Uncanny Desire and the “Death-Drive” in Magritte’s The Lovers (1928)

Death and desire are two concepts and realities that greatly concern psychoanalytical and philosophical minds. Their enigmatic natures open up opportunities for various questions, answers, and interpretations concerning their relationship not only between one another, but also with human nature. What roles do both death and desire play in human thought and activity? How do they affect our sense of self, as well as our perception, reception, and interactions with others? Freud’s theories, specifically those found in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), attempt to make sense of death’s interplay with pleasure and desire. The art world, too, has been endeavoring to contemplate and represent such ideas within (and, in some instances, with-out) the context of their cultural and historical roots. René Magritte’s The Lovers (oil on canvas, 21 3/8 x 28 7/8″, 1928) depicts the drive of desire as a distortion of the “death-drive,” consequently invoking a sense of the “uncanny” through its manifestation of the “double,” the return of the repressed, and the “compulsion to repeat.” Freud’s work on “The Uncanny” (1919) will help us unveil the psychoanalytical implications of Magritte’s work.

The Lovers’s most striking feature is its depiction of what Freud calls the “double.” In the “phenomenon of the ‘double,’” Freud explains that “we have characters who look alike…so that one possesses knowledge, feelings and experience in common with the other.”[1] The two figures in the painting – the “lovers” – though distinctly gendered in their attire, are made to appear similar to each other in countenance through the cloth(s) that conceal(s) their faces. Indeed, the lovers are necessarily gendered through their clothing in order to display an expression of desire in their contact with each other. In this way, they are made to represent one aspect of the “double”: they become “an insurance against the destruction of the ego.”[2] Moreover, while the lovers do manifest “an ‘energetic denial of the power of death’”[3], they simultaneously portray another, characteristically opposing aspect of the “double.” The double, Freud writes, “from having been an assurance of immortality…becomes the uncanny harbinger of death”[4]. Thus, the lovers, while daringly expressing desire, face the inevitability of eventual death through suffocation. Their desires, in this light, become constrained by death both in a physical and a symbolical sense. The uncanny nature, then, of the figures as “doubles” emanates an anxiety of death consuming the lovers in their display of desire.

Moreover, The Lovers further heightens this anxiety through its depiction of the “return of the repressed”. The “return of the repressed” is “the frightening element” which shows itself “to be something repressed which recurs.”[5] The uncanny feeling of “the return of the repressed” is, as Freud explains, “in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.”[6] In the case of The Lovers, the “return of the repressed” is not overly much of a return as much as a recurring, or even a re-emerging of the death-drive which underlies every unconscious human thought. The lovers’ drive for desire obliquely coincides with their death-drive: the very expression of their desire, their mutual contact, is that which also emphasises the presence of death. In this light, The Lovers becomes an image that speaks to the irrepressibility of the death-drive. Thus, inasmuch as the desire manifested by the figures in the painting is a representation of the supposed dominance of the “pleasure principle”, so does their physical proximity – and, with it, the painting’s focal point – coincidingly accentuate the shrouding and threatening presence of death. Yet the figures arguably do not show any struggle to remove themselves from their doom-laden pose. It is because their sense of the pleasure principle – that is to say, their sense of desire – is at one with the death-drive, and, indeed, this affect of desire becomes a form of the death-drive.

To better understand why this is, it is of principal importance to observe further that the lovers express an uncanny “compulsion to repeat.” According to Freud, “it is possible to recognize the dominance in the unconscious mind of a ‘compulsion to repeat’ proceeding from the instinctual impulses and probably inherent in the very nature of the instincts – a compulsion powerful enough to overrule the pleasure principle.”[7] In The Lovers, the compulsion to repeat works to free the death-drive from the repressive impulses of the pleasure principle. There is a hint of irresistibility in the lovers’ pose: their lack of struggle to break free from their kiss despite their heads being wrapped in cloth marks their uncannily calm demeanour. Moreover, inasmuch as the binary boundary between the heimlich and the unheimlich is, as Freud hints, eventually broken down so that the “heimlich…finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich”[8], so much so is the boundary that divides the pleasure principle and the death-drive distorted, as the viewers are left to feel uncertain about whether the lovers’ primary drive is that of Eros or that of Thanatos. Thus, there is in The Lovers the inevitability of the viewer’s intellectual and emotional uncertainty regarding both the affect of desire and the anxiety of death – an uncertainty that allows the painting to radiate an overall feeling of uncanniness.

