AlphabetAlphabet: A Biannual Academic Journal on Language, Literary, and Cultural Studies
Vol 3, No 2 (2020)

The Association of the Secret, Guilt, and Ego Defence Mechanism in the Novel and Then There Were None

Shafira Aulia (Universitas Brawijaya, Malang)



Article Info

Publish Date
28 Oct 2022

Abstract

And Then There Were None is about ten strangers who are lured to a remote island on August 8th, 1940s. Each of these ten characters harbor deep secret that they have been complicit in the deaths of other person(s) but either escaped justice or deemed innocent. The theme of guilt played in this novel an important role in the novel because it showed how the characters’ minds worked. Fictional character is designed to closely resemble real human beings, and thus their minds can be psychologically analyzed just like real people using Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories. Using this theory, this study psychoanalyzed four characters from the novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. The objective of this study is to identify the correlation of secret and guilt that affect the characters’ psyche and elicited the use of defense mechanisms. The findings of this study showed that the characters’ conscious act of keeping secret has unconscious repercussions on their psyche. The characters kept secret that they have been complicit in the death of other people, and thus the guilt from that event is repressed into the unconscious mind. The defense mechanism is then employed to keep the upsetting guilt hidden and away from consciousness. The repressed guilt slowly builds up and manifests in various symptoms until it finally resurfaces to the conscious mind.

Copyrights © 2020






Journal Info

Abbrev

alphabet

Publisher

Subject

Arts Humanities Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media Social Sciences

Description

Alphabet is an open-access, biannual journal aimed at advancing and disseminating the state-of-the-art knowledge on language, literary and cultural studies. It instills the etymological spirit of the word alphabetos which means learning or lore acquired through reading. Reading, in this context, ...