Literature Essays

Literature Essay on Interpretation of Dreams by Fraud

In Section V of the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud expands on the Oedipal complex suggested in his letter(s) to Fliess. Freud argues that every person experiences the emotions of loving the mother and hating the father; psychoneurotic people are only distinguished from “human beings who remain normal” because they show these emotions “on a magnified scale”.

Freud points out that the action of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King consists of the “process of revealing” the plot, and that this process is like the work of psychoanalysis: a gradual unfolding process.

Freud observes that Oedipus the King is “a tragedy of destiny”. Berri’s Water of the Hills films are also about a tragedy of destiny, for example, at the end of Manon des Sources, Delphine explicitly says, “it’s a tragedy”. Freud’s comments about Oedipus the King in The Interpretation of Dreams are also valid for Berri’s Water of the Hills films because both Sophocles’ and Berri’s texts are about “the supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts of man to escape the evil that threatens them.”

Freud writes that the lesson the spectator should learn from the tragedy of Oedipus the King is “submission to the divine will and realisation of his own impotence”. Here Freud points out the “impotence” of man against the power of the gods, or the divine will.

In Berri’s films, the three male characters, Jean, Ugolin, and Cesar, all show indications of impotence: Jean fails to find the water-source and instead of discovering running water, he only runs out of money; Ugolin fails to find a suitable wife in order to continue the family lineage; Cesar thinks he is impotent because he thinks he has no children. The weather is crucial in Berri’s films because the villagers need the correct proportions of rain and sun to survive.

The weather is a form of “divine will”, and in Jean de Florette there is a flood, a draught, and a sirocco, causing the crops to be ruined, and causing Jean’s rabbits to die. There is a scene where Jean thinks it is about to rain, but discovers that it rains only on the other side of the mountain, and so his valley is left dry.

In this scene, Jean shouts at the sky, “Is anybody up there? I’m a hunchback! Do you think it’s easy?” The camera angle is nearly vertical on Jean, implying that God or a “divine will” is looking down on Jean, controlling the plot.

In Berri’s films, the characters are impotent to change the weather, and are powerless against the forces of the divine will. Jean dies by being hit by a falling stone from above. The fact that the stone falls from above suggests another element of divine will and forces above.

Freud mentions the “compelling force of destiny in the Oedipus”. This “force of destiny” is present in Berri’s films as well, and it is underlined by the compelling title music, which is Verdi’s “Force of Destiny”. Freud argues that this force of destiny stems from the unconscious.

Literature Essays

• Example of Short Autobiography
• Romanticism and the Romantic
• The Rainbow
• Hamlet
• The Sandman, Turn Of The Screw
• Oedipus The King
• Post Modernism - The Passion of Eve
• Sophocles and Euripides Treatement of Orestei
• Feminist Theory and Dickens
• Seamus Heaney
• Modernist Writing Characters
• Medea and Clytemnestra
• Othello, Jew of Malta
• Byzantium poems
• Interpretation of Dreams
• Postmodernist Fiction
• Fertility Myths In Modern Literature
• In A Station of The Metro
• The Mill On The Floss

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