Ultimately, The Lovers prompts questions concerning the relationship between death and desire. The uncanny elements it embodies serve to make audiences obliquely contemplate over such a relationship. The presentation of the “double”, which juxtaposes themes of death and desire, points out to the ever-looming presence of death. Its depiction of the return of the repressed and the compulsion to repeat underscores the dominance of the death-drive in its unrepressed form. A Freudian reading, then, as we have seen, effectively brings out key themes from the painting – but it would be as interesting to see what Lacan or even the existentialist philosophers have to say in response.

 

 

 

 

Bibliography:

René Magritte, The Lovers, 1928, Oil on canvas, 21 3/8 x 28 7/8″ (54 x 73.4 cm)

 

Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny.” In The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary                   Trends, edited by David H. Richter, 514-532. Boston:  Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007.

 

[1] Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, edited by David H. Richter (Boston:  Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007), 522.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] p. 523.

[5] p.526.

[6] Ibid.

[7] p. 524.

[8] p. 518.

The Movement from the Parallactic Surreal into the Heimlich in McEwan’s The Child in Time

Two works of art came out in 1987. One is Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (648-3): the Abstract Impressionist tone of the painting radiates a sense – if only an impression – of the surreal and the uncanny. The other is Ian McEwan’s novel The Child in Time. The novel opens with the dissolution of home caused by the loss of a child; what happens thenceforth builds up a sense of the dissolution of reality wherein the reader is taken through the realm of the uncanny. Indeed, there is in The Child in Time a dimensional shift into the Surreal, a realm through which Stephen recovers and reinstates his lost sense of home. For it is in this realm where Stephen deals with the repressed through a liberating process that helps him dissolve the Unheimlich into the Heimlich[i], transforming the repressed into the homely. Slavoj Žižek’s work on The Parallax View[ii] will help us gain further insight into the surreal and uncanny experiences in the novel, and, more importantly, into the intricate process that gives Stephen liberation.

One of Žižek’s great contributions to philosophy and theory is his concept of the “parallax gap”. He introduces it as “a kind of Kantian revenge over Hegel”[iii]: whereas Hegel’s philosophy seeks some sort of dialectical synthesis between a thesis and antithesis, a link between two binary oppositions, Kant points out an unbridgeable gap, a transcendental illusion, “the illusion of being able to use the same language for phenomena which are mutually untranslatable”[iv]. There is thus, in Hegelian diction, “a fundamental antinomy which can never be dialectically “mediated/ sublated” into a higher synthesis, since there is no common language, no shared ground, between the two levels”[v]. What Žižek then observes in Kant’s notion of the transcendental is the presence of what he calls the “parallax gap”, “the confrontation of two closely linked perspectives between which no neutral common ground is possible”[vi]. The parallax gap is made observable only through a shift, or a “minimal difference”[vii],  in the perspective of an object – a shift which Žižek further posits as an object itself. It is the third space between the phenomenal and the noumenal, a separate Dasein which we are able to contemplate.

An artistic notion that in the novel goes together with the concept of the parallax gap is that of Surrealism. André Breton in his first Surrealist Manifesto (1924) puts forth that “Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life”. This “superior reality” is accordingly what Breton calls a surreality: the “resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality”. We may then draw from this description of surreality its inherent nature of uncanniness. Being a synthesis of the state of reality and dreams, surreality delves into the realm of the unconscious, the repressed, and the uncanny. Moreover, being itself a dimension beyond reality – and, in a sense, one which encompasses reality – the realm of the surreal is free to constantly fluctuate between our familiar reality and the trans-natural domain of unconscious, psychic automatism. It is precisely such a presentation of the surreal that gives it a sense of the uncanny; it draws on the familiar and yet distinguishes itself as psychologically unfamiliar and enigmatic. The in-between-ness of surreality, its position between reality and the psychically transcendental, characterises it as a version of the parallax gap: the “reality” it offers is nothing but a transcendental illusion.

