The Symbolic Projection Of Lack In Surrender

The Symbolic Projection of Lack in Surrender A human first enters the symbolic world through birth. As explained in The Subject of Semiotics by Kaja Silverman, the symbolic order is a social world of language, with rules and constructs, that allows people to communicate with one another and derive meaning from all facets of life. Multiple events mark this transition into the symbolic order in a child’s life: birth, territorialization, and lack are three of the most significant. Often times, the journey into the symbolic order does not follow a direct path, children are all raised differently. Sometimes--like in the case of Anwell, the main character in Surrender by Sonya Hartnett, there is an event that essentially starts the process over
He experiences lack, the imaginary, and signification no only from separate belief systems, but from two entirely different beings that coexist as part of his consciousness. A combination of guilt and an abusive family contribute to a state of mind that causes Anwell to divide himself into two different people, because that is the only way he can follow the strict rules and regulations of both his parents and society, and satisfy any of his desire to be connected to the real. Anwell finally combines his two split selves as he is dying. Anwell, as Gabriel, is laying in bed and sees Vernon--who now happens to speak with Finnigan’s voice: “I take his hand and follow him trustingly into the world. I feel sun-warmed grass growing under my feel, a cap of sunshine on my hair . . . But wings unfold around me and, with a mighty sweep of air, I alone am lifted skyward, from where I first arrived” (247-248 Hartnett). In this moment Anwell returns to an oceanic state--he is part of everything around him and the multiple identities he has been splitting into return to him. He is “alone” because he is no longer three different people, his desire to return to the real with perfect union is