And He Almost Deserved It: a Psychoanalytic look at Eustace Clarence Scrubb from Voyage of the Dawn Treader
In Psychoanalytic criticism, one thing that is important is to look at a character's motivations. What are their core issues? What are they afraid of? What are their defenses against these core issues? I think psychoanalytic criticism offers a way of looking at the characters of Voyage of the Dawn Treader in a new light. Many people have looked at the religious aspects and the symbolic aspects of Narnia, but few have looked at the psychological motives of the characters in Narnia.
One character that has potential to be looked at in this light is Eustace. The opening lines in the book describe him as such: "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him for he had none." So what drives this boy who is so nasty up until his transformation? After careful study, I think what may be driving him is a fear of abandonment and a fear of betrayal.
Lois Tyson, in Critical Theory Today: a user-friendly guide, explains that fear of abandonment is "the unshakable belief that our friends and loved ones are going to desert us (physical abandonment) or don't really care about us (emotional abandonment)" and that fear of betrayal is "the nagging feeling that our friends and loved ones can't be trusted". Eustace always thinks that everybody is out to get him. He believes that nobody really cares about his well-being and thinks that everyone should bend over backwards to help him. Because his parents are emotionally detached from him, even going so far as to have him call them by their first names, Eustace fears that no one wants to be close to him or really cares about him. As such, he uses defenses such as selective perception, displacement and projection in order to avoid these fears.
His selective perception is evident in his diary entries, where he claims that "I've been put in the worst cabin of the boat, a perfect dungeon, and Lucy has been given a whole room on deck to herself, almost a nice room compared with the rest of this place. C. says that's because she's a girl. I tried to make him see what Alberta says, that all that sort of thing is really lowering girls, but he was too dense. Still, he might see that I shall be ill if I'm kept in that hole any longer." He uses displacement, "taking it out" on someone or something less threatening than the person who caused the fear or anger, through his bossing and bullying: "For deep down inside him he liked bossing and bullying; and, though he was a puny little person who couldn't have stood up even to Lucy, let alone Edmund, in a fight, he knew that there are dozens of ways to give people a bad time if you are in your own home and they are only visitors." He also shows this when he targets Reepicheep, who is a mouse and naturally smaller than he is: "...as soon as he saw that long tail hanging down -- and perhaps it was rather tempting -- he thought it would be delightful to catch hold of it, swing Reepicheep round by it once or twice upside-down, then run away and laugh." Lastly, he uses projection, or placing the blame on others, in order to feel better about himself, as evident, once again, in his diary entry: "It would be bad enough even if one was with decent people instead of fiends in human form. Caspian and Edmund are simply brutal to me."
One character that has potential to be looked at in this light is Eustace. The opening lines in the book describe him as such: "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him for he had none." So what drives this boy who is so nasty up until his transformation? After careful study, I think what may be driving him is a fear of abandonment and a fear of betrayal.
Lois Tyson, in Critical Theory Today: a user-friendly guide, explains that fear of abandonment is "the unshakable belief that our friends and loved ones are going to desert us (physical abandonment) or don't really care about us (emotional abandonment)" and that fear of betrayal is "the nagging feeling that our friends and loved ones can't be trusted". Eustace always thinks that everybody is out to get him. He believes that nobody really cares about his well-being and thinks that everyone should bend over backwards to help him. Because his parents are emotionally detached from him, even going so far as to have him call them by their first names, Eustace fears that no one wants to be close to him or really cares about him. As such, he uses defenses such as selective perception, displacement and projection in order to avoid these fears.
His selective perception is evident in his diary entries, where he claims that "I've been put in the worst cabin of the boat, a perfect dungeon, and Lucy has been given a whole room on deck to herself, almost a nice room compared with the rest of this place. C. says that's because she's a girl. I tried to make him see what Alberta says, that all that sort of thing is really lowering girls, but he was too dense. Still, he might see that I shall be ill if I'm kept in that hole any longer." He uses displacement, "taking it out" on someone or something less threatening than the person who caused the fear or anger, through his bossing and bullying: "For deep down inside him he liked bossing and bullying; and, though he was a puny little person who couldn't have stood up even to Lucy, let alone Edmund, in a fight, he knew that there are dozens of ways to give people a bad time if you are in your own home and they are only visitors." He also shows this when he targets Reepicheep, who is a mouse and naturally smaller than he is: "...as soon as he saw that long tail hanging down -- and perhaps it was rather tempting -- he thought it would be delightful to catch hold of it, swing Reepicheep round by it once or twice upside-down, then run away and laugh." Lastly, he uses projection, or placing the blame on others, in order to feel better about himself, as evident, once again, in his diary entry: "It would be bad enough even if one was with decent people instead of fiends in human form. Caspian and Edmund are simply brutal to me."