Psychoanalytic Lens

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Contrary to many other lens’ during this time, the psychoanalytic lens deals with the complexity of the human mind. Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud, founded this lens and separated the subconscious mind into three major categories: the id, the superego, and the ego. With many interviews and different experiments on many people, Freud concluded that the faulty emotions that are being held back in the brain will affect our actions in the future, which ultimately caused him to make these neurological categories. The id is the instinctual, impulsive part of the human mind that yearns for physical/sexual desires. The superego is the moral part of the human mind that adopts the normal parts of society with little to no impulsive decisions. The …show more content…
When the American wife went downstairs to go and bring the cat inside with her, she is repeatedly told the same phrase. As she talks her husband, he says “don’t get wet” and the maid also states “you must not get wet.” With this repetition and the use of the psychoanalytic lens, Hemingway is trying to show the repression of femininity with this repetition. Even though rain is virtually harmless, the husband as well as the maid put emphasize on to not get wet, which ultimately reveals a further meaning. Throughout the story, the American wife is physically attracted to the hotel owner with his “heavy face” and “big hands.” Even though the wife was already married, she could not control her mind and hide her inappropriate thoughts about the hotel owner, which resembles the id manifestation in the brain with her sexual/physical desires. Thus, with the constant repetition of this phrase, “don’t get wet,” Hemingway illustrates the repression of femininity by telling the wife to completely ignore her id part of human brain. In other words, since the id part of her brain is instinctual and utterly repulsive, she is constantly being told to repress her sexual desires—femininity—throughout the short story. All in all, Hemingway expresses the repression of femininity with repetition and the id’s manifestation in the human brain, which is often too difficult to
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