An Adventure into the Human Psyche- A Psychoanalytic Reading of William Golding's Lord of the Flies

الملخص

Psychoanalysis, as an approach to literary criticism, is the analysis of the subconscious mind of the author / characters in a literary work. Accordingly, it is an attempt to delve into the depth of the text to discover its various meaning levels, to analyze the causes and impulses of characters' external internal social behavior, and, thereby, to interpret the work. The approach is mostly based on Sigmund Freud's theories of psychoanalysis which holds that the subconscious mind is the source and origin of all human behavior. This article studies the human psyche of the characters in William Golding's Lord of the Flies from the Freudian psychoanalytic view point. The analysis reveals that the tensions and abnormal behavior of the characters, as representatives of modern man, originate from their psychological abnormality, which, in turn, represents social problems and disastrous life-conditions that modern man might find himself in.