Exploration of Subjectivity: Psychonalytical Study on Philip Roth’sThe Dying Animal

Abstract

This research is an attempt to show the exploration of man’s mind filled with repression expressing the wishes and desires for young girls in Philip Roth’sThe Dying Animal. It consists of an alteration of sexual gratification through the sublimation of repressed desires of the protagonist David Kepesh, an authorial character of the text, the marginalized existence of Kepesh as dying animal due to social denial, expression of his melancholic condition through the medium of creative writing. In this traumatic realism, the protagonist’s psychology is filled up with the sense of loss, pain, and lamentation because of his problem of aging. Due to the age gap between David Kepesh and his beautiful young beloved, Consuela Castillo, the protagonist can’t have emotional love affair with her. As a marginalized man, his emotional love affair is denied by the social standards of morality and propriety. Because of the overwhelming realities of aging and loss in his psyche, he is expressing jealousy in the version of pornography. Thus, the researcher has exposed the exploration of protagonist’s identity and subjectivity in Roth’sThe Dying Animal.