In The Child in Time[viii], Stephen is transported into the liminal realm of the parallactic surreal. His first experience with the surreal is described as such:

He set off, and within minutes found satisfaction in this new landscape. He was marching across a void. All sense of progress, and therefore all sense of time, disappeared. The trees on the far side did not come closer. This was an obsessive landscape – it thought only about wheat. The lack of hurry, the disappearance of any real sense of a destination, suited him. (p. 53)

 

Stephen thereafter is in a constant flux between surreality and reality, with no explicit struggle to understand his displacement from mundane reality. What he questions instead is the nature of time in his seemingly unnatural experiences: “What do you make of it, that thing about time?”[ix] he asks Joe regarding their accident. It is indeed difficult to clearly distinguish the real from the surreal in the novel if only because it is an attribute of the surreal to encompass the real within itself – but also because Stephen himself is unconscious of the transitions between the two dimensions. The surreal parallax gap wherein we often find him strikingly positioned is moreover an anachronistic gap between his past and his present that blurs the temporal boundaries between those two periods of his life. At times, Stephen is transported into what for him is a prenatal period, able to observe his parents from before he was born; at times, it would appear as if he is rooted in present reality – though again it is almost impossible to draw proper boundaries between reality and surreality. The surreal in the novel occurs as a “minimal difference” between the perspectives of reality and the uncanny, and the object for which these perspectives offer such a difference is Stephen himself.

What is then evoked in this surreal realm is the return of the repressed as it is symbolically and obliquely personalized for Stephen. Consequently, his two major surrealistic experiences contain maternal motifs. The scene of the lorry accident presents a birthing scene: “There was a head at Stephen’s feet. It protruded from a vertical gash in the steel. There was a bare arm too. . .”[x] The scene continues until Stephen “took hold of the man’s shoulder with one hand, and cupped the other under his face and pulled. The man groaned”[xi]. The other scene involves Stephen’s mother in a pub (p.62) where we eventually learn of her pregnancy. The scene radiates an unconscious and uncanny pathos for Stephen from which he feels “a cold, infant despondency. . .a bitter sense of exclusion and longing”[xii]. The scenes taken together thus indicate that the repressed desire for Stephen returns is the actual unheimlich desire in its most Freudian sense, the Oedipal desire to return to “the former Heim [home] of all human beings, to the place where each one of us lived once upon a time and in the beginning”[xiii]. This desire expresses itself in Stephen’s consciousness: “home, he was home, enclosed, safe and therefore able to provide, home where he owned and was owned. Home, why be anywhere else?”[xiv] In a parallel perspective, the transposition of such a repressed, unconscious desire for Stephen into the realm of reality reveals his actual but subconscious[xv] desire to repair the lost sense of “home” in his family. What, in other words, Stephen longs for after the kidnapping of Kate is the restoration of the sense of the homely – to be able to return to Julie and re-establish their shattered home.

Stephen’s experience in the parallactic surreal, while often submersing him in the realm of the repressed, paradoxically liberates him from the selfsame paralyzing realm. Such is one of the many functions of the parallax gap. For the gap, being what Žižek calls “the third space between phenomena and the noumenon itself”[xvi], contains our freedom: “Our freedom persists only in a space between the phenomenal and the noumenal”[xvii]. For Stephen, freedom from the repressed involves a form of “separation”. According to Otto Rank, it is a process of

the overcoming of previous supporting egos and ideologies from which the individual has to free himself according to the measure and speed of his own growth, a separation which is so hard, not only because it involves persons and ideas that one reveres, but because victory is always, at bottom and in some form, won over a part of one’s own ego[xviii].

