The Vine Poem

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Are dreams just random firings of neurons or are they the thoughts that we think while sleeping? Is it possible that these dreams could reveal an underlying, unconscious theme about ourselves that we should try to uncover? In Robert Herrick’s poem The Vine, the speaker dreams of taking sexual power over Lucia. Looking deeper, however, the dream is more than just that. Through the manifest content presented in Herrick’s The Vine, the latent content, id, and libido are discovered, which all help to reveal the speakers’ unconscious, repressed thoughts and desires for Lucia. Through the poem’s manifest content, it is obvious that the speaker secretly longs for Lucia, whether he consciously knows this or not. In this poem, Lucia is the equivalent …show more content…
Because the “vine” took over Lucia and consumed her, it can be assumed that the speaker’s id (psychological reservoir of instincts) was filled with sexual desires. He might have been suppressing his libido, or sexual energy, in life. Maybe he was desiring to have sex with a beautiful woman since it might not have happened in a long time. Because of this suppression, all of his libido might be coming out at once in a dream, hence why his genitals become an all-consuming vine that takes over. Also, by saying “such fleeting pleasures there I took” (line 20), it could be debated that the speaker continues to repress his sexual thoughts and desires for power and control since they are only fleeting. When he awakens, he discovers that the “flesh of [his is] more like a stock than like a vine” (line 23), revealing that although he may like to keep the thoughts in his unconscious, they are still able to make their way into his consciousness. Clearly, the speaker’s dream goes beyond the manifest and latent content to display his inner id and libido. Ultimately, dreams are not only like “mini movies” in your head while sleeping, but they can also reveal something about a person’s unconscious state of mind. Although this is not always the case, sometimes these unconscious thoughts are not positive ones, thus being repressed throughout a person’s life. In The Vine by Robert Herrick, the
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