
4. Extra credit:
• Sketch out a psychoanalytic reading of contemporary American culture, using Hoagland’s “Texaco.” Click here for the poem (or check BB Course Documents).
OR
• Sketch out a psychoanalytic reading of Oleander, this time by analyzing phallic and yonic symbolism.