A Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism of A Rose for Emily and My Papa's Waltz
Research Essay Final Draft
This is where you will upload the final draft of your research essay.
Your essay should be:
900-1,200 words long
fulfilling requirements outlined in the essay instructions
written in a clear, academic style
The purpose of this paper is to apply at least one literary critical approach to literature we studied this semester. You will select one or two short stories or poems assigned in Modules 2-11 to be the focus of your literary research and analysis.
Select from the following types of critical approaches:
Biographical
Historical/Cultural
Feminist
Gender Studies
Critical Race
Formalism
Psychoanalytic
Postcolonial
Note: There are many more critical approaches than the ones listed here. Any of the critical approaches defined in our textbook could also work.
For this essay you will:
Develop a thesis that connects an aspect of your chosen literature to at least one critical approach.
Support your thesis by supplying pertinent evidence from the literature AND evidence from at least 3 valid secondary sources.
Length
This paper should be at least 900-1,200 words.
Some Topic Examples
Biographical and Historical approach to “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”: Examine Joyce Carol Oates' inspiration for the story. (She wrote the story after reading about a serial killer.)
Postcolonial approach to “A Wall of Fire Rising” by Edwidge Danticat: Poverty and limited opportunities in Haiti prevent Guy from realizing his dreams. (Biographical and Historical approaches could also work with this story.)
Feminist approach to Trifles by Susan Glaspell and “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” by Adrienne Rich: The main characters in both represent negative consequences of oppressive marriages.
Psychoanalytic approach to “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Symbols reflect the character’s declining mental health. Gilman’s own experience with depression inspired this story.
Source Details
You are required to use and document a minimum of four sources in this paper.
One of these sources should be the primary text(s) (short story or poem) you are discussing.
The other three (ono more than 3) sources should be secondary sources in which scholars or experts have written their interpretations and analyses of the texts or topics that are relevant to your argument.
Sources must be valid for college level writing. Journal articles from the library databases should be used.
Additional sources can be any type (website, documentary, personal interview, etc.) as long as they are relevant and credible. Do NOT use Wikipedia, Ask.com, About.com, Sparknotes.com, etc.
Format
Your paper and the Works Cited page MUST be submitted in correct MLA format.
If your writing contains ANY plagiarism (if any source information is not credited to the source it came from), you will be given a ZERO on the paper.
Final Tips
Don’t use summary any more than you need to in order to make a point; assume your readers have already read the text; summary should only be used as support and for clarity.
Don’t use 1st person “I” or “we” or the 2nd person “you” or “your” in your writing
Do make sure your work stays focused on discussing and proving the main argument made in the paper’s thesis.
Do make sure your work is in MLA format and your sources follow MLA guidelines.
Do proofread and edit carefully!
Remember that this is the only essay that can not be submitted late. Double Check the Due date. This essay is due on Thursday!
The short story that I would like to use is "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner and the poem that I would like to use is "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke.
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A Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism of A Rose for Emily and My Papa's Waltz
In A Rose for Emily, Emily denies her father's death, spends most of her time indoors lonely, kills her lover, and for over forty years, sleeps beside the corpse. While this story may easily be dismissed as a typical Southern Gothic work for which William Faulkner was renowned for, it is heavily laden with psychological motivations. In this view, the story can be analyzed critically through the prism of psychoanalytic since this approach attempts to establish the psychological motivation of Emily's strange action, as perceived by the town, and the root cause of such actions. According to Romdhani (pr. 1), even though Faulkner denied that A Rose for Emily is not a psychological text, it is heavily laden with elements of avoidance, denial, regression, depression, and necrophilia. In this view, the current paper seeks to provide a psychoanalytic criticism of the story in reference to the poem My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke.
Psychoanalytic Theory
Developed by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalytic theory is an approach to diagnosing and treating mental health or personality disorders. The theory holds that what a person experiences in childhood impacts their thoughts, behavior, and actions in adulthood. In essence, psychoanalytic criticism of a text helps expound on how a character's actions are rooted in their childhood experiences. But since all characters are a projection of the author, this form of literary criticism may also provide a basis for understand the author's anxieties. According to Sandbaek (32), key concepts like regression, ego, super-ego, Id, denial, and avoidance, among others, are considered in psychoanalytic criticism of literature. These are some of the concepts that underpin the Freudian theories of personality and behavior.
Emily in A Rose for Emily
If anything, the portrait in Emily's house symbolizes her father's controlling nature. In the portrait, Emily appears as a slender figure in the background behind her father's "spraddled silhouette in the foreground" clutching a horsewhip (pr. 12). Both her father and the town's people represent the super-ego which, according to Freudian theory, on personality, is part of the psyche driven by morals. Since this was an aristocratic family, Emily's father expected her to live by a certain moral code in which she hardly socialized, which rendered all the young men in the town unfit to marry her. According to Faulkner, "none of the young men were quite good enough for miss Emily…because the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were." By the time she was 30 years of age, Emily was still single contrary to what the society expected of women. This controlled nature of Emily's childhood impacts her actions like denial of death, the desire to hold onto a man forever, inability to socialize, and resistance to change because, without her father, she does not know how to face or handle life alone.
Denial of her Father's Death
By most standards, Emily's entire life can be considered abnormal. Her father remained the only prominent person in her life growing up. The symbol of him holding a whip suggests that he might have been abusive, particularly when it came to upholding society's moral standards as it was required and expected of aristocratic families. When her father dies, she is left alone making it her first time to be in control of her life. But this leaves her in a disarray because she does not know what to and for that reason, she cannot let go of her father. On the day of her father's death, all ladies visited her house; but for th...