The Wars Between Id And Superego Revealed In Poe’s Three Tales

Edgar Allan Poe is a poet, novelist and literature critic of America. Though he lived in the time when American was experiencing rapid development and the dominant literary voice is optimistic and hopeful, his works are considered outside the mainstream of American literature for his mysterious and grotesque style. However, as Chang Yaoxin states that Poe’s greatest achievement lies in probing into the darkest side of human psyche, Poe has a special obsession with human mind. The fact that his works attach importance to the depth of unconscious makes him continuously the subject of the psychoanalytic study.Freud holds that literature is the disguised dreams and it is the satisfaction of the repressed impulses in the writer’s unconscious. Freud divides psychical personality into three aspects, i.e. the ego, the id and the superego. The ego should not only represent the demands of the external world, but remain on good terms with the id. On the other hand, it is observed at every step it takes by the strict superego. When the ego fails to keep harmony with the id, the superego and the external world, it generates anxiety, which, in turn, represses the impulses of the id. However, the repressed impulses are still left in the id and can only reach their satisfaction through a harmless hallucinatory path such as dreams and illusion. Based on Freudian theory and with an analysis of Poe’s psychical personality and the dreamlike factors in Poe’s terror stories, the author of this thesis takes Poe’s works as his nightmares that are the outlet of his repressed impulses. However, as a serious writer, though Poe over-indulged his id in his works, he has to check his irrational behavior with the strict moral standards of his superego. Thus, wars between his id and superego are reflected in his works. Considering Poe’s personal experience, the author holds that the ideal aristocracy, parental authority and Christianity are important parts of his superego. And his three tales-William Wilson, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat reflect the conflicts between his id and superego in these three aspects respectively. The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one gives a brief introduction to Poe’s literary reputation and Poe study home and abroad. Chapter two analyzes Poe’s tales of fancy and his psyche on the basis of Freudian theory of dream and psychical personality. Chapter three gives a detailed study of his three tales and digs out the wars between his id and superego in the fields of aristocracy, authority and religion. Chapter four probes the causes of Poe’s conflicts between his id and his superego. The last chapter gives a summary to the whole thesis and its limitation as well.