It is indeed an extremely difficult struggle for Stephen to liberate the ego from paralysis. The novel depicts his struggle as such: “Almost three years on and still stuck, still trapped in the dark, enfolded with his loss, shaped by it, lost to the ordinary currents of feeling that moved far above him and belonged exclusively to other people”[xix]. What is arguably the most poignant of the surreal scenes in the novel is that which also helps liberate Stephen. “Perhaps he was crying as he backed away from the window, perhaps he was wailing like a baby walking in the night. . .”[xx]. The vision of his mother at The Bell changes from a moment of the uncanny, the unheimlich, into a moment of das Heimliche [homely][xxi]. Wells explains that “he [Stephen] imagines it. . .as a stage in a process that will lead to new life. . .Stephen’s brush with non-existence through contact with his parents’ ‘ghosts’ prompted him to follow the ‘forking path’ that led to intercourse with Julie”[xxii]. Stephen’s journey through surreality encompasses and eventually refashions the melancholia and paralysis that he experiences: “he understood that his experience there had not only been reciprocal with his parents’, it had been a continuation, a kind of repetition. He had a premonition followed instantly by a certainty…that all the sorrow, all the empty waiting had been enclosed within meaningful time, within the richest unfolding conceivable”[xxiii]. What is thus expressed here is the total transubstantiation of the Unheimlich into the Heimlich, the uncanny – and with it, the repressed – into the homely. Stephen’s surreal experience at The Bell becomes a “continuation” from an uncanny prenatal “memory” into a present reality with Julie, a reality wherein the homely may be re-established, where “the feel of the warm boards under his feet brought to mind again the idea of home”[xxiv]. The parallax gap of the surreal becomes transformed itself, from an unbridgeable gap between Stephen’s paralyzing repression and his ideal Heimlich reality, into precisely the synthesis that allows for the conversion and transition of the former to the latter, a synthesis that paves the way towards Stephen’s freedom.

The Child in Time deals with the dissolution of home in its own unique way. Stephen’s uncanny experiences become the remedy that leads him towards his healing. His submersion in the realm of the surreal becomes his therapy, for it is in this realm that the repressed becomes deconstructed and reconstructed into the very thing that provides him with closure. The Unheimlich, once a gap wherein no higher synthesis is possible, becomes the higher synthesis for Stephen, the bridge that connects his experience in The Bell with his present situation, leading him back to Julie, endowing him with a new sense of home, and finally giving him the restoration of everything he lost in the beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[i] I use the original German terms because they contain not only the concept of the canny and uncanny, but more importantly the key connotations of the homely and un-homely that may not be so apparent in their English counterparts.

[ii] The Parallax View (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006).

[iii] p. 4.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Žižek, 18.

[viii] All quotes taken from Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time (Vintage Canada, 1987).

[ix] p.107.

[x] p. 109.

[xi] p. 105.

[xii] p. 62.

[xiii] p. 528, Sigmund Freud, in “The ‘Uncanny’” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, edited by David H. Richter (Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007), 514-532.

[xiv] McEwan, p. 68.

[xv] As opposed to unconscious.

[xvi] p. 22.

[xvii] Žižek, 23.

[xviii] p. 375 in Otto Rank’s Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1932).

[xix] McEwan, 141.

[xx] McEwan, 62.

[xxi] Coined from Freud, 526.

[xxii] p. 54 in Lynn Wells’ Ian McEwan (Palgrave, 2009).

[xxiii] McEwan, 235.

[xxiv] McEwan, 237.

DUSK AND THE UNCANNY IN CONRAD’S HEART OF DARKNESS

The dichotomy of Light and Darkness is noticeably prevalent and all-encompassing in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, so much so that the symbolisms and meanings of this antithetical pair may seem at times to fall into ambiguity or to get muddled into complicated significations. Yet the novel remains comfortable with such a situation. Its themes thrive on ambivalence and a tone of seeming uncertainty. What at first glance appears to be a scene of incertitude for characters can turn out to be, after an uncovering of many complex layers, a moment of revelation, self-awareness, or existential understanding. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the gulf between Light and Darkness – the gulf that harbours the uncanny, the gulf that represents Dusk – is depicted as a zone wherein Marlow experiences self-realisation and enlightenment.

