Chapter 4 Psychoanalytic Study
四定原则on the Symbols in Rabbit, Run
Freud’s psychoanalytic theories have made it possible for us to perceive the world from a new point and to interpret human behaviors from a different perspective. A ca in point is that it provides an approach to the mind-body problem, as what we have done in the analys of Rabbit’s personality structure accounting for his behaviors. What is discusd in the following passages is concerned with how Freud’s psychoanalytic theories extend to explore the implying significance of the symbols which cluster in the novel in the atmosphere of xual passion.
4.1 The Interpretation of Symbols in Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism
A symbol is anything that is ud to reprent something other than itlf. In literature, according to Griffith, symbolism is offering readers a concrete object that actually has a broader, more abstract meaning to the story, and such broader and more abstract meaning is often a moral, religious, or philosophical concept or value. Just as characterization, dialogue and plot work on the surface to move the story along, the u of symbols works under the surface to tie the story’s external action to the theme. In a word, a symbol means A stands for B. So when the writer wants to tell readers B, what he
directly writes about is A. At this time, it is the critic’s duty to tell
B to readers.
Since symbols are created, such created symbols are subjective and some special meanings must be given (implied) within their context. The context of the symbols is different among individuals and societies and can vary over time. Therefore, the meanings of the symbols are, likewi, highly variable. So in different contexts, the interpretations should be different, but not arbitrary, becau the writer intends to give some special signs and backgrounds to lead readers to follow the writer’s way of thought.
In regard to Freud, any arts are objectified, systematized and visualized day-dreams, symbolizing the writer’s unconscious desires. In the solid structure of arts, with symbols as the agency, the outer and the inner, the conscious and the unconscious, all are combined with each other. In order to detect the unconscious motivation in literature, a literary critic needs to ruin the surface structure of arts, to trend back and restore the original unconscious motivation and interpret the meanings of symbols.
Freud has worked out a ries of rules and codes for this kind of interpretations, eking the accordi
虾需要煮多久ng unconscious meanings from the characters, incidents, plots, details and sceneries in literature. Part of them refers to religious connotation, and almost most significations are related to x in a complicated way.
One follower of Freud even claims that nearly all the symbols are symbols of x. And the kind of so-called panxual analysis on symbols provides a basic mode of thinking and rearch approach to the psychoanalytic literary criticism, and has long been employed by Freud and his crafty brothers.
4.2 Implied Meanings of Some Symbols
Symbols are not difficult to find in Rabbit, Run, thought they are not abundant as the Hawthorne’s symbolic novel The Scarlet Letter. Updike has learned this powerful method from this predecessor, and focud on the people’s names, places’ names, the surroundings in his works. He us the symbols to reprent the characters’ psychology, to express the author’s profound meanings and to deepen the theme.芝麻酱拌豆角
We have found that almost all the symbols utilized into the novel uniformly convey some special ns of unconsciousness or some xual desires when we take the psychoanalytic perspective to explore the deep meanings implied beneath the surface of the narrative. So apart from the symbolic
meanings of people’s names, the other symbols in Rabbit, Run can be classified into two types: one is dealing with the objects and scenery, the other with activities.
4.2.1 Place Names
In exploring a transformation within the individual psyche, Updike endows the place names with profound meanings.
The first place is Harry’s town called “Brewer”, which connotes that the living environment is a little brutal becau a brewer is a man who produces beer. Superficially this name indicates that it is a place producing beer, but for greater importance, it implies that the city is like a brewery which constantly pollutes with a disgusting smell.
什么真什么作文The cond place is Mt. Judge, from which one could bird-view the town of Brewer. Rabbit mentions this mountain veral times during his flights when he can no longer put up with his vere stress coming from both inside and outside. In Rabbit’s mind, this field can never “wholly explore” (Updike, 1988: 17). In long patches of forgotten pine plantation, the needle-hushed floor of land glides up and up, on and on, under endless tunnels of dead green, which will make one have a n of horror. When coming through it, Rabbit would become “vividly frightened, as if this other sign of life will call
attention to you, and the menace of the trees will active” (Updike, 1988: 17).
In his clear impression, this place gives him trilling fear that he cannot shut off. Then, after safe on the firm blacktop, he would decide whether to walk back down home or to hike up to the Pinnacle Hotel for a candy bar and a view of Brewer. Mt. Judge looks like an overpowering
manipulator of people’s feelings. In terms of the psychoanalytic study, it reprents the cruel superego, a deep religious connotation, which is cloly associated with the Judgment Day. According to Christianity, all the people’ morality will be judged on this day.
