Desire and Disease: Psychoanalytical Study of John Barth’s The Floating Opera

Abstract

This present research work attempts to study Barth’sThe Floating Opera from psychoanalytical perspective. The study explores the protagonist Todd Andrews’s repressed desire of not being sexually potent through his own narration of his past which he recreates in order to project himself as a perfect man. As Todd suggests that his sexual failure might have resulted from his two troubles: the subacute bacteriological endocarditis, and infection of his prostate gland. But he tries to conceal thereal causes of his failure. Though he promises to give the reader the explanation of his disease, he delays for fear of being exposed to the reader and himself. Todd tells a fictitious tale of his sexual encounter with Jane Mack to assert his sexual vitality, but he fails to prove himself as sexually active as his repressed mind cannot hide anything. Thus, this thesis dramatizes the protagonist Todd’s consciousness of his sexual impotency and his attempt to hide it from both the reader and himself.