A Psychoanalytical Interpretation Of Intruder In The Dust

William Faulkner, who was born in1897, is one of the most significant writers in the United States of the20th century. There are many images of blacks in his works, which shows the writer’s concentration on the racism in American South. Intruder in the Dust is a well-known work of his late writing career. As it shows Faulkner’s notion of race so deeply, it becomes an important writing of the writer.This paper, mainly based on Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory, analyzes the personality of the main characters of Intruder in the Dust:black people Lucas, white people Chick and Chick’s uncle, a white lawyer Gavin. It shows the maturity process by talking about their personality, psychological activity and so on. Meanwhile, it shows the change of their notions of race.The first chapter mainly discusses the psychoanalytical theory of Freud and its formation and development and the concepts of Id, Ego and Superego. In the last part, it tells the impact of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory on Literature. The second, third and forth chapter separately analyzes the personality of black people Lucas, white people Chick and Chick’s uncle, a white lawyer Gavin. The three characters of the novel declare their different attitudes to Lucas’s murdering. This is a process of their maturity of their notions of race.After a detailed analysis of the characters, this thesis mainly approaches that the characters of Faulkner’s novels will not get rid of the influence of the notion of race. As racism has existed for a long time, everyone will first tell the whites and blacks apart, and then consider the black people in a pair of tainted glasses. Furthermore, the writer himself is also influenced by the cultural, social, historical factors. Though he is getting more and more mature day by day, it is the fact that racism exists in everyone’s mind.