The Prussian officer - the Importance of Subconscious in D.H. Lawrence’s Short Story

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The whole story is based on oppositions. A permanent opposition that runs through the story is between nature and men. The descriptions of nature are suggesting that unlike men, the nature is eternal and pure. The words “snow”, ”pure”, “golden” appear for several times in the whole text (for instance the word “snow” is mentioned 7 times). Words of one semantic field also highlight the superiority and divinity of nature: “golden light behind golden-green glitterings…”, “And like the golden, lustrous gleaming of the snow” (PO, p.15).[8]

In order to fully understand the text by D.H. Lawrence one should be familiar with the term psychoanalysis which has a huge importance in this case due to the fact that psychological suppression and physical abuse are one of the main themes of the story, the focus is on human’s behavior in situations which are non-conventional.[9] That field of knowledge known as psychoanalysis was developed by Sigmund Freud in late nineteenth-century in Vienna. The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include the following: besides the inherited constitution of personality, a person's development is determined by events in early childhood; human attitude, mannerism, experience, and thought is largely influenced by irrational drives; irrational drives are unconscious; attempts to bring these drives into awareness meet psychological resistance in the form of defence mechanisms; conflicts between conscious and unconscious, or repressed, material can materialise in the form of mental or emotional disturbances, for example: neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, depression.[10] The suppressed passions, feelings which are in the subconscious of the main characters result in powerful forces which cause severe problems and conflict between the officer and his orderly. After continuous insults from the Captain the orderly’s subconscious takes over and acts furiously which is the exact opposite of his nature, the orderly being obedient, submissive. The orderly’s inner conflict between conscious and unconscious leads to anxiety. The murder is the last chance for him to put an end to the Captain’s perverse, violent acts which caused so much suffering. The tension is built up gradually, we feel the presence of it from the beginning due to the mentioned oppositions, presented hierarchy, unfair treatment. The reader’s expectation is confirmed by the climax of the story.

One interpretation of D.H. Lawrence’s tragic story The Prussian Officer could be that no matter how evil is somebody and treats us in a very insensitive manner we have the right to defend ourselves because the anxiety and the revolt of the unconscious can cause a serious personality shift and even leads to committing things which we don’t mean.

References

- D.H. Lawrence: The Prussian Officer

-Erich Fromm (1992:13–14) The Revision of Psychoanalysis

-Anna Grmelova, 1998

-Terry Eagleton (1996:131-132) Literary Theory-An introduction

-David Herbert Lawrence “The Prussian officer”. Critical analysis. http://www.mikhae.com/2012/01/david-herbert-lawrence-prussian-officer.html, Date of access 8 January, 2014.

-The world of English, The Prussian Officer. Available:http://groupa.ucoz.co.uk/index/the_prussian_officer/0-145, Date of access 8 January, 2014.

-Analyzing D.H. Lawrence's The Prussian Officer by Travis Tate, 2007. Available: http://voices.yahoo.com/analyzing-dh-lawrences-prussian-officer-677936.html. Date of access: 30 December, 2013.

- Summary of The Prussian Officer. Available: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_summary_of_the_prussian_officer?#slide=7, Date of access 30 December, 2013.

-A novel interpretation, D.H. Lawrence The Prussian Officer. Available: http://novel-interpretation.blogspot.ro/2011/05/d-h-lawrence-prussian-officer.html, Date of access: 30 December, 2013.

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