Oedipus Complex

Background on Sigmund Freud: He was a physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist and influential thinker of the early twentieth century. He articulated and refined the concepts of the unconscious, infantile sexuality and repression, and he proposed a tripartite account of the mind’s structure—all as part of a radically new conceptual and therapeutic frame of reference for the understanding of human psychological development and the treatment of abnormal mental conditions. 

The Oedipus Complex

This term derived from Sigmund Freud's theory of psychosexual stages of development to describe a boy's feelings of desire for his mother and jealousy and anger towards his father. According to Freud's theory, boys have the urge to kill their father, in order to gain possession of his own mother. Basically, boys compete with their father to "win" their mother. The boy views his own father as an enemy who is taking the attention and affection of the mother away from him. Sigmund's theory explores the idea that these feelings occur during the phallic stage of psychosexual development, when the boy is about 3 years old. This stage is important in the formation of sexual identity. Freud's theory is not limited to males only, but also to females. The female equivalent is called the Electra complex.

According to Freud, the boy eventually comes to terms with the fact that his father is physically stronger than him and the boy then experiences castration anxiety. He states that once the child becomes aware of the physical differences between males and females, he assumes that the female's penis has been removed and he fears that his own father will castrate him because he is desiring his mother. The young boy then identifies with his father and gains moral authority, where his urges are suppressed.



My opinion: Quite frankly, I find this theory extremely disturbing. I have never heard anything like it before or even considered it, for neither males nor females. I do, however, understand that the studies of psychology in all its forms have to be considered. Freud may be called a freak for having these theories and for having thought about it so much but as a psychologist, he would not base his theories off of unreliable and nonsensical resources. Clearly he himself experienced these feelings and perhaps even witnessed his own theory on various occasions. Psychology studies are essential because we, as humans, all experience psychological sensations and events daily and must be open to hearing and taking into consideration what psychologists have to say.

Writing a RADIO PLAY

As part of our grade 12 requirements for the course, we must compile a radio play in pairs.

I find this task to be extremely challenging but helpful in broadening our horizons as young writers. As we are only able to use the sense of hearing, without the aid of visual images, we must be very creative with our diction and sound effect choices. Every action and feeling that we want to be portrayed has to be done so by using the sense of sound. For example, something as simple as a character that is having a daydream. The dream must be displayed using sounds that we, as humans, recognize and associate with a dream. Music is important as it sets the mood. A variety of different sounds and tones is what makes a radio play engaging and interesting.


On the other hand, it is easy for us to make our characters. We can come up with a biography and backstory and also a physical description of these characters but anything we do have on a character must be shown through sound. Nobody listening to the radio play can see the character and they don't know of their past; it is just helpful to us writing the play so that we can envision the character in that state. We need to show the character through dialogue. Good dialogue is key for a good radio play. A character trait can be exposed through dialogue. For example, if there is a character who has romantic feelings for another character, we can use dialogue to express that because we cannot see how the person acts around that person so we must show it with words.

I think that this will be a difficult task but extremely useful in the long run for us to develop as writers.

the Title of A Streetcar Named Desire

The title of the play has both a literal and metaphorical meaning. The streetcar exists in the opening scene of the play, where Blanche uses it as a means of getting to her sister Stella's house and is referenced later on in the play.

The deeper meaning behind the title can be interpreted as such:

Blanche Du Bois is brought to New Orleans by desire. Having all these "relations" with many strange men led her to go to her sister's home, with her husband, Stanley. This desire always ends in the death of something significant. For example, when Blanche is raped by Stanley (he is consumed by desire at this point), all that was left of her sanity is killed.

Desire is a prominent theme in the play. I think that Stanley and Stella's relationship is completely driven by sexual desire rather than love. Blanche notices this and says to her sister, "What you are talking about is brutal desire-just-Desire!-the name of that rattle-trap street-car that hangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another..." (Williams 4). She is trying to show Stella that her husband and her relationship is not about love but rather desire. What I find interesting is that Blanche is quite the hypocrite. It was desire for men that led her to leave her old life and come to New Orleans.

Stanley; the dominant and the control freak

A Streetcar named Desire's Stanley Kowalski is a man consumed by the need to control. He holds a lot of power over his recessive wife Stella, who has an undying love for him. Or is it love? I think more desire.

