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Tiffany James Mr. McCauley Survey of British Literature I 6 October 2013 The Minds Unconscious Decisions The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied, Sigmund Freud. During the psychoanalysis chapter I learned that Freuds most famous model of the human psyche is his revised version of the typographical model, the tripartite model, sometimes referred to as the structural model (Bressler pg. 127). According to Freud the psyche is divided into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. While reading the short story The Paring Knife by Michael Oppenheimer I found all of these parts of the mind. Right from the beginning of the story it is easy for the reader to see how the unconscious plays a role. The narrator says, I found a knife under the refrigerator while the woman I love were cleaning our house. It was a small paring knife that we lost many years before and had forgotten about. It seems that the mind caused the husband and wife to forget about the knife and the meaning behind why it was under the refrigerator because it was there because of something unpleasant that happened. The id is the aspect of personality that is entirely unconscious and includes instinctive and primitive behaviors. This can be seen in I became incensed. I swept everything that was on the table onto the floor. The man let his emotions overtake him and he ended up making a mess of the kitchen floor which caused the paring knife to end up under the refrigerator.

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The ego on the other hand is the exact opposite of the id. The ego is the part of the mind that is responsible for dealing with reality, which Oppenheimer shows in the noise was tremendous, but then the room was very quiet and I suddenly felt sad. I thought I had destroyed everything. The realistic part of his brain kicked in and he felt bad for acting out in the way he did and he regretted what happened. The ego can also be seen later in the story; the next morning we cleaned up the mess, but obviously overlooked the knife. This shows that the man regretted making the mess and both the man and woman regretted fighting which caused it all to happen to begin with. Then there is the super ego which helps keep the peace between the id and ego. The superego holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals; basically it controls our right and wrong. The reader can see how the womans superego comes into effect when I began to cry. The woman I love came into the kitchen and asked if I was all right. I said, Yes. While hearing the man crying she feels bad and goes to see what is wrong; the need to check on a sad person is something human beings learn as children in society. The poem ends with the superego rearing its head; I was about to ask the woman I love if she remembered the incident when she came in from the next room and without saying a word, picked up the knife from the table and slid it back under the refrigerator. By the woman sliding the knife back under the refrigerator it shows that she wants to keep it there as a reminder of what happened that day and that they should not let it happen again. The short story has proved that it represents the unconscious and the three different parts of the mind: the id, the ego, and the superego. I have also learned that the different parts of the mind are at work all the time even in the little things a person does like deciding what is and is not appropriate to put in a paper.

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Works Cited Bressler, Charles. Literary Criticism. 5th ed. United States: Pearson Eucation, Inc., 2011. 127. Print.