Location of Self Identity --A Freudian Psycho-Analysis of the Protagonist in I Want to Know Why

Gao Jing(Hebei Normal University for Nationalities)
Song Wei(Hebei Normal University for Nationalities, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei, 067000, China)

Abstract

Sherwood Anderson plays a signifcant role and regards as a signpost in the transitional period contemporary American literature. Moreover, Anderson's writing style exerts a great influence on other writers like Faulkner and Hemingway. Sherwood Anderson has been called the frst of America's "psychological writers" because he frst explored the motivations and frustrations of his fictional characters in terms of Sigmund Freud's theories of psychology. I Want to Know Why is one of his famous short story from his short stories collections The Triumph of the Egg which is one of his most representative works. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the unnamed frst-person narrator, aged ffteen at the time of the events with Freud's theory of three structures of personality. With the help of Freud's psyoanalysis, this essay mainly probes into the inner spiritual world of the narrator in order to locate his own personality.

Keywords

Writing style; Psychological; Personality

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26549/jetm.v1i1.299