梦见自己坐牢了有什么预兆4.2.2 Mrs. Smith’s Garden
After Rabbit leaves home and lives with Ruth, he works for a living for three months in Mrs. Smith’s garden. Mrs. Smith’s dead husband is called Horace Smith, which symbolizes the ancient Roman poet Horace (65-8BC). In the psychoanalytic study, this garden is the symbol of the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve live merrily but later are expelled after they have eaten the Forbidden Fruit: apple. It is now Harry’s Promid Land.
During the staying in Mrs. Smith’s garden, the green and fertile woods and plants make him find the 马桶品牌排行榜
xual nature of life while he is t free from all realistic restraints. Nasturtiums, poppies, sweet peas, petunias, fragrant plum, cherry trees, leaves of maple…all the are what Rabbit “had waited all spring” (Updike, 1988: 136).描写牧童的诗句
The flowers remind him of the oriental prostitutes, and tho cheap girls who wear them to go to church on Easter Day. Rabbit has often “wanted and never had a girl like that”(Updike, 1988:136). The pleasant smell of the flower rembles the perfume of tho girls as they pass him on the concrete cathedral steps. In Rabbit’s eyes, “each flower wears on the roof of its mouth two fans of freckles where the anthers tap” (Updike, 1988: 137).
Thus, the garden is such a place as a symbol of the “heaven” in which Rabbit has been wandering. Yet, what he feels in this garden is really different from what Adam and Eve have felt in the Garden of Eden.
4.2.3 Playing Basketball and Golf
To literary psychoanalytic critics, all convex images are symbolic of genitals, and all concave images are symbolic of vaginas. They regard dancing, riding, flying and sawing as the xual pleasure, and the cut of limbs, disability and blindness as castration. Therefore, in the eyes of a literary psychoanal
圣家大教堂ytic critic, some of Rabbit’s actions may symbolize xual activities.
Playing basketball and golf are undoubtedly two of the most impressive and important symbols, which Updike sustains through the novel, allowing them to remind people of their deep indication as the book progress. Indeed, the two kinds of sports, which are repeatedly prented in the book, bear xual images. Basketball initially appears in the beginning, when Rabbit comes up the alley in a business suit, stops and watches six boys playing basketball. As Rabbit shots the ball from an angle, it “drops into the circle of the rim, whipping the net with a ladylike whisper” (Updike, 1988: 4).
No matter how he shots --- one-handed, two-handed, underhanded, flat- footed or out of the pivot --- he ts the ball successfully, and he feels liberated from the long gloom. Rabbit does show his inten love or his xual passion in such an activity that he takes pride in. It is simultaneously a token to demonstrate his xuality. Another ca in point is that, once on his way home, while driving a car, Rabbit recalls the feeling of basketball game --- he would run not for the sake of score, but for himlf. At that time, there is only him and sometimes the ball and “the hole, the high perfect hole with its pretty cret of net” (Updike, 1988: 37). To him, that fringed ring sometimes even comes down faith to his “rip”, and sometime it stays away, “hard and remote and small” (Updike, 1988: 37).
The author also gives playing golf some deep meaning. In the protagonist’s mind, the golf clubs are women. “Come on, you dope, be calm; here we go, easy” (Updike, 1988: 130). He even looks as if it is Janice. He gets angry when the slotted club face gouges the dirt behind the ball and the shock jolts up his arms to his shoulders becau he thought it as if Janice would strike him. He thought: “Oh, dumb, really dumb. Screw her” (Updike, 1973: 130).
Taking all the into consideration, it may be safe to say that Updike has learned a lot from Freud, giving a emly allegorical cast to an esntially realistic novel. He actually allows his characters to express their fervent xual instincts on the golf and basketball cour in this esntially realistic novel.
4.2.4 Running and Driving
The scenes of driving or running are very easy to find for readers. The hero always drives through thickening nights. After viewing the six boys playing basketball, Rabbit “drives too fast down Joph Street, and turns left, ignoring the sign saying stop” (Updike, 1988: 22). On another evening, he escapes from Janice, he “zips north” (Updike, 1988: 36). on the road keeping the speedometer needle leaning to the right. At such fast speed, he falls into thinking of young DuPont women standin
g on the sides of the road for their lovers. Later on, he even ridicules mentally the Amish have xual life with their wives standing up out in the fields while just hoist their skin with nothing underneath.
The hero’s last running in this book is rather unforgettable: bearing complex n of guilty and gloom, he escapes from Ruth at hearing her pregnancy. “His hands lift their own and feel the wind on his ears even before, his heels hitting heavily on the pavement at first but with an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter” (Updike, 1988: 307). Running, actually, gives him n of happiness and life. It indicates his strong libido.
In general, when viewed from the perspective of a psychoanalytic literary critic, Rabbit,
Run conveys the core idea of the Freudian psychoanalysis: the unconsciousness and the libido, a force that implies the xual drives to find expressions in body and mental activities.
