Psychoanalysis: Interpretation Of Snow White

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Reading a book is like putting together a puzzle. The big picture is fractured into different component pieces and it is up to the reader to interpret the pieces and put the puzzle together. The pieces can be interpreted to have multiple meanings like the words in a Shakespeare sonnet, but the key is figuring out which meaning best fits the big picture. In general, fairy tales contain a rather simple plot and surface characters. However, when it comes to fairy tales there are numerous ways to interpret the tale. Folklorists, historians, literary critics, psychologists, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists have developed different interpretations of fairy tales and the corresponding meaning of the tale depends on the interpreter’s area of expertise. The tale of Snow White will be interpreted using psychoanalysis; it will also explore the multiple meanings hidden in symbolism, and the problems encountered when interpreting the tale. In this paper a psychoanalytical approach will be used to interpret the sequence of events in Snow White’s relatively simple plot. Psychoanalytical analysis, based off Sigmund Freud theories, has often been as a tool for literary criticism. Psychoanalytical principles such as the unconscious, dream interpretation, and repression can be applied to literature (Gray). Psychoanalysis like literature is structured around narratives and explores the complexities of human behavior. The connection between literature and psychoanalytic theory is that literature generally owes much of its appeal to its ability to express unconscious content in a masked form (Douglas). This could be considered true because if literature was considered to be a sort of dream, the story is born from the author’s mind, then psychoanalysis is the best tool to use in order to understand the literature. Bettelheim agreed that fairy tales could be used to bring

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