critical commentary I Tomos Davies
When writing the short story, ‘The Boy And His Dog’, I chose to focus on three issues. The first of these is Freud’s concept of the Id, the irrational, desiring and emotional part of the mind that represents our innate desires. The second, heavily intertwined with this, is how a materialistic, consumerist and modern lifestyle leads to these desires being repressed, which in turn causes transgression. The third is the profound condition whereby humanity attempts unsuccessfully to bury the animal drives and urges within itself. The first technique which I use is allegory.The principal allegory used is the dog,which is a figurative representation for a masculine Id. The dog shows a man’s primal and innate desires, the first example of this being when the bitch comes out of the decrepit tyre yard and the dog sees her. The dog “eagerly stares” at her whilst she “whimpers”.This emotive language is specifically used in order to show how these two animals yearn for one another and amongst the background of “vulcanised rubber”, essentially an urban wasteland, this stands out as innocent and just.The bitch whines at the “looming gate”, the gate being representative of anything which imposes itself upon an individual and represses or cuts off natural processes. Following this, the boy “snatches on the lead”, restricting the dog with his hand of oppression posing as the allegorical chain. Here the boy can be seen to be acting in the way of Freud’s Superego. The Superego is the social and critical part of the mind; it develops as a result of social conditioning and enforces certain inherited ethical rules. The boy is the controlling part of the tripartite structure which makes up Freud’s theory of the structure of the mind. He controls the Id’s impulses which society views as taboo,
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