There is in Heart of Darkness a gap in the dichotomy of Light and Darkness. This gap is magnified and made observable by the distinct contrast in the representative figures of Light and Darkness, and indeed they are portrayed to be almost archetypal. Kurtz is said to be “claimed” by “powers of darkness” (1989). The darkness embodied in Kurtz is universalised as Marlow describes the last moments of his life: “The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea…and Kurtz’s life was running swiftly too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time” (2003). The juxtaposition of these sentences parallels Kurtz’s heart with the “heart of darkness” that is found everywhere from the centre of the wilderness to which the phrase alludes, to the River Thames which it threatens to encompass. Kurtz’s position as a figure that embodies darkness is further solidified when he is described in his deathbed as not being able to see the “light…within a foot of his eyes” (2004). Indeed, his stare “could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness” (2005). The irony of this description is in Kurtz’s inability to see light no matter how wide or universal his stare is. All he is able to see is darkness, and that darkness resides within him.

Inasmuch as Kurtz is unable to see the light, the Intended is ignorant of – if not unable to comprehend – the darkness in Kurtz. She is portrayed as an archetype of light and of what is beautiful, pure, and innocent. Marlow describes her thus: “She struck me as beautiful—I mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie too, yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features” (2007). She has “a pale head”, “fair hair”, a “pale visage”, and a “pure brow” (2007). All these fair and beautiful external features set her up in contrast with the darkness within Kurtz. However, her innocence, her “unextinguishable light of belief and love” (2008), is thought by Marlow to be incapable of understanding or bearing the reality of Kurtz’s darkness. He says that, for her, it would be “too dark altogether” (2010). He thus implies that there is a necessary separation between the dealings of Light and Darkness.

Following Marlow’s logic for separation, it would seem that the Darkness and Light that Kurtz and his Intended signify respectively have between them an unbridgeable gulf. And yet the novel complicates this distinction. Dusk, a time that rests between the bright and dark hours of the day, is depicted in the beginning of the novel with poignancy: “And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men” (1955). It is in the light of this setting sun where the Nellie’s crew go through a contemplative and aesthetic experience: “We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories” (1955). It is also in the climate of this setting wherein Marlow’s narrative is unfolded: not in the brilliance of midday nor in the darkness of midnight, but in the dying light of dusk.

Dusk is the gulf between Light and Darkness, and this gulf may be equated to the realm of the uncanny, the realm of Freud’s Unheimlich. Indeed, insofar as Freud’s concept of the Unheimlich breaks down the binary boundaries between its own essence and that of the Heimlich, so does the concept and imagery of dusk break down the dichotomy of Light and Darkness. This area of the uncanny in the novel breaks down oppositions in such a way that there is certainty to be found in uncertainty and realisation in ambiguity. The gulf of the uncanny, the gap symbolised by dusk, is a dialectical realm wherein the ethos of Marlow’s character attains an understanding of its existence and that of the world and people around him. The culmination of Marlow’s experience, being a character situated symbolically in such a realm, is described by himself as such: “It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough too—and pitiful—not extraordinary in any way—not very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light” (1958). In his experiences are fragments of self-realisation, revelations, and understandings, not least of which is his understanding of Kurtz’s darkness and his Intended’s sparkle of sublimity. Marlow also explains to his fellow seamen that “it seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence” (1973). His contemplations and philosophies, unclear to himself at first, are constantly deconstructed and reconstructed in the course of his journey and his narrative.

