A Comparison Of Id, Ego, And Superego By Freud

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Id, Ego, and Superego by Freud as used by Golding.
The book “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding is a novel about young schoolboys, who are stranded on an island, losing their innocence and diluting down to base savage human nature over time. Our main characters of the story (Jack, Ralph and Piggy) can all be assigned a role as one of three forms of the human brain’s consciousness which Freud established as Id, Ego, and Superego respectively. Through the characters actions, we can accurately assign a conscious to its appropriate character. Id “functions in the irrational and emotional part of the mind. At birth a baby’s mind is all Id - want want want. The Id is the primitive mind. It contains all the basic needs and feelings. It is the
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Superego “becomes an embodiment of parental and societal values. It stores and enforces rules. It constantly strives for perfection, even though this perfection ideal may be quite far from reality or possibility. Its power to enforce rules comes from its ability to create anxiety.”*1. So basically, we can say that if a Superego is too strong, an individual will feel constant guilt, and may harbor an “insufferably saintly personality”*1. Have you guessed who yet? That is right, our Superego representative is Piggy, the man himself. This is quite obvious as he has many times mediated, sometimes as a judge and others as a referee, between Jack (Id) and Ralph (Ego). He has never had a problem with using his knowledge to put either Jack and Ralph on the spot and expose their faults, like his exclamations towards Jack when his abandoning the fire led to the boat to pass them by(*5). He has a natural tendency to care for others and to want to help, regardless of their wrongdoings towards him, such as agreeing to watch the kids even though they mock his obesity, and following Ralph even though he pushes Piggy down from time to time(*5), successfully solidifying his position as the Superego of our