Psychoanalytic Criticism In Peter Browning's Meeting At Night

Psychoanalytic criticism explores the relationship between culture and the personal identity of a character and a text. It attends to the role of the subconscious in the author, reader, and characters in a text. The concept of psychoanalytic criticism identifies the state of internal experience meaning it explores how the different states may affect the external experience either positively or negatively. In basic terms, psychoanalytic criticism is the application of the ideas of psychology to textual criticism. It builds on Freudian theories of psychology. Freud asserted that human behavior is affected by their unconscious where they are motivated by desires, needs, and conflicts.
The unconscious mind is twice the size of the consciousness and is hidden similar to how an ice cap has a large portion of its ice hidden below the freezing water. Freud believed that the unconscious is influenced by childhood events and therefore organized such events into developing stages that involve relationships with parents along with the children’s desires and pleasures. Sometimes children will repress their …show more content…
The speaker begins with the description of his setting. It is night time with the grey sea and long black land in the distance while the “yellow half-moon large and low.” We are given a general description of the landscape but not what actions are taking place. The speaker continues his detailed illustration of the surrounding landscape where “...little waves that leap/ In fiery ringlets from their sleep [.]” With this specific and vivid detail one can now assume that not only is the speaker near the ocean, but that the is presumably in a small canoe. Nevertheless, the speaker clarifies that he is in fact sailing as he approaches a place described as the “cove.” At this cove, the speaker eventually makes a stop for he tells us that the boat has reached the “slushy