Marlow is subsequently elevated into a state of enlightenment. He becomes representative of the individual who beholds the Truth and escapes the Platonic Cave, but who also consequently becomes alienated from his company. By the end of the novel he is said to have “ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha” (2010). And indeed he has already recognised his isolation in the artistic frame when he states, “We live, as we dream—alone” (1973). Yet this alienation, this dream-like uncanny state of retrospection, allows Marlow to observe and understand the universal darkness while remaining apart from it. He thereby becomes the didactic Individual, a signifier of the Particular marked especially by his contrast with the nameless Others, his fellow seafarers, to whom he shares his profound reflections on Truth and the human soul. In this perspective he is not alone. His life, as in his dream-like narration, is recounted with company. Together, they journey through the river of experience and past memories, with the threat of the looming darkness making their quiet solidarity all the more poignant.

 

Bibliography:

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, ed.by K. J.H. Dettmar, Pearson Education, 2010. pp.1949-2010.

DUALITY AS A TRAGIC MOTIF IN SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH

Russ McDonald’s statement that “Shakespearean tragedy depends on a paradox” could not be better suited to any other play than in Macbeth[1]. The actions and the structure of the play hinge on the paradoxes found in accepted truths, language, and signifiers. The theme of duality, in particular, comes into special significance in Macbeth. Shakespeare utilizes duality as a tragic motif in Macbeth; that is, it is used to contextualize and procure Macbeth’s hamartia, and also to lead the hero eventually to his downfall and death. Theories from Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” and Sigmund Freud’s “The ‘Uncanny’” would help us further understand the significance of duality in Shakespeare’s play.

The theme of duality is uncannily pervasive in Macbeth,[2] as is depicted in the diction of the characters. The witches “speak in paradoxes: ‘When the battle’s lost and won,’ ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (1.1.4,11),”[3] “Double, double, toil and trouble” (4.1.10). The human characters themselves speak at times through duality if not in paradoxes: “All our service / In every point twice done, and then done double” (1.6.15), “Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell” (2.1.64-65). Macduff, moreover, makes note of “such welcome and unwelcome things at once / ‘Tis hard to reconcile” (4.3.139-140). This extensive use of duality and paradox serves to reflect the play’s consciousness of and emphasis on the arbitrariness of language and words as signifiers.

Indeed, Nietzsche describes words as having “arbitrary assignments…beyond the canon of uncertainty” and “arbitrary differentiations”, explaining that “we believe we know something of the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors of things, which do not at all agree with the original entities.”[4] The human being’s “arrogance associated with knowing and feeling,”[5] as Nietzsche terms it, is tested in Macbeth, where Hecate remarks that “security / Is mortals’ chiefest enemy” (3.5.32). To be secure in the stability of language in Macbeth is to forget that “truths are illusions that have become worn out and sensuously powerless.”[6] Macbeth, who, in the beginning of the play, is “sensitive and aware”[7] of the arbitrariness of language—for in fact he notes that “two truths are told (1.3.128) which “cannot be ill, cannot be good” (1.3.132)—in the end forgets the instability of words and signifiers, that they “speak metaphorically or metonymically to a single aspect of the signified; they cannot convey its essence.”[8] Macbeth perceives the admonitions of the apparitions only in their literal sense, and confidently declares that they “will never be” (4.1.94). He forgets Banquo’s warning that “the instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / In deepest consequence” (1.3.123-126). This situation William Scott explains thus: “In becoming a part of the self-deluding show and undoing some literalisms to confirm another, he [Macbeth] skews the boundaries of literal and figurative and of perceiver and perceived, with paradoxical results.”[9] As much as Macbeth, in self-delusion, “skews the boundaries of literal and figurative”, the witches do so as well, if not better, using Macbeth’s ambition-driven over-assurance in language to deceive him who so readily would be deceived. Accordingly, the witches’ use of seemingly impossible predictions and “hopeful messages”[10] effects the dissolution of Macbeth’s awareness of the arbitrariness of language: he who, being unprepared, thus becomes a servant to defect[11]. Hence Macbeth declares ironically that “damned [be] all those that trust them” (4.1.139), not realizing that he himself belongs with the damned.

