Author Archives: claudia yuen

Extra stuff from Hausman essay

Here’s some stuff that never made it into my essay…thought I’d share it. My essay was about the ‘Nunnerator’.

This is where I end my essay, but I have one more point to make and I reckon it is way too far-fetched to be considered a justifiable reason as to why a frame narrative is used. But I do not mind throwing in a theory that somehow made sense in my brain. As I said in my introduction, I experienced this sense of ‘mind distortion’ or mind – *insert f-word* when I first read the novel. I almost got mad at Hausman for leaving so many plot holes and questions unanswered. Then I remembered how puzzling it was to read the first two chapters, and so I thought – Why not reread those two chapters with the knowledge I have now? And my goodness, my mind was blown. Everything came full circle. And me, yearning to connect this ‘Nunnerator’ to a character in the story, I came to the conclusion that the narrator in the frame narrative is Chef telling his tale of the larger story of Riding the Trail of Tears. I am not entirely sure how I am supposed to back up this theory without wanting to talk to you in person about this but I’ll just list some reasons as to why I see this theory fitting. Firstly, I searched up what ‘Nunnehi’ meant and it meant travelers. The ‘Nunnehi’ are a supernatural spirit race that are friendly with the Cherokee tribe and often intercede in battle on the Cherokee’s behalf. And doesn’t that happen during the ride in the Trail of Tears when the Misfits from the Stockade come charging in and killing all those soldiers and essentially saving Group 5709? Moreover, the ‘Nunnerator’ in the frame narrative states how the Misfits “fit into all the stories that have been recorded, but they don’t fit very well into reality” (Hausman 6), which makes me think of how the Chef told Tallulah to not talk about him, Ish, and Fish from the kitchen, but it was all right to talk about the Misfits and hence that is how they fit into all the stories that have been recorded. Furthermore, the ‘Nunnerator’ comes off as wise and experienced and I believe it is because he is the one who left and walked out with Tallulah and experienced the world. From the encounters Irma Rosenberg and Tallulah Wilson has had with the Chef, the Chef comes off as extremely reserved. He does not tell you specific details of events, he often answers you by starting a different conversation, which makes him mysterious and unreliable, and I think the frame narrative here is to act as his confession. This confession is the one part of the larger tale between him and Tallulah Wilson’s story – it is a story within a story basically. Just like how the story of Tallulah’s last ride in the Trail of Tears was split between two perspectives – Irma and Tallulah. I hope that makes some sense.

No Message is a Message – Fun Home

No message is a message. I used to say this to all my friends who had a crush on somebody that didn’t reciprocate their feelings. Besides this phrase being quite applicable in the ‘romance department’, I think ‘no message is a message’ (or in other words, SILENCE), is quite fitting in ‘Fun Home’. So what do I mean by that??? Well…

I think one of my favourite parts of ‘Fun Home’ would be from pages 220-223. From pages 220 to 221, we see Alison and Bruce in the car, moment to moment, sharing a conversation about something that now has been finally brought to light between the both of them. I think Bechdel choosing to show this scene moment by moment is crucial to the book’s climax as we finally get to see a more direct and vulnerable side of Bruce. There are a total of 3 boxes/images/moments of Bruce and Alison not saying a word out of the 24 frames in the 2 page spread. I think silence is profound in a car. I don’t know. There’s just a lot that goes on when you’re silent in a car. You’re thinking. You’re in a daze. You’re trying not to say what you want to say. You’re withholding. It’s just something about silence in a car, but more specifically, showing silence in a graphic novel that helps delay the suspense the reader feels as a vulnerable and fragile moment unfolds in front of them.