Though Stella claims to "nearly go wild when he's away for a week" and "cry on his lap like a baby when he comes back" (Scene one - page 19), I am not certain that she loves Stanley. She puts up with his rude and disrespectful gestures towards her. For example, in Scene one, on page 4, he 'throws his meat at her,' meaning for it to be a sexual innuendo toward her. What kind of husband throws food at his cherished wife, as if she were an animal, if he loves her? Like the title suggests, desire is what drives the relationship between these two. I think this is one of the things that is the root of Stanley's control. He has this woman who would do anything for him at anytime and he knows this. He takes complete advantage of the things Stella does for him. Stella even allows him to slap her straight across her face, in the drunk state that he was, yet still jump his arms that same night - and later that night, into bed with him. I do not think Stanley Kowalski is capable of loving a woman because he thinks he is so much more powerful and important than they are. I think this man is driven by sexual desire and it consumes him, making him an abusive, angry man.

When Mr. Kowalski hears about the loss of the land of Belle Reve, owned by his wife's family, he is very suspicious. He goes on and on about the Napoleonic Code that he knows so much about. He jumps to the conclusion that Blanche, his sister-in-law, lied about its loss and rather, took all of the money for herself. Being the selfish, controlling man he is, he tells Stella that Blanche must have taken the money for herself and insists that she query her about it because "what's Stella's is his and if there is money hidden somewhere, he wants it because it is so rightfully his." He hates Blanche and thinks she is a compulsive liar. He eventually rapes her, being the beast he is, which I think gives him the impression that he is even more sexually powerful over women. I think Stanley is an evil character and I cannot relate to his character in any way because I detest his morals. He puts himself on a pedestal and treats women, especially his wife, as if they are lower than him.

My ISU book choice process

White Oleander (Janet Fitch) - My first choice as a book to use for my ISU project.

The Color Purple (Alice Walker) - My second choice as a book to use for my ISU project.

Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)- My third choice as a book to use for my ISU project.

To begin my choice of book, I chose 3 from the list given by (Mrs. Chaussé) and I further researched the major themes involved in the books and I looked up a summary of each story. For each story, I looked to see if there was an existing movie on that book and I watched its trailer to see how much it interested me or if I could see any relevance to the Book of NEGROES.

Right off the bat, I wanted to analyze and compare White Oleander to the Book of NEGROES. The story is about a girl who is tossed from foster home to foster home and her parents are absent in her life for one reason or the other. The main character, Astrid, struggles to find and discover herself. I immediately thought about Aminata's character, who is also put into the hands of a few different people and is put into different environments, has to adjust on her own, which allows her to grow as a person and get in touch with herself. My ISU would focus on this theme of self-actualization.

The Color Purple is about a poor, black girl named Celie, who writes letters to God because she is being sexually and physically assaulted by her father. Prominent themes in this story are racism and gender inequality. The Color Purple also addresses issues such as women of color's exceedingly low position in culture. The Book of NEGROES displays these themes also throughout the entire novel so I thought that this would be a good aspect to compare between the two books. Also, something I found interesting was that the children that Celie gave birth to in the story were taken away from her, by her father, and Aminata's children were also taken from her. Even if the situations were completely different, I thought I could maybe write about the effect that had on the two man characters.

Les Misérables is about a slave, Jean Valjean, escaping slavery and giving his life to God whilst becoming a good man. He must hide from the man who enslaved him, Javert, who still searches for him after many years. I can completely relate this man's story to Aminata's. She, too, escapes her owner and earns a living for herself, whilst having to be careful not to be caught and enslaved again. A major theme, then, would be fear. This fear is by the main characters, who have to be cautious everyday of not being caught. Another common theme between the 2 novels is social injustice and hierarchy. However, the novel Les Misérables, also focuses on many different aspects, including the French revolution, which might have made it difficult for me to analyze and relate it to the Book of NEGROES.

Technology makes us LAZY

After discussing the article by Jarrid Wilson, "Why I'm Getting a Divorce in 2014," a situation that I endured this summer came across my mind. I spent a lot of time with a friend of mine who just recently received an iphone as a gift. This article talks about learning to balance the amount of time you spend on your phone and giving yourself limitations with the usage of your phone. Wilson says that you should not let your phone control you and I think this is excellent advice. The friend of mine who I spent a lot of time with over the past 3 weeks became a victim of the power her iphone had over her. At any given time, she was glued to her phone; she was always scrolling and refreshing her social media and looking at photos on the Instagram app. Need I say, she was taking endless photos of everything that we would do, editing the photos and posting them online and waiting for people to "like" these photos. Her phone consumed her and she did not even realize. I think that nowadays, we are too often on our technology devices and it makes us antisocial and quite frankly, dumb. We are dependent on calculators for simple math and dependent on our phones to tell the time. Though I was in this girl's presence, she would find it appropriate to stare at her phone's screen and completely ignore my existence. That is, until I would make a comment about how boring she was acting. Then, she would become offended and claim that she was not obsessed with her phone and that she was "just checking it." I think it would be a great decision for someone to make their phone an accessory rather than a priority, which is what Wilson says in his article. We need to stop relying on our phones, get up off of our lazy backsides and divorce our phones. It's time that we start becoming more active again and have face-to-face conversations, if we even remember what those are.