Macbeth’s defective action, then—his hamartia,[12]—is precisely that he blindly disregards the existence of dualities in the realm of the play. This gives him a false and unhealthy sense of security as, after saying, “I cannot taint with fear…. / The mind I sway by and the heart I bear / Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear” (5.3.3,9-10), Macbeth, in response to the servant’s entry, and in what is consequently an expression of his paranoia, says “The devil damn thee black, though cream-faced loon! / Where got’st thou that goose look?” (5.3.11-12). This sense of security is, in turn, haunted by the duality that Macbeth overlooks, and such effects Macbeth’s tragic recognition and reversal.

Informing and qualifying the notion of this haunting duality in Macbeth is Freud’s concept of the “double”[13]. In Macbeth there can be found characters whom Freud would identify as the “doubling, dividing and interchanging of the self.”[14] In fact, two stages of Freud’s “double” are represented in the play: that which “was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the power of death,’”[15] and that which, “from having been an assurance of immortality…becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.”[16] The titular character of the play possesses three of these “doubles” in the figures of Lady Macbeth, the witches, and Macduff—and these figures offer Macbeth unique stages of his own recognition and reversal..

Lady Macbeth, as one of Macbeth’s “doubles,” figuratively completes him, exhibiting characteristics and performing actions that are either opposite or almost like his. In Act 1 Scene 5, she calls on the spirits (l. 40) to “take [her] milk for gall” (l. 48), since her husband is “too full o’th’ milk of human kindness” (l. 17). Her apostrophe to night beginning in line 50 of the same scene, resembling that of Juliet’s in Romeo and Juliet[17], is echoed by Macbeth in Act 3 Scene 2 when he calls on, “Come, seeling night” (l. 49). They both find themselves reluctant before the execution of their murderous actions, yet Lady Macbeth’s power over Macbeth’s identity earlier on in the play is such that he attempts to affirm his masculinity through Lady Macbeth so much so that “he sins to win her approbation.”[18] She inevitably corrupts his masculine identity by using it against him during his times of hesitation. Eventually Macbeth becomes “in blood / Stepped in so far that, should [he] wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er” (3.4.137-139). Lady Macbeth realises only too late that “What’s done cannot be undone” (5.1.68). When it becomes her turn to regret the actions of herself and her husband, telling him “You must leave this” (3.2.39), Macbeth only informs her of a forthcoming plan for her to “applaud the deed” (3.2.49). Such has become of the situation of Macbeth’s identity as it relates to Lady Macbeth, that his actions have become mere performances, “deeds”, that need the applause of his one audience, his wife. Her death consequently triggers his speech in Act 5 Scene 5 wherein life is but “a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more” (ll. 24-26) –  a description of life that is very much pertinent to his own.

Realising such a fact, Macbeth “turns unsuccessfully to the witches for the power he needs to make him author of himself.”[19] The witches, who are characteristically duplicitous, symbolise Macbeth’s “double” that is supposed to assure him of immortality. They are beings who may be figuratively associated with Macbeth. Macbeth’s first words “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” (1.3.38) echo the witches’ last ones in Act 1 Scene 1 where they say “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (1.1.11) Cheung observes this of the witches’ interaction with Macbeth:

Significantly, it is not a surprise encounter but a meeting that is to take place. Already there is a hint of intercourse between the witches and Macbeth, so what seems to be an external temptation also can be interpreted, as many critics have done, as a psychological projection.[20]

The witches not only embody the external “multiplying villainies of nature / [that] Do swarm upon him” (1.2.11), but also they symbolize the internal, “black and deep desires” (1.4.51) already present in Macbeth’s character. Viewing their relationship thus makes it easier to relate such a relationship with Freud’s idea of the double where “the one possesses knowledge, feelings and experience in common with the other.”[21] Indeed, the witches prove to be effective because, according to Scott, “they seemed to have access to the frightening secrets of his heart.”[22] The power in the duality of their nature, being representative of both the external and internal forces of evil that besiege Macbeth, makes it highly difficult for Macbeth to resist the temptation of accessing and utilizing the murderous ambition that their prophecies leave as a readily-available option for him. However, it is exactly this duality in nature that opens up and leads Macbeth to his downfall. He recognises that he has fallen into this pitfall, but only too late: “And be these juggling fiends no more believed / That palter with us in a double sense, / That keep the word of promise to our ear / And break it to our hope” (5.8.19-22).

