In each story we are faced with main characters that act selfishly and
many of their motives are weak or almost dumb. In Marcuse's first chapter he
delves into the theory of "repressive needs" and "true
needs". In each of the three stories, we can see these needs that Marcuse
discusses. The execution of these needs changes and impacts the three stories
in multiple different forms and facets.
In a class named narrative and technology, this semester we spent time
reading stories that fuse technology into interesting stories while also
playing video games with complex story lines. Taking a step back for the
technological aspects, looking at the stories as a whole we can see numerous
similarities, many of which are psychological characteristics that multiple
protagonists share.
In Jimmy Corrigan, we see obvious psychological deficiencies in every
aspect of his life. Many of Jimmy's biggest draw backs can be traced to his
father having left him as a young child. But this doesn't completely explain
his obvious psychological egoism; he ignores everyone in his life, including
his mother. Yes, Jimmy is suffering from severe mental issues, but that doesn't
discount the fact that he lives each day in hopes to self-satisfy.
For Neuromancer, the psychological egoism occurs before the story starts
and impacts the course of the story. From what we know, Case was a successful
computer hacker, until he got greedy. His possessive desires inevitably ruined
his life. Moves to Japan, meets a girl, the usual romance ensues. With Case
however, things are slightly different. Even with the confusing story and
dialect that encompasses Neuromancer, the fact that case is essentially on this
hunt for his own well-being exudes his egoism.
The most obvious case of psychological egoism is Victor Frankenstein
himself. Victor is a man who set out to create a new race, just for fun and
because he could. When he was done creating, he abandoned his work because it
wasn't what he wanted it to look like. Victor puts his selfish needs and
desires before he even considers anyone else in the entire novel.
The topic might seem intense in the grasp, but I feel like it can be
formed into a psychological view of the course that we have taken as a whole,
from beginning to end. For this proposal the use of psychological studies and
other views on egoism would be beneficial. In C.D. Broad's entry to The
Hibbert Journal, he discusses the theories of egoism and examines the
different reasons behind it. I believe with a deeper understanding of
psychological egoism, we can more thoroughly understand the characters we read
about all semester. With just a shallow reading of these books without trying
to find deeper meaning in the stories and characters, are we truly able to
assess the narratives we experienced all semester?
Bibliography (I assessed
their benefits within)
Broad, C.D. "Egoism as a Theory of Human
Motives." . N.p.,
n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2014.
Gibson,
William. Neuromancer. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2004. Print.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. By Steph Lady and
Frank Darabont. Perf.
Kenneth Branagh, Robert De Niro, Tom
Hulce, Helena Bonham Carter, and Aidan
Quinn. TriStar Pictures, 1994.
May,
Joshua. "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." Psychological Egoism []. N.p., n.d. Web.
31 Mar. 2014.
Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan:
The Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon, 2000. Print
2 comments:
I really like the concept of your essay – that people are motivated by their own self-interests. I think that psychology is an excellent realm of study to base a research paper off of. Characters are the integral part of any story. Truly, without them, the whole story would cease to exist. To examine how a character’s mind works is the perfect gateway to understanding the character, and then on a broader scale, the book as a whole. I also like that you are fusing so many of the stories together, three and Marcuse, because you will be able to show your understanding of a good portion of the class concepts, which is what a final project should do.
I would be very careful analyzing four different works together, though. You don’t want to spend too much time on one or two of the works and little time on the others like I noted in the essay we critiqued in class. You need to make sure that you strike a good balance between the four.
If you’re still looking for sources, then I went ahead and did a search on JSTOR, a database I like on PittCat. I found an article by a famous philosopher, W.D. Glasgow, that I have heard a lot about that goes into detail about psychological egoism. He lays out the theses for motive egoism and principle egoism, both of which have to do with psychological egoism. You can use his views on these two types of egoism (principle egoism is his revised form of psychological egoism) in order to supplement your argument with another accredited philosopher’s viewpoint. The link to Glasgow’s article is:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20009607?seq=1&Search=yes&searchText=egoism&searchText=psychological&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dpsychological%2Begoism%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff&prevSearch=&resultsServiceName=null
Good luck! I think you’re off to a great start!
I'm tempted to just let Kristen's comments stand without adding any of my own - they're dry useful.
Let me emphasize her point that you might be trying to work with too many books - one or two is usually better than three or four. I'd also like to understand your exact agenda with Marcuse - for instance, I feel kind of like you're arguing that Marcuse is providing the counterpoint or alternative to psychological egoism, which is interesting (and would be an interesting way of using Marcuse to read, say, Frankenstein).
So the approach seems solid, but I want to be clear on what really matters here. What should the reader take away? My suspicion is that Marcuse is central to that, but I might be misreading. And do consider focusing on fewer books rather than more.
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