Exploring Repressed Desires and Their Effects on the Emergence of Varied Kinds of Violence in the Selected Novels of Stephen King

Abstract

This research provides a psychological review of Stephen King's Misery and The Dark Half based on Slavoj Zizek's ideas of violence and its veiled dimensions. In this investigation, the issue of encountering violence promptly and abominating all kinds of violence in the actions of human beings as well as commiserating with victims have been scrutinized. There are diversified critical assumptions to the statement of what psychology is considerably worth applying to the works of Stephen King who has gained achievements as a gothic author and who has paid attention to unconscious gothic components and psychotic characters. It can be argued that these two novels reveal the doctrine of violence which is the result of dualism and failure in attaining interior desires as explained in Slavoj Zizek's conceptions: subjective and objective violence (symbolic and systematic violence). For the reason that Stephen King is referred to as a gothic novelist, this research will concentrate on the leading characters' psyches in two of his most thrilling novels to determine if the author's ideas keep in line with the definition of psyche and unconscious are effective in the representation of violence, trepidation, affliction, torment and madness and of the protagonists in Stephen King's Misery and The Dark Half. As a theorist and a philosopher, Zizek emphasizes on the doctrine of violence and its effects on changing the mood and on carrying out frenetic activities. Consequently, it is being explored that unfulfilled intrinsic and intellectual desires in the real world and truly the potential uncertainties of mental demands and the unfulfillment of these desires in the real world, novel's characters as well as individuals can cause violence in the society.

Keywords

• psychoanalytical criticism
• slavoj zizek
• subjective violence
• stephen king
• gothic elements