In the face of this realisation, Macbeth finds himself pitted against Macduff, the “double” who is the “uncanny harbinger of death” for Macbeth. For, being what Campbell terms as a “figure of the tyrant-monster”[23], Macbeth’s presence inevitably calls for “the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence will liberate the land.”[24] And Scotland must needs be liberated from Macbeth, as it is described by Lennox as a “suffering country / Under a hand accursed” (3.6.49-50). Indeed, Macduff becomes for Macbeth “a thing of terror,”[25] who tells him: “Despair thy charm, / And let the angel whom thou still hast served / Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped” (5.8.13-16)[26]. Hence is Macduff qualified to be the nemesis of Macbeth, whereby he is also portrayed as a figure that is the direct opposite of Macbeth, a figure of “the self-creating and invulnerable masculinity that Macbeth cannot fashion for himself.”[27] Macduff’s character moreover serves to haunt Macbeth with the duality that the tragic character forgets persists in the play’s dramatic universe. The very fact of Macduff’s birth and existence, the circumstances of which Macbeth deems impossible, shakes Macbeth out of his self-inflicted tragic delusion and reverses his expectation of the witches’ equivocal prophecy. His death in the hands of Macduff symbolises the taking-over of the “double”: the former, suffering self, represented in Macbeth, is replaced by the projected and more perfect – though not entirely unscathed[28] –  self in the person of Macduff[29].

This ending for Macbeth is not to be restricted with a tragic affect. “Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms,”[30] writes Joseph Campbell. Macbeth, in this light, is at once tragic and liberating. The titular character is tragic because he, blinded by ambition, undermines if not forgets about the existence of duplicity and the prevalence thereof in the world he lives – but on the same note, this selfsame duplicity allows for the liberation of the imprisoned and corrupted self in Macbeth and transfigures it into the more complete, more heroically-realised self in Macduff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] R. McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2001), 86.

[2] All quotations from Macbeth are taken from D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakespeare (The University of Chicago: 2013), 710-747.

[3] D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakespeare, 712.

[4] F. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2007), 454.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 455.

[7] D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakepeare,711.

[8] D. H. Richter, The Critical Tradition, 438.

[9] W. Scott, “Macbeth’s—And Our—Self-Equivocations” (Shakespeare Quarterly: 1986), 160-174.

[10] Ibid, 171.

[11] I am referring here to 2.1.17-18: “Being unprepared, / Our will became the servant to defect”.

[12] Russ McDonald reminds us that hamartia would be “a term more properly understood as an error in action rather than as fatal weakness of character”. The Bedford Companion, 88.

[13] Quotes from Freud are collectively taken from “The ‘Uncanny’” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2007), 514-532.

[14]Ibid, 522.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, 523

[17] See Juliet’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in The Necessary Shakespeare ed. D. Bevington (The University of Chicago: 2013), 3.2.5

[18] D. Bevington, 712.

[19] Ibid, 713.

[20] K.K. Cheung, “’Dread’ in Macbeth” (Shakespeare Quarterly: 1984), 431.

[21] S. Freud, 522.

[22] W. Scott, 170.

[23] The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell Foundation: 2008), 11

[24] Ibid.

[25] S. Freud, 523.

[26] Macbeth is certainly made terrified by this statement, saying “it hath cowed my better part of man” (5.8.18).

[27] D. Bevington, 713

[28] For Macduff has also suffered loss: the death of his wife and children.

[29] Not coincidentally, Macbeth uncannily tries to refuse killing Macduff: “Of all men else I have avoided thee” (5.8.5). He sees a vision of a more perfect and unsullied self in Macduff – to him, there is something of the uncanny in Macduff, something, according to Freud in p. 526, “familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.” This more perfect and now-alienated self that Macbeth finds in Macduff he has repressed in his murderous drive towards kingship.

[30] The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 21.