西方文论论文

An Incomplete Man: An Analysis of Mr. Hooper in The Minister`s Black

Veil with Freudian Personality Structure

Content

1 Introduction

2 Brief Introduction to Freud`s Id, Ego and Superego

3 Severe Id-repression of Mr. Hooper

4 The Disorder of Mr. Hooper`s Ego

5 The Overwhelming Success of Mr. Hooper`s Superego

6 Conclusion

1 Introduction

Nathaniel Hawthorn is the founder of American psychoanalytic novel and regarded as the greatest romantic novelist during the 19th America. One of his central focus is the completeness of human being. The goal of this paper is to explore the incompleteness of Mr. Hooper in The Minister`s Black Veil with Freudian Personality Structure: id, ego and superego, aiming at digging out the nature deep in Mr. Hooper`s consciousness.

Critics explain this short novels, especially its main character priest Hooper, from various levels and perspectives. For instance, feminists regard Mr. Hooper as a Sexual Escapist, just like Elmer in Birthmark and Brown in Young Goodman Brown. Some think that Mr. Hooper is arrogant; some regard Mr. Hooper as a demon. In Shang Xiaojin`s Nathaniel Hawthorne Selected Readings and Critical Inthrodutions, the author thinks that Mr.Hooper has, just like Nathaniel Hawthorne, a sober awareness about human being`s crime, and wants to call forth people`s perception of crime, aiming at purifying human being`s soul and perfecting human being`s morality. However, on the other hand, Mr. Hooper has certain doubt about moral superiority, and is caught in egoism, like Ethan Brand---one of Nathaniel Hawthorne`s fictional character, so that the chain, connecting human being`s friendship and affection is cut off. In one word, the interpretation of Mr. Hooper is various. Samuel

Coale summarizes these various explanation as follows:

Mr. Hooper, regarded by people as a sinner, nearly a demon, is a man who is without belief, arrogant, blasphemous, and addicted to sin. He is also an obsessive religious fanatics, a cruel Calvinist christian, a principal criminal of the most heinous guilt, a coward afraid of women, a Sexual Escapist and doomed to be lonely, lost and despair. He is a vivid moral allegory.

It seems that most of the studies about Mr. Hooper neglects one of Nathaniel Hawthorn`s main focus: the completeness of human being. Therefore, this paper is going to study the protagonist Mr. Hooper`s completeness.

In order to achieve this goal, this paper is divided into four chapters together with an introduction and a conclusion.

The introduction begins with a brief introduction to the goal of this paper , then the literature review and last the organization of this paper.

The second part is a brief introduction to Freud`s personality structure, that is, id, ego and superego, aiming at offering a theoretic basis for this paper.

The next three parts argue why Mr. Hooper is an incomplete man from three parts based on Freud`s theory. Firstly, the severe id-repression of Mr. Hooper, secondly, the disorder of ego, and last the overwhelming success of Mr. Hooper`s superego.