In the story, Alison and Bruce end up seeing a film. Then, Bruce takes Alison to this ‘notorious local nightspot’. There is a gay bar at the back. After being ID’d, they drive home in silence. This silence is different to the one before they got to the theatre. It’s ‘mortified silence’. I think they’re both realizing something. And this is what it is…

So, Bruce takes his daughter (who recently just came out as lesbian) to a gay bar. The way they behave during this and whilst afterwards personifies the contrasting differences between the father and daughter’s ways of dealing with their homosexuality. Bruce wants to support Alison, but he’s still uncomfortable or at least he’s still struggling with his homosexuality. I’m sure both Alison and Bruce want to connect on their common ground, but ultimately, they can’t be on the same page because Bruce’s shame is just too deep. He talks about his past affairs, but he can’t come out and just say it straight to his daughter’s face despite wanting to be there for her. I think that’s what the silence represents. He wants to be supportive but he can’t bring himself to be that figure because he himself isn’t comfortable and whole with who he is. So he’s unable to be by his daughter’s side through this all.

Sebald – Time, Memory, and the Human Experience

SAUDADE
sau·da·de
souˈdädə/
noun
  • a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.
    The word ‘saudade’ came to mind when understanding Austerlitz. I guess it’s because it made me think of the past and how time back then and the memories which unfold give me this certain feeling.

There’s this text that appears at the end of a Wong Kar Wai film, In The Mood For Love (2000) that I’d like to share that talks about memory –

“He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.”

I find that incredibly beautiful. I know for a fact I have a thing for melancholia and nostalgia. I find it somewhat romantic. To describe looking into the past as a ‘dusty window pane’ is unparalleled to any description I could ever make up. Anyway, let me talk about how what I’ve just said above ties in with Austerlitz.

To set the tone… Here’s one of my favourite passages from the book:

“It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last… And might it not be, continued Austerlitz, that we also have appointments to keep in the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us on the far side of time, so to speak?”

Sebald writes with this trance-like, fleeting yet deep quality which makes me hear the voice of Time yet Time for some reason does not like to overstay its visit and dissolves into a core place within ourselves that transforms into memory. Sebald captures the sentiment and makes the intangible as tangible as you could get when he explores the very journey of being lost and found again, falling apart only to be put back together… This book is covered with wandering beings, movement of trains, mist, fog, smoke, buildings, empty places, streets, forests, cemeteries, obscurity etc. It’s melancholic. We’re wandering. There’s sadness when you wander, just floating by. We’re near death in a way. The prose wanders like the narrator and it gives me the sense of this lost soul trying to find home. It even reminds me of the sadness I felt when Holden Caulfield (from The Catcher of The Rye) endlessly wanders trying to find Allie, feeling as if he could possibly vanish into thin air every time he turned a corner. The narrator’s voice floats and guides us to feel melancholia – it’s beautiful and tender, but there is also a deep undercurrent of sadness and loss.

What Sebald has written truly is a representation of the human experience. It made me feel a lot as I tend to gravitate towards the past. Sebald’s Austerlitz is actually giving me the same feeling I felt when I watched the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both the book and film deal with the themes of memory, time, and the human experience.

Life and Death in Vertigo

Just wanna go on a spiel about the themes of life and death in Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ –

LIFE:

So, there is an awful lot of green in the film. Let me explore the symbols in ‘Vertigo’ that represent life and mortality to an extent…

TREES! (More importantly, sequoia trees!)

So Scottie and Madeleine go to a forest filled with sequoia trees – sequoia stands for ‘always green, ever living’. Isn’t that just fitting? The tree’s scientific name explicitly symbolizes life in the film. However, for Madeleine, it represents her life/her mortality. The two come across the cross-section of a tree, and she tells Scottie where/when she was born, and where/when she died. Weird. Despite being surrounded by nature, all the more of a reason to embrace life in its entirety, Madeleine reacts differently. She gives a complex response. It seems as if she’s drowning from being surrounded by life. She is simultaneously afraid of living and afraid of dying. She even says she does not like knowing she has to die. Pretty haunting, huh?

GREEN!

Yes, green can represent nature (and with that being said, nature can mean life), but in ‘Vertigo’, the colour green has always made me feel uneasy. It reminds me of deception, or at least something associated to being eerie, uncanny, or disturbing. I can see how green is meant to represent Madeleine. When Scottie first sees her, she stands out from everyone else in the red dining room with her dramatic and vividly green gown. She’s a breath of fresh air, she’s unsettling, yet mesmerizing to look at. Moreover, when Scottie first meets Judy, she’s also in a green dress.  Her hotel room is illuminated by the building’s green neon sign. How convenient. One of the most well shot scenes in the film is when Judy walks out of the bathroom, having fully transformed into Madeleine. She looks ghostly, bathed in green light and green fog. It’s ghostly. It’s uncanny. It’s as if she’s come back from the dead (especially with the green fog sort of dissolving itself and creating this halo effect around Judy). And I suppose the colour green is fitting here since Judy’s body is now a vessel for Scottie to fill with his ‘lost Lenore’.

