Dream Narrative And Identity Reconstruction: A Psychoanalytical Approach To Isak Dinesen’s Out Of Africa

Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, since published in 1937 has attracted worldwide attention. For revealing Dinesen’s 17-year life in Africa, Out of Africa is now being considered as Dinesen’s autobiography. Foreign and Chinese scholars have studied Out of Africa from different perspectives. However, studies on Out of Africa’s narrative strategy from psychoanalytical perspective are rare. This thesis is an attempt to make a new interpretation of Out of Africa with a psychoanalytic approach.The main argument of this thesis is that Out of Africa adopts dream narrative strategy for identity reconstruction. Dream narrative refers to a narrative strategy that a writer borrows the theory of dream working mechanism to create so that the text shows the characteristics of dream and ultimately the writer’s wishes could be realized. Freud proposed the theory of dream working mechanism, including the work of condensation, the work of displacement, the work of projection, the work of symbolization and the work of rationalization.Apart from Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis includes three chapters. Through analyses on character, context and plot, combined with the theory of dream working mechanism, this thesis will interpret Out of Africa’s dream narrative in order to explain the importance of writing Out of Africa for Dinesen to reconstruct her identity.Chapter Two with the insight of the dream working mechanism of projection analyzes some representative characters, including the Natives, the Europeans, animals, and the man in the stork story. This chapter shows that these characters are actually Dinesen’s projections, and with these projections Dinesen realizes her identity wishes.Chapter Three is about the context analysis. This chapter focuses on the natural scenery and the local life of Africa with the insight from the dream working mechanism of symbolization. By analyzing the symbolic discourse of the novel, this chapter will explain that how Dinesen expressed her wishes in these symbols.Chapter Four is about the plot analysis. This chapter focuses on the fragmented plot of Out of Africa, starting with the internal structure and the external structure of the novel. Firstly, this chapter uses the dream working mechanism of condensation and displacement, through analyzing the main events of the novel to dig out Dinesen’s inner wishes which were hidden behind the condensed narrative time. Secondly, this chapter discusses an underlying clear development in a seemingly disjointed plot with the insight from the dream working mechanism theory of rationalization in order to show that Dinesen finally achieves the goal of reconstructing a complete identity by reflecting the theme of survival integrity.