Study On To Kill A Mockingbird From The Perspective Of Freud’s Psychoanalysis Theory

To Kill a Mockingbird is a brilliant work by the American writer Harper Lee.As soon as the novel was published,it achieved a huge success,and Harper Lee also won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1961 by virtue of this novel.It established Lee’s irreplaceable position in the history of American Literature at the same time.The story is narrated in the tone of a six-year-old girl.Through the theme event,the trial of the black man Tom Robinson,the novel demonstrates the social background of that age,criticizes the social hierarchy,seamy sides of the society as well as the complexity of human nature,and exhibits the unrest of human’s psychology under the background of times.The purpose of this paper is to enter the spiritual world of the characters and grasp the author’s writing psychology by analyzing mentality of characters in the work,so as to achieve a more comprehensive and deeper comprehension of this work.This thesis attempts to interpret To Kill a Mockingbird from the perspective of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis.The thesis mainly makes use of three major personality theories of Freud’s psychoanalysis,namely,the theory of personality structure,unconsciousness theory and defense mechanism theory,to dissect the inherent psychological mechanism of characters and explore psychological motivation behind their behavior through the characters’ language habits,behavior patterns,personality features,combined with their background and social status.In the analysis of personality structure theory,the thesis explores the factors and processes of the check and balance among the "Id","Ego" and "Superego" in the personality structure of typical characters in the novel.In the chapter of unconsciousness theory,the thesis further excavates the unconscious elements in the minds of characters and endeavors to enter their deeper spiritual world.As for defense mechanisms triggered by the interaction between characters and the environment,this thesis systematically analyzes the reasons,manifestation and consequences of defense.To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel which includes the discussion on human nature.Utilizing relevant theoretical results of Freud’s psychoanalysis to study this work provides us with a fresh way of interpreting the text,which prompts the inner soul of the work to be more clearly unfolded in front of readers and is beneficial to obtain a deep-going interpretation of the work from the angle of psychology.Meanwhile,it is also a method to keep a watchful eye on people’s spiritual ecology of current times.