Quotations

Quote #1 - "Got a slave mama, then you is a slave. Got a slave daddy, then you is a slave. Any nigger in you at all, then you is slave as clear as day" (Hill 153).

Georgia says this to Aminata when she was questioning the ethnicity of Mamed, an overseer on the indigo plantation. I think that this quote speaks for itself. Mamed had a white father and a black mother but he was still considered a recessive. I can relate this to Hill's story, Black + White = Black, because the blacks were so much less than the whites that if someone even had the slightest bit of black in their blood, they were treated terribly and looked down on. The theme of racism is prevalent throughout the book so I think that this quote is significant in that sense. At this point, also, Aminata was still young and Georgia was teaching her things, as a mother would. She is learning more and more about just how bad the situation for blacks was.

Quote #2 - "I felt cheated. Now that I could read so well, I had been excited by the prospect of finding my own village on a map. But there were no villages - not mine or anybody else's" (Hill 240).

When Aminata finally gets her hands on a map and finally has the ability to read, she is extremely let down by what she sees. On the map, Africa lacks a lot of detail. There are no names of villages or anything because it is the white men who make the maps. She calls it a white man's fantasy because if it were up to them, which it is, then they would only regard the fact that Africa exists, but go no further into its Geography. This is because of the obvious - Africa is inhabited by Africans and the whites only want them as slaves and barely see them as humans, even. I think this quote is important because at this point, Aminata has always known that there was inequality between the whites and blacks but to see that her country, where she longed to be, was conveyed so uncaringly on a map, she was completely let down. Her country was barely even considered as such because of its history.

Quote #3 - "I had now written my name on a public document, and I was a person, with just as much right to life and liberty as the man who claimed to own me" (Hill 274).

A theme prevalently displayed in the book is dehumanization. Here, Aminata is "humanized" a bit. Being able to sign a recognized document as an actual person was something new to her. She was always just another slave or had a branded name/number. I liked this quote because Aminata feels so proud to write her name and feels equal to everyone, even the whites. Sadly, we know that the discrimination was still there but Aminata's pride does not let her see that. This quote just shows how little the slaves were but Aminata was heading up the ladder of reign and becoming something, in her mind, not just another slave.


Quote #4 - "Nova Scotia, Miss Diallo, will be your promised land" (Hill 320).

Colonel Baker is one of the men who devise a plan to bring the Africans back to Africa and allow them to live in anti-slavery and live "freely". This quote is taken from the part of the book where he is trying to persuade Aminata to be a part of this master plan. This is an allusion in itself. The promised land was part of the covenant between a man named Abraham, and God in the Christian Bible. The agreement between the two was that Abraham would do as God told him to and then God would, in return, give him land, hence called the promised land. So, Aminata must make a deal with these men that the Africans would work in Nova Scotia and live "normal" lives and in return to them, they will provide security, work opportunities, food, water and shelter. It does not end up being just as good as it sounded to all of the slaves who longed for freedom all of their lives. I liked this quote because the Biblical allusion gave me a better understanding about how the whites saw this plan and what Baker meant when he said that this place would be their "promised land."

Quote #5 - "I never managed to return home to Bayo, but for one month in a tiny village of strangers, I became the storyteller - the djeli - that I had always hoped to be" (Hill 500).

When Aminata escapes from Alassane, who had betrayed her after all, she finds herself in a little village in Africa that she did not know. She is taken in and aided back to health and the people there love her. I saw this as the climax of the entire story because Aminata has longed to be a storyteller since she became a slave. It took going back to her homeland and being lied to, hence she ran away, to get her the title she desired. Everything she has gone through, everything she has learnt and everything she has experienced is finally worth it to her. She can now tell her story and be content with life. Unfortunately for Aminata, she did not get to go home after all; she was so close to getting there but as per usual in her life, something disrupted her getting what she wanted. Slavery might not had been demolished, she did not get her children or husband back and she did not get to live a free life but she did become what she had desired for as long as she knew.