An Analysis Of Twilight Saga From The Perspective Of Personality Structure Theory

Created by the American modern female writer Stephenie Meyer,the series of Twilight Saga consists of four parts: Twilight(2005),New Moon(2006),Eclipse(2007)and Breaking Dawn(2008).It takes the emotional entanglement among the human girl Bella Swan,werewolf boy Jacob Black and vampire Edward Cullen as the main line and combines youth,campus,horror,adventure and other elements,which has attracted millions of readers’ attention around the world after publication.Scholars at home and abroad have studied Twilight Saga from perspectives of initiation story,Gothic elements,postmodernism,feminism and so on,but few have applied the personality structure theory to analyze the main roles in the series.The theory of personality structure is a branch of Freud’s psychoanalysis theory.It evolved from the primitive psychological structure theory composed of unconsciousness and consciousness into three-level personality structure theory,which includes id,ego,and superego.Id is the most basic part of the personality structure.It consists of instinct and desire,and aspires after “the principle of happiness”.Ego is rational,conscious id,and acts according to the “the principle of reality”.Superego is the highest level of personality,made up of the ego ideal and the conscience.Personality will be in a relatively balanced state if id,ego and superego coordinate with each other and operate harmoniously.Otherwise,the personality structure will be seriously unbalanced,which will have a negative impact on human body and mind.Bella is the heroine of Twilight.Although as a human,her demand of love in id,performance based on reality,and pursuit of conscience in superego are in the relative balance,her human nature,cowardice,is always an obstacle for her to pursue perfect personality.After being a vampire,Bella overcomes the shortcomings of human nature and realizes her ego ideal.The werewolf Jacob has gone through the procedure of changing from human to werewolf.His desires in id and expressions in ego are changing and restricting each other.The werewolf status encourages him to better pursue the noble quality of the superego.The protagonist Edward,as a vampire,restrains his id needs which are harmful to the society.He makes reasonable actions according to reality and is the incarnation of perfect personality.Through the analysis of the mutual restraint,mutual transformation among id,ego,superego of the main human,werewolf,vampire characters in this novel,this thesis explains the importance of maintaining the balance of the three-level personality structure.Then,combined with the intention of the author Stephenie Meyer to create these images,it comes to the meaning of this thesis: the author of Twilight Saga places the human pursuit of perfect personality on the virtual images such as vampires,deeply describes the human weakness and directs the direction for human beings to pursue superego qualities and constantly perfect themselves.