Summary Of Lord Of The Flies By Sigmund Freud

Perhaps, Sigmund Freud’s most significant idea was his interpretation of the human mind. His perception of human psyche was that there are not one, but three aspects to it: the id, the superego, and the ego. In the book The Lord of the Flies, three characters really embody these aspects. Jack, Piggy, and Ralph illustrate what the tripartite is like in real life and how it can be reflected in influentially distinguished literature. The id is the primitive pleasure seeking part of the brain. It is impulsive, lustful, and contains hidden memories and the sexual and aggressive drives and desires of the mind. It operates on the pleasure principle; A principle based on seeking immediate and direct gratification of lascivious wants. Jack mirrors the id. His behavior and obsession with hunting is primitive and impulsive. He does …show more content…
In the beginning of the book, Ralph, Simon, and Jack are hunting, Jack hesitates and lets the piglet get loose, the narrator then tells us “They knew very well why he hadn’t: because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood.” Here, some of Jack’s innocence and fear of the horrors of killing held him back. That quickly changes when his sexual and aggressive drives and determination take over, making him merciless and intoxicated with the feel after his first kill. He says, “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had to come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a