DEATH:

Only writing a super short comment about death because I want to tie this with the paragraph just above!

I feel like when Judy finally accepts Scottie’s yearning to mold Judy in Madeleine’s image, the action in itself, is a sort of death. She chooses to let herself go and let Scottie dictate her as a way to earn Scottie’s love and affection. She even says she doesn’t care about herself anymore. I think losing yourself in wanting to be loved as much as you love someone else is a sort of death. At least I think of it in that way.

More on The Yellow Wallpaper

When I was writing my essay about confinement in ‘The Yellow Wall-paper’, I sort on went on this tangent so I thought it would be a suitable idea to just continue that stream of consciousness…

In addition to being confined to the nursery, and desperately wanting to mold herself to become the ideal mother and wife for John, by stating “I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!” (Gilman 649), the protagonist struggles with balancing her husband’s wants with her desire for a creative outlet. He represses her creativity, and says her problems are a product of her overactive imagination. John would tell the narrator that she “was letting it get the better of (her), and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (Gilman 649). The subtext of ‘Don’t let your imagination run wild, you should really get a hold of yourself’ is constant through pages 649 and 650. If anything, this just gives a limited view of women because it suggests that if we apply more restrictions and limitations on someone, the better that person will end up being. The narrator goes on to remind the reader that her husband believes “There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?” (Gilman 650). That last line sounds incredibly manipulative. I suppose it does because John plays two roles in the narrator’s life – the doctor and the husband. The relationship between husband and wife turns into something more aggravating and intense, like a father and child, doctor and patient relationship, where there is an obvious authority figure that dictates, or even unknowingly manipulates the submissive one. Of course I am not trying to state that John is the villain in the story because in my perspective, I see him as a reflection of the 19th century man. I assume he wants the best for his wife/his patient, even though he can seem controlling and manipulative (but keep in mind that these accounts are coming from a very unreliable narrator). With that being said, I suppose this exhibits society’s values destructing women’s individuality. Gilman confirms women’s little significance by not even providing the narrator a name until perhaps at the very end. Note that also the narrator has no traditional mother and wife tasks to do, which truly lowers her significance in society. The women who have taken on the narrator’s societal identities the protagonist is forbidden and incapable of doing, are the ones who do have names. The narrator compliments and compares herself to Mary and Jennie, by saying, “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.” (Gilman 649), and “She is a perfect and enthusiastic house keeper, and hopes for no better profession” (Gilman 650).

Also!!!! I found this book particularly difficult to write an essay on..I guess it’s because there are so many layers and complexities to this short story, and how there can be so many interpretations, which really leaves everything out in the open and having to write an essay focusing on a certain interpretation can feel a bit daunting since every sort of interpretation can bleed into another…

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

So here are some things I’ve noticed from watching this film that really caught my eye…

In ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’, there is this huge use of jagged landscapes, spiky objects, tilted walls and windows, blades, things looking sharp like knives, crooked asymmetry etc. I mean, even the title sequences’ font is jagged and sharp. This aesthetic not only makes this silent film stand out from other silent films that usually have a tendency to mirror reality, but the style in ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ is bizarre. It’s radical distortion. There’s no sense of safety, I feel as a viewer, I’m constantly sensing danger and darkness. Even the score of the film doesn’t have to tell me to be paranoid, the mise en scene tells me to be so.

