Reasons why I chose Psychoanalytical Lens!

I chose to do Psychoanalytical Lens because I would like to have an idea of what the true intentions of the characters, whether its bad or good. I want to be able to go deeper into what the characters inner thought are and what they feel in the book. By reading A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer it covers this lens because it shows how the mother would play “games” with him and would make Dave starve and she brutally abuse him. This book makes one think Why would she do that? What was going through her mind? Something that we question in life is how do people see their parents in a different way. How can you love your father/mother more than what you should actually feel for them? Another Lens that I would consider is Feminist Lens because i would like to see the perspective of both genders. I would like to understand their point of view.

This lens was chosen, why was.

Choosing a Marxist lens was no easy choice. My first option was feminist lens because Beloved being set in such an older time period Females were always socially known to be in a lower class than men but sometimes they still have more power and more control over situations than most of the other characters. Also, as a diverse member of society who plan on owning my own country, I have a large amount of curiosity about power and how it is transferred from person to person and how most underdogs and wimpy archetypes always evolve and they “either try hard or you die hard” --Kanye West. Naturally, being the nosy gossiper “chismoso” that I am, power is huge. Whether it is Kanye stealing Taylor Swift’s power or a nerd stealing power from a jock, the concept of power and confidence is as real as anything in the world and how it gets exchanged from person to person is what makes the Marxist lens so interesting to me.

Why I Choose this Lense

It’s funny how powerful thought is on the human condition. Throughout my young adult life, I have experienced great highs and terrible lows of my own. I have also watched how ominous past experiences have tugged at the emotions, expressions, and actions of my parents, siblings, and other loved ones.

I come from an emotionally complex and challenged family. My family dynamic at home has been ever-changing and by watching my parents and brothers go through their deepest, most desperate deserts, I have discovered myself and developed an understanding and appreciation for each of their journeys, and how it has shaped them to the people they are today.

I consider myself to be a very internal person. I have always been naturally secretive and limited the people I confide in and the manner in which I express my truest, most honest self.

Through my internal and external experiences though, I feel I have gained an empathy for others and my own faults and imperfections. I feel that I can consider past experiences, tragedies and triumphs that lead to a person’s actions and personalities but understand that it is ultimately their thoughts that dictate their being.

Based on my own past experiences, I have felt a certain weariness with the same old issues that I’ve always seemed to have - the same boring flaws and anxieties that I’ve been gnawing on for years, which leave them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain I might have buried long ago. I strongly believe that this feeling is part of the human condition and that every person can relate to the struggles of their internal demons. I want to explore this concept more deeply and relate the literary text of Beloved to my own life.

I believe that the unconscious is the storehouse of those painful experiences and emotions, those wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts we do not want to know about because we feel we will be overwhelmed by them. I also believe that the beginning in childhood, wonderful and all-awesome moments as well as unhappy and painful events are repressed into the unconscious mind so that the person is not overcome by those disturbing experiences. Psychoanalysis uncovers information that has been repressed and allows one to understand how behavior has been influenced by the repression of events and memories from one's past.

In this project I want to uncover which ways characters exhibit evidence of the unconscious and how might the author’s constructed text be a representation of the unconscious.

Why I chose this lens?

In every book I have read I have always wondered if there were any secret relationships between the characters, that even the characters themselves don’t know of. Such as a love relationship between the mom and the son, or the dad and the daughter. This has to do with reading a book on the psychoanalytical lens of the book, which can really help understand the way the characters are really thinking when they make a decision. Since the way certain characters think is know if background context is given by the author of the book, to further understand and know what the characters are like and what decisions affected the way they are.

The psychoanalytical lense is very good for getting to know the characters a lot more, and how some characters connect to other characters in the plot. That is why I want to choose this lens, since it will be useful for getting some in depth info about character behavior.

Why I chose this lens ("Horizon")

The American Dream seems to be an ongoing controversial topic in today’s society. The question of whether or not it is realistic is influenced by each of our personal experiences and struggles which in turn, makes it different for everyone. I myself am still pondering the idea of it all. I am your average hard working Mexican-American low-income student with the vision of  pursuing an education and a better life. Sometimes I am hopeful. Sometimes I am realistic. I have not formed a definitive answer but I look for different perspectives in what I read. This takes me out of the narrow perspective one can easily get into and opens understanding for new outlooks. The Marxist lens in particular has been very helpful. I sympathize with Karl Marx’s perspective because of my background. I recognize the oppressive conditions the lower class minorities may be placed in. Societal structure is unfortunate and should be focused on, questioned and challenged.

In 1987, “Beloved” by Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Even today it is still one of the most discussed books. I plan to analyze the book Beloved through the Marxist lens in hopes of gaining a better point of view on the American Dream. By the end of the book, I hope to have formed an informative decision on the famous questioned “American Dream”. This book will allow me to do so because of ts focus on social classes and power.