An Analysis Of Characters In Breakfast Of Champions From The Perspective Of Freud’s Personality Theory

Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions was set in the United States of America in 1972 when Vonnegut himself was experiencing a serious spiritual crisis.At that time,the United States of America had just experienced the Industrial Revolution.Along with the seriously polluted environment and exhausted resources,the public was also in great mental distress and extreme confusion and fear about the future.Their personality structure had changed in various degrees as well.The thesis employed Freud’s personality theory to analyze the process of transformation of personality structure of characters in Breakfast of Champions.In The Ego and the Id,Freud elaborated the concept of personality and divided personality into three parts: the id,the ego and the superego.The three interacted with each other and maintained the balance of personality,so that people could operate normally in the process of social operation.As Freud said,the id followed the pleasure principle,acting instinctively,minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure with no contact with the outside world.The ego,the rational aspect of personality,followed the reality principle and is responsible for guiding and controlling the instinct,providing appropriate constraints for the expression of the id instinct.The superego was the moral aspect of personality that was responsible for expressing the ego and constraining the id in social life.Based on this,this thesis analyzed the personality of the characters in Breakfast of Champions and found that every character in Breakfast of Champions had experienced various degrees of spiritual crisis.Kilgore Trout’s life had been shrouded in pessimism because he witnessed the extinction of Bermuda Erns in his childhood when his father even ordered him to measure the wingspan length of the dead Erns,making the id unable to obtain energy.His father did not give him American citizenship,which added insult and injury to his already low-energy id.The identity of “science fiction novelist” was not popular in the money-oriented America at that time.A series of traumas made the id of Trout lose the energy of normal operation,and his personality structure was severely damaged.Dwayne Hoover was an orphan and was adopted by a couple.Such an uneasy growth environment created Dwayne Hoover’s sensitive,selfish and suspicious character,and his thoughts became easy to be controlled,and his id evolved into a little pathological one.In addition,when Trout met the white truck driver and the old miner on the way to the arts festival,they were respectively bore the condemnation of the superego for doing or having done irreversible damage to the ecological environment.Hoover’s son Bunny’s homosexual identity and disharmonious family relationship led to his extremely depressed id because of the condemnation of the superego,and Hoover’s secretary and mistress Francine Pefko lost her ego by loving Hoover too much.Their personality structures were damaged.However,through the analysis of personality theory,it could be found that the characters in Breakfast of Champions were trying to save their unbalanced personality structure in their own way although the results were not the same.By writing novels,Trout narrated his trauma in the form of novels and released the pessimistic factors in the id.Later,the letter received from his only fan and the invitation to the arts festival increased his authentication of his identity as a science fiction writer.While Dwayne Hoover caused a serious riot when he read Trout’s novel Now It Can Be Told,which seriously hurt Trout and many other people.Trout’s superego woke up and realized the value of his identity as a science fiction writer,which also restored his personality structure.The white truck driver and the old miner and other people he met also had their personality structures successfully repaired because their instinct for survival drove them to do the work that destroyed the environment and overwhelmed their superego that stood on the moral high ground.Hoover’s appeal to the outside world through his remaining ego such as repeating others’ words was ignored by the apathetic people of the country.After reading Trout’s Now It Can Be Told,Hoover’s id exploded like a demon,and his inability to restrain it led to a riot in which he became downright maniac.Two people close to him were also seriously injured by the riot.Francine lost the ego and was seriously hurt because of her love for Dwayne Hoover and failed to recover her personality structure.By accepting his father’s beating,Bunny wanted to lessen his guilt and relieve the pressure on the id,however,he still ended up in tragedy.The analyses demonstrated that the only and most appropriate way to figure out the imbalance of personality structure was confronting the reality directly.It was meaningless and helpless for them to escape from the dilemma they were caught in.As readers,we could choose some useful and helpful experience from these characters to overcome difficulties and frustrations in life as well.Meanwhile,by using Freud’s personality theory the public could know more about the characters’ spiritual world in Breakfast of Champions,which also offered readers a new perspective to interpret the novel and receive a better understanding of Breakfast of Champions.