The 2D sets definitely make a difference in the film. It heightens the eeriness of the film, and how far fetched we are from the norm. The crooked asymmetry of objects like windows could reflect a warped reality, a skewed perception, which totally makes sense. It’s very fitting. I believe this isn’t just a horror film that started the German Expressionist era, but a psychological fantasy type film. The make up on the actors is dramatic, especially the eye make up! It’s usually black around the eyes. Not only does this draw attention to the actors’ eyes, but it creates a motif – that we have to constantly be looking/watching what the actors’ eyes are telling what the audience needs to know. It’s eerie and I like it. Even the exaggerated movements of the actors create this out-of-the-norm experience for the audience. Everything is so heightened. The stakes feel so much higher with everything being so dramatic. Even the constant close up shots or extremely long takes with deep focus (to allow everything in the mise en scene to be in focus) with little editing is a smack in the face for the viewer. We have to be constantly aware of what is going on. The director is allowing us to see what he wants us to see. He wants us to see everything, or at least everything he wants us to know within the frame. The constant reminder of distorted vision through the physical background of shots is cinematic innovation, it highlights the protagonist’s skewed perception and draws the audience closer to the darker side of the human psyche, which I find fascinating.

The extreme distortions and discordant angles most definitely contribute to German Expressionism. I can totally see how ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ as well as other films foretold the rise of Nazism. I can see how the film is a reflection of unconventional composition of shots and wrong angles, the lost of once cherished values… Hitler = Caligari. German people = the sleepwalkers.

ALSO, the Iris Shot. Wiene is seriously into the iris shot. And I like to think this is why: it contributes to him allowing us the privilege to see what he wants us to see. He wants us to be aware. He wants us to look. He’s given that subjective perspective to focus on the intimate details that the audience can only see. The eyes say a lot and I guess Wiene wanted to stress on that gesture.

Freud/Hoffmann Presentation

My presentation question: “So in ‘The Sandman’, Hoffmann REALLY likes to use heat and fire as a motif. He often links it to the overarching theme of perception/vision/eyes…Why is that? How is that? How does it link? WHAT?”

As you guys know what happened at our last Freud/Hoffmann seminar, my group and I had a huge epiphany. We had our minds blown thanks to Christina for helping us put the last piece of the puzzle together! MIND BLOWN. *makes sound of something exploding* Yeah, I was really happy about that. Still happy about that actually. Maybe too happy.

So, here’s what my group came up with this whole heat and fire relationship with vision and perception:

Nathanael deals a lot with warped perception and reality. He definitely has trouble differentiating what’s real and what isn’t. Hence why Freud sees this whole uncanny business going on. Nathanael can’t tell the difference between things and he often finds similarities and differences in polar opposite or very similar characters e.g. calling Clara an automaton when really Olimpia (who he says has full of life) is an automaton, as well as Coppelius and Coppola possibly inhabiting the same entity.

Whenever Nathanael thinks of Coppelius or whenever Coppelius’ presence is around, fire comes up. The two come hand in hand. This is found in the poem about Clara as well as other recurring thoughts that imply Coppelius’ presence. With Coppola, he is the one who’s got all the gadgets – the telescope, the spectacles… And what is interesting is that despite a spyglass’ use being to help magnify and make distant objects clearer, if anything, it has caused Nathanel to blur reality and imagination together. Hence, warped perception. And this faulty perception usually happens with the use of a spyglass or a spectacle made by Coppola, who also made Olimpia’s eyes.

What connects these two entities into one is how hot burning rains of sand is used to throw into one’s eyes. And guess what? sand is used to make glass(es)!!! What even.

All in all, you can tell that fire and eyes/vision/spectacles/anything related to perception and the ability to see something are motifs/symbols used to trigger the reader and Nathanael’s subconscious into relating the two characters as one being. THAT IS PRETTY SICK.

Blake’s My Pretty Rose Tree, and how jealousy plays a role in our lives

So basically, a man is offered this beautiful flower and he’s like, “Nah, I’m good. I’ve got a pretty rose tree”. And then he returns to his pretty rose tree, and she’s all jealous so she turns away from him and only gives him her thorns, which makes him delighted. What?

