Man's Malignant Aggression In Robert Bly's Political Poetry

Robert Bly(1926--)is one of the contemporary important poets of America.He distinguishes himself with his political work The Light Around the Body,which won the National Book Award in the second year after its publication.His political poetry mainly concerns about the Vietnam War and the two Iraq wars.He insists that political poetry should leap up into the whole nation's psyche and reflect the people's state of consciousness.The thesis analyzes man's malignant aggression in Bly's Vietnam poems from three aspects:sadism,necrophilia and the teeth mother.It tells people that wars are understood as being caused by pleasure in killing and wars are caused by an innate destructive trend in human nature.First,this thesis analyzes man's malignant aggression from the perspective of American and Vietnamese soldiers in the war based on Erich Fromm's theory of sadism and masochism.What presents in Bly's political poems are poverty,death,trauma,devastation,ruins and burned corpses.American soldiers,as sadists,bring heavy disaster to Vietnam soldiers and civilians.Meanwhile,as Masochists,Vietnamese soldiers are hurt badly,not only physically,but also psychologically.Second,it analyzes executives' anal complex and sheriffs' Oedipus complex according to Fromm's views on necrophilia disease.Necrophilia people are attracted by all kinds of dead,decayed,mechanical and lifeless things in Bly's poems.The executives show abnormal preference for dead bodies.Sheriffs are addicted to fighting.They want to be strong men and destroy everything.Third,this thesis insinuates America's cruel invasion of Vietnam based on modern psychoanalyst Eric Newman's concept of “Teeth Mother” of the“Great Mother”.“Teeth Mother” is a symbol of “numbness,paralysis,the end of mental life,etc.” It explores American imperialism's lies and hypocrisy and the “Paradise Lost” of humankind.The Vietnam War helps everyone to see the hideous faces of the “Teeth Mother”.It makes people realize man's malignant aggression and the darkness of the war.In conclusion,through analyzing the three kinds of man's malignant aggression of“sadism”,“necrophilia”,and “the Teeth Mother” in Bly's political poems,it tells people thatall human aggression,including the passion to murder and torture,as being an outcome of biologically given aggression,transformed from a beneficial to a destructive force because of a number of factors.War brings great trauma to human beings.Bly's poetry penetrates to the depth of the nation's soul to make people realize the cunning of politics and cruelty of war.