From Breakdown To Unity:Interpretation Of The Road With Freud’s Theory Of Personality Structure

The Road is the tenth novel of McCarthy, which describes a journey of America taken by a father and his young son after an unnamed cataclysm. Since the publication of the novel there has been widespread concern at home and abroad. Based on the former studies of The Road, this thesis tries to analyze the importance and possibility of the characters’ personality while the mankind and the external world from breakdown to unity with Freud’s theory of personality structure. Freud distinguishes the personality structural to three parts within the human mind, which he called id, ego, and super-ego. The id is present at birth and consists of instincts and desires which require satisfaction; the ego is the buffer between the id and the world’s realities; the super-ego represents the influences from parents and the social customs, it is complies with the morality judgments and aims to protect human and society from the id.The disorder of external world leads to the disappearance of social restrictions directly. With the loss of the external restraints, the super-ego loses its cornerstone; the ego will not restrict the id’s release. Driven by instincts, the id will be satisfied without any suppression. The human personality structure was broken extremely when majority people were guided by the instincts under the id. Accordingly, the breakdown will cause a great cataclysm to both the individual and the external world. The world will degenerate to a wilderness for human beasts; the crazy killing among mankind is doomed to the death of human beings around the world, even the winner of the last cannot escape from death; meanwhile, the civilization due to the loss of the physical basis and will stop developing, and the history of civilization will be erased from human memory little by little. Anyway, the thesis tries to find a way out of the difficulty in the novel, even though McCarthy gives a description of the terrible reality in the imaginary end of the civilization, he reveals the hope of reconstruction of harmonious environment. Readers can find a hope of reconstruction of the external world, which contains the new family, orderly society and newborn nature in the novel. With the nurture of outside and humanity faith, the restructuring of the personality will realize someday, it demonstrates the unity of man and self, thus, they make the unity of man and circumstance possible.This thesis attempts to evoke a universal pondering upon human nature, existential condition, the future and means of salvation in the real world through the analysis of the novel. So that people may reexamine themselves and transform their behavior and moral systems, protect nature to realize a sustainable development of human society.