This poem brings up huge themes of lost love, possession, jealous, lack of mutual respect, and selfishness. The gardener/speaker gains this satisfaction from turning down the offer of a beautiful, and perhaps more youthful flower because he realizes he is still wanted. He also comes off as an incredibly self-absorbed individual when he gets all happy about how his rose tree gets super jealous and only gives him her thorns. There is a sense that when she gets jealous, it is his way of getting a major ego boost. Ugh. How unattractive. This obviously shows how the relationship is unequal. The rose is not seen as a partner to the speaker, but as a possession instead. This theme of possession is prominent because of the repeated use of the words ‘my’ and ‘I’ve’.

So, this theme of jealousy and possession got me thinking. How does jealousy play a role in our lives and how are there some people who just do not get jealous at all? I did some thinking and this is what I’ve come up with…

What is the root of jealousy? Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s the fear of not being enough, and/or fear of abandonment…? Perhaps it has something to do with self-doubt and even a intense sense of insecurity.

And how does jealousy affect us? Well, first off, it weakens our mental health. We begin thinking of all these unstable thoughts. We begin damaging the trust we have with our partner, and we also begin to break the trust we build within ourselves. Jealousy immediately pulls you into the past. And what I mean by that is how difficult communication can be as one will always look into the past, to what triggered this jealousy and distrust in the first place. There will be that constant doubt of whether or not your partner will do what they did again that brought up this disgusting feeling of jealousy. It restarts arguments. It creates intense insecurity. It makes you mis-perceive common and small situations. It’s just an ugly, unhealthy, and vicious feeling to inhabit.

So, how are there people who can live without jealousy at all?

I suppose people who don’t get jealous are the ones who do not seek approval from others. They are not reaching for something outside of themselves when ultimately, what they are seeking for, is found from within. I think that search for completion, to fill that void we always have open somehow, is a treacherous journey to embark on. Because at first, we feel that this void can be filled by someone or something, but really, as time goes by, we realize our inner demons can only be healed and transformed into something better by growing to learn and love yourself on your own. And that (unfortunately, I guess? I mean it is unfortunate in this day and age when everything is so instant), takes an awful lot of time. Moreover, people who do not get jealous do not compare themselves to others. They have a high sense of self-worth.

You can obviously see why the rose tree is so jealous. The relationship dynamic between her and the speaker is clearly unequal and unhealthy. :/

Galileo, The Bible, and Friedrich Nietzsche

I’m not intending to have this blog post come to a coherent conclusion because what I’m currently typing is really just a stream of consciousness…

After reading Kurt’s essay on Galileo, it got me thinking about how objective is the Bible if it were considered a gateway to understanding the knowledge of truth, as well as how one interpretation of scripture could be considered right and while another interpretation could be labeled as false, and also, what even is the value of truth?? So, for some odd reason, those questions immediately got me thinking about the tiniest bit of stuff I learnt in high school about Friedrich Nietzsche.

The Bible – well, it’s pretty ‘abstruse’ (Galileo used that word a couple of times in his letter to the Grand Duchess). It can be interpreted numerous ways. I remember reading Kurt’s essay about how the Bible doesn’t explicitly translate God’s thoughts word for word so we’re left to interpret and assume as much as we can. And we all know that humans are innately flawed, we come up with metaphors and concepts to adjust to what we currently understand in order to comprehend as much as we can of the world. And yet we consider the Bible as a way to understanding the knowledge of truth. But to understand the Bible, we apply what we know and perceive to understand this piece of truth….Do you see the problem? I hope this makes sense.

In Nietzsche’s essay called “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” which was written in 1873, he states that truth is “A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seen firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins”. Dang, Nietzsche. That’s quite something right there. In Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, he writes that “The text has disappeared under the interpretation”, which I’ve gotta say, totally does apply with people understanding scripture. One’s version of truth is really subjective. Your truth is different to mine. I suppose it all depends on how you’ve been brought up, what you believe in (spiritually, politically etc), and so much more. With Nietzsche, he doesn’t believe in absolute truth. There can only be a variety of perspectives from which one can see a situation/matter. With truth (in this case, the Bible), it demands a specific point of view in claiming that THAT is the truth. This totally falsifies the bigger picture.

Anyway, I feel like the more I think about it, the more existential it gets… After all, Nietzsche is one of the pioneers of existentialism and is also considered the father of Nihilism.

