Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ASOS Yayinevi, cilt.9, sa.35, ss.1-18, 2023 (Hakemli Dergi)
The psychoanalytic approach to literature emphasizes the role of psychological motivations and conflicts in shaping a character’s behavior and actions in a literary work. This article explores Graham Swift’s The Light of Day, a richly-imagined narrative that offers an evocative account of events in a single day. By drawing on the major elements of Freud’s psychoanalysis, the article illuminates how literary works offer a means of accessing and analyzing the unconscious desires, anxieties, and conflicts of the author and their characters. Swift’s narrative technique is unconventio-nal, employing the first-person narrator, suspense, and hidden meanings to create a convincing portrait of mystery and the structure of the human mind through the stream of consciousness. The article investigates how experienced time can reveal childhood traumas and memories within a narrative that takes place in less than a day. By using psychoanalytic rea-ding, the Freudian concept of the unconscious, the effects of the id, ego, and superego, repressed desires, feelings, and childhood traumas are bro-ught to the forefront to deconstruct the single-day framework and reveal the protagonist's developmental process of identity. The article offers a cri-tical analysis of the text, drawing on the theories of Freud to analyze the complex psychological motivations and conflicts that underlie the actions and behaviors of the characters. The article provides a comprehensive exploration of the text and offers insights into how literature can serve as a means of accessing and analyzing the unconscious desires, anxieties, and conflicts of the author and their characters.
Keywords: Psychoanalytic criticism, unconscious, repressed desires, child-hood trauma, Graham Swift.