How Does Human Evil Thrive

A Comparative Study of Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies from the Perspective of Psychoanalytic Criticism

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_111How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Human Evil; Psychoanalytic Criticism; Personality Theory

Abstract

Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies are two seminal works of post-World War II that explore totalitarianism and human evil. While previous studies explore these themes respectively, few employ psychoanalytic criticism to analyze them together. To fill this gap and find their common concerns, this paper uses Freud’s personality theory to analyze the evolution of the main characters’ personalities. Specifically, we explore how their id, ego, and superego interact and change over time. We examine the authors’ insights towards dual pursuit of materialism and power and characters’ alienation to different species. This paper highlights the complexities of human nature and the importance of confronting the destructive forces from a new perspective.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jinchang Peng
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/09/09
TI  - How Does Human Evil Thrive
BT  - Proceedings of the 2023 9th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 909
EP  - 916
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_111
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_111
ID  - Peng2023
ER  -