DEATH DRIVE: A NEGATIVE IMPACT OF RACIAL ABUSE IN TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED

Abstract

This thesis deals with psychology analysis which concerns on the analysis of death drive described in the main character of Beloved by Toni Morrison, Sethe. The character analysed in this thesis illustrates the death drive which is motivated through fear and anxiety. The main character, Sethe, is a black slave woman who is treated differently by white people in plantation. She has to face brutality and inhuman treatment. Those conditions, finally, made her life into chaos and take the impact of her psychology. Sethe, then, does an extraordinary action by killing her two-year-old baby. This thesis, furthermore, uses library research and qualitative method in collecting the data which means the data are in the form of texts. Data collection in this thesis is documentary study. The data is documented from selected quotation of the novel which depicts racial abuse, anxiety, fear and death drive. This thesis is a descriptive study which elaborates Freudian psychology theory of death drive. The data are taken from several resources related to the death drive. All data are categorized in the form of narrations and statements which later those are processed by using the psychological theory of death drive. The result of this thesis shows that there is connection between the balance of fear and anxiety as the trigger to the death drive. This happens due to the id is restricted by the superego signed by the power of racialism in the society. The ego, thus, could only consolidate to the death drive as the constitution of the id. The idea of killing the baby, nevertheless, brings no a stable happiness. The death drive continues to follow and emerge in many alternatives behaviour of main character’s life because the id energy in human psyche only has temporal satisfactory state.