The Cement Garden depicts an isolated family and the narrator is the eldest son of the family, named Jack. As a fifteen-year-old teenager, it is time for Jack to develop sexual and gender consciousness. However, after the death of his father and mother, he and his sister Julie begin to play the role of parents in the family, resulting in incest. Andrew Birkin argues that Jack's sexual instinct becomes evident after his father's death, and his mother's death brings about the emergence of Jack's character, because he is eager to take on the role of a father. Debashis Mitra and Manish Shrivastava argue that Jack is oppressed by his father who is initially an obsessive and powerful man, while Julie acts as a surrogate mother and tries to establish a traditional family structure after her mother's death. In The Fiction of Ian McEwan, the author states that Jack sleeps with his sister Julie, who is the mother of the family, and in the meantime is expecting a baby again. This article will apply Freud's theories to the analysis of Jack's consciousness and abnormal adolescent sexuality by focusing on sexual instinct, alliance with Julie, and the absence of manners. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Jack's strong sexual drive and curiosity can be witnessed during the puberty stage, which is an incentive for improper relationship with his sister. In Freudian theory, the sexual instinct resides in the unconscious of children and even infants, including Jack. As Sigmund Freud observes, puberty transforms infantile sexual life into its normal defined form, while the sexual impulse is mostly dominated by autoeroticism (72). As a teenager around age 15, Jack is addicted to masturbation during puberty. After the first ejaculation, seriously observe the liquid which is not milky, colorless and tasteless. The biological meaning of the masculine is connected to the presence of sperm (98). Masturbation becomes an insignificant but necessary part of Jack's daily routine, which gradually turns even a child into a man. On this side, Jack's awareness of masculinity is growing. Furthermore, children begin to masturbate early in life, especially when they notice the distinction between the sexes in the second year of life, so they show their sexual curiosity towards their parents' genitals and would like to touch the genitals if they could (Josephs 947). The adolescent recognizes the change in his genitals and must find an object that is his sexual purpose. In Freudian theory, sex can be divided into two parts, subject and object, and the acts of the opposite gender as an object are essential to constructing a gender role. Absolutely, in The Cement Garden, Julie serves as a sexual object for Jack. When he plays the sex game with his sisters, he imagines Julie's body, even as he is examining Sue's body through his fingers. Jack pours his curiosity and libido on his sister. A description of Julie's feminine characteristics is found on Jack's fifteen-year-old birthday. Jack convinces Julie to do a handstand again and describes her skirt falling over her head. Her panties showed bright white against the tan skin of her legs and I could see how the fabric gathered in little folds around the elastic that clung to her flat, muscular stomach. A few black hairs curled from the white horse. His legs, which were initially together, now slowly moved apart like giant arms (McEwan 20). Jack can't wait to see Julie's handstand, because he's curious about female genitalia. Freud believes that the union of the genitals is onenormal sexual purpose (19). Jack's growth in gender and sexual consciousness strengthens his libido, particularly for his sister. The Oedipus complex is the unconscious desire for Jack, which causes the improper relationship with his sister, although the initial stage of the Oedipus complex usually included an obsession with the mother. Referring to Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the “mother” is originally the sexual object for people in their childhood and then they look for someone to love them as their mother loved them (Freud 40). The unconscious affection towards the mother is considered by Freud as the id, because it gratifies the instincts but goes against social conventions. There are some details that show that Jack likes his mother. For example, when Jack is eight years old, he comes home from school one morning pretending to be seriously ill so that his mother will humor me. Jack wants to monopolize his mother while the others are away from home. The unconscious desire to possess his mother individually foreshadows his affection towards Julie. After his parents' death, Jack still seeks his parents' love and care, even though his mother's care has disappeared. The unconscious awareness is reflected in his dream. Dreams are linked to the interpretation of repressed thoughts because they are not in harmony with the life of selected consciousness (Freud 5). In Jack's dream, my mother and father were walking in front of me carrying lawn chairs and a bundle of towels. I couldn't keep up. The large, round pebbles hurt my feet. In my hand was a stick with a windmill at the end. I was crying because I was tired and wanted to be carried. My parents stopped to wait for me but when I was a few steps away from them they turned and walked on (McEwan 63). Jack dreams of being left on the beach and returning to his childhood stage (Childs 44). The absence of a primary mother prevents children from cultivating a healthy set of relationships with other objects in the future (Sistania et al. 454). After the death of Jack's mother, Jack's true nature emerges. Jack said, “When Mom died, underneath my strongest feelings was a sense of adventure and freedom,” because no one judges her behavior anymore (McEwan 34). He will take on the responsibility of being a “father” in the family while taking on the role of mother. Jack's affection towards Julie is much more evident than his affection towards his mother. He keeps clean, rarely masturbates, helps Tom go back to sleep when he wakes up at night crying, and even has sex with Julie (Birkin 35). In fiction, the Oedipus complex resides primarily in Jack's alliance with Julie who takes on the role of instant mother after the death of her parents. The death of his mother and father offers him the chance to be a father who can love "mother" Julie. She needs a mother as the position is replaced by Julie, because she takes on her mother's personality traits (Sistania et al. 454). Jack's family lacks morality and traditional rules that represent the superego in Freud's theory. Building on the Oedipal complex, children's jealousy and retaliatory fury towards their Oedipal rivals conquering the person they deeply desire to mate, just like Jack (Josephs 949). The oedipal rival refers to the father who takes away the mother's love. Jack's father's image is arbitrary, dominant and powerful, totally at odds with that of his mother. In Jack's words, "I didn't kill my father, but sometimes I felt I helped him on his way" (McEwan 7). Jack is masturbating when his father suffers a sudden heart attack, which to some extent precipitates his father's death. Furthermore, the father represents the Superego, which symbolizes morality and inhibits the impulses of the id. For example, Jack's father criticizes Tom who does not,.
tags