Oedipus and Freud’s theory on the psyche (Superego, ego & id)

When reading Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, I immediately did a mental character analysis on Oedipus and realized how similar he is to Marlow from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness…Now bare with me, I know it is a bit of a stretch, but what I’m trying to say is, if you apply Freud’s psychology on the psyche as being structured in 3 parts – superego, ego, and id, you can see the qualities these two protagonists share.

So, what is Freud’s theory on the psyche? Allow me to explain. I love this theory, I’m honestly so psyched to tell you!! (Yes, that pun was intended)

THE SUPEREGO – It incorporates the values and morals of society which one learns from parents and other people. It controls the id’s impulses, especially the ones society forbids. The superego focuses on morality instead of reality and impulsivity. It also has two systems: the conscience and ideal self. The conscience can punish the ego through guilt and the ideal self is a visual/imaginary image of how one aspires to be.

THE EGO – This is the malleable part of the psyche, as it mediates between the unrealistic and reckless id and the real world. It works by reason and reality. It postpones satisfaction and considers society’s norms and etiquette. It is rational and orientated towards problem solving. For example, Freud made an analogy that the ‘id’ is the horse whilst the ‘ego’ is the rider. This would mean that the ego would have to have superior strength over the chaotic and unreasonable id.

THE ID – This is the primitive and instinctive component of one’s personality. It is the unconscious and impulsive part of one’s psyche as it responds directly and immediately to instincts. It is illogical, irrational, and fantasy oriented. It has no sense of being realistic and therefore it is selfish and ambitious in nature.

So, how does this all relate to Oedipus and Marlow?

Well with Oedipus the King, initially in the play, Oedipus displays all these Apollonian (I’m apply Nietzsche’s theory of the Apollonian and Dionynsiac duality) qualities (being righteous, in order etc), but as he meticulously and desperately searches for his own truth, he begins to show Dionysiac qualities. He begins to lose himself as he discovers himself. His superego consisted of being godly like for his people as well as being a confident, courageous, and respectable leader. However, once he took the time to truly discover his ‘riddle’, his id took over. His ego could not mediate between the two extremes and therefore, in the tragic moment of the third act when Oedipus stabs himself in the eyes, it is a moment of impulsivity and aggression. His emotions overtook his thoughts and his rationality.

When you apply the Psychodynamic Theory, an individual’s moral standards are malleable because when given the proper circumstance, an individual may succumb to the id’s urges and act irrationally. For Heart of Darkness, when Marlow sees ‘the woods unmoved, like a mask – heavy, like the closed door of a prison – they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence’ (pg. 71), it draws a parallel to the journey into the Congo with the journey of discovering self-hood. Marlow begins to understand the thoughts, emotions, and desires everyone represses from their daily consciences. He comprehends ‘When you have to attend to things of that sort, the mere incidents of the surface, the reality – the reality, I tell you – fades. The inner truth is hidden – luckily, luckily’ (pg. 43). In addition to this, when he comes face to face with a tribe member, he recalls the face ‘looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil had been removed from my eyes’ (pg. 75). This conveys a sense of having peeked behind the mask to see what is concealed under the unconscious. This scene draws a parallel to Oedipus the King because when Oedipus and Teiresias have their confrontation, Teiresias plays the role of the tribe member, the one who knows the truth, the one who actually personifies the truth of the protagonist and the overarching theme of the narrative.

When Marlow searches for Kurtz, he enters unknown land and water, which can serve as the unconscious because whilst he is discovering this unknown territory, he is also discovering unknown parts of himself. The steamboat is a metaphor for a consciousness rowing in an all-too-primitive mind because the steamboat portrays a super-ego trespassing into an id. And once one goes into this territory, there is no going back. This analogy applies to Oedipus because in the third act, when he figures out his truth, there is no going back because he is too far deep in his chaotic origins/id and therefore reacts irrationally.

So yeah that’s basically it. I literally thought of Charlie Marlow from Heart of Darkness when reading Oedipus the King. I saw immediate parallels between the two characters. It’s amazing how literature and psychology bleed into one another.