I approached the poem
"Bitch" by Carolyn Kizer in a psychoanalytic sense where I
concentrated on the ID. The ID is a term first used by Sigmund Freud in his
structural model also containing the EGO and SUPER-EGO. The ID is the part of the mind in which innate instinctive impulses and
primary processes are manifest. In the poem Bitch we repeatedly see the author
express basic human feeling of which she has no control of her primitive stage.
Where she switches between the id the ego and the super ego. To explain further
the ID is the part of you which is primitive where the Super Ego is what one
should do, like a conscious. And the Ego is the balance between the ID and the
Super Ego.
In the poem the writer expresses her
ID through a dog that is uncontrollable and seems to dislike then like again. She uses the dog because dogs are instinctual animals which give you the feeling of primitive Which give you a feeling of unconditional love from a dog. I can tell that her
most primitive instincts of wanting to be with the man through her interpretations
of a metaphorical dog barking. The ID was focused as a dog because dogs seem to
be very primitive they bark at those they don’t like and whine for what they
want.
The feeling that this “dog” creates
is the most of primitive not even using words that almost of a feeling that her
emotions are animal like. The main words that make a difference in the
poem are, words like bitch, barking, whining, wanting, etc. in the poem because these words are noises and vulgar words which she expresses in her mind so no other can hear. she acts like the ego but in her mind she is all of them at the same time. In the poem she
states that they are apart because some bad things happened, or at least its
implied through her interpretation of the dog barking and missing him not being able to return to him. The fact that she misses him is primitive even after the she had suffered
being with him. The fact that she stays away is due to her EGO, and Super EGO because both of these are telling her what the right thing it is to do and ego because the ego is the balance of ones emotions, and actions.
The poem is affected by the type of writing that uses these
basic words that one would associate with an animal, and by doing so the writer
affect the poem in a way that makes the character of the story seem as if she
herself had animal instincts you experience this with words such as bitch, or phrases like "I yank the dog by the chain". The way she pulls back on the leash of the
animal, The animal being her feelings. You can get a very good idea through the
metaphor the writer uses that the woman in the story has ID qualities such as she barks hysterically and she whimpers to be with him. Anything
compared to animals would seem primitive and in a sense of one basic interest. Therefor the character if affected
by the writing style the writer uses, because the writer uses simple words to
give emotions to the reader, guiding them through feeling and emotions one
should feel while reading the poem “Bitch”. She uses this type of writing because she wants to sway your emotion in order to orchestrate feeling that correlate with the poem.
