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The Uncanny Essay

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The Uncanny Essay
In The ‘Uncanny’, Sigmund Freud analyzes the characteristics of uncanny literature. According to Freud’s psychoanalytic studies of literature, the qualities of the literature is castration, the idea of the double, involuntary repetition, and animistic conceptions of the universe. Ralph Ellison’s King of the Bingo Game, shows characteristics of uncanny literature. Specifically, the themes of castrations and animistic conception. Freud analyzes the castration complex in many of his writings. Particularly in The ‘Uncanny’, Freud states that the castration complex is the loss or forgotten psyche of sexuality. Freud notion of the animistic conception of the universe is he psyche is stronger than reality: “, animistic conception of the universe, which was characterized by …show more content…
He closed his eyes. Now a dreamy music was accompanying the film and train whistles were sounding in the distance, and he was a boy again walking along a railroad trestle down South, and seeing the train coming, and running back as fast as he could go, and hearing the whistleblowing, and getting off the trestle to solid ground just in time, with the earth trembling beneath his feet, and feeling relieved as he ran down the cinder-strewn embankment onto the highways and looking back and seeing with terror that the train had left the track and was following him right down the middle of the street, and all the while people laughing as he ran screaming. . . (Ellison 125)
His mind is playing tricks on him and taking him away from reality. This scene examines the fate of the protagonist. It foreshadows that although he tries to escape the terrible life he had it will continue to chase after him. It will not go. It also show that people will sit around and see that his life is in trouble and not help. This is foreshadowing to the actual Bingo game, as he is given the chance to run away from his fate, his reality, but because life is already fixed in some way it would not go his
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