ANALYSIS OF ANXIETY AND DEFENSE MECHANISM ON THE MAIN CHARACTER REFLECTED IN ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865) NOVEL BY LEWIS CAROLL

Abstract

This study analyzes the anxiety and defense mechanism of the main character, named Alice in the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland novel written by Lewis Caroll. The goal of this research is to analyze the anxiety of the main female character and her defense mechanism according to psychoanalysis theory by Sigmund Freud. This study uses descriptive qualitative technique of research in analyzing the data. The data are collected from the novel in the form of dialogues, monologues, and prologues. There are some steps which are used to collect the necessary data such as reading the novel, identifying the data, classifying the data, and reducing the data. Through Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland novel which was published in 1865, this study find the anxieties of Alice based on Sigmund Freud’s theory, they are reality anxiety, moral anxiety and neurotic anxiety. Those anxieties can be seen by Alice’s feeling unpleasant and guilty because of her excessive imagination and her great expectations toward Wonderland’s people and all of things at the peculiar world. Whereas the defense mechanism acted by Alice are repression, intellectualization, displacement, regression, reaction-formation, and introjection. In the analysis, the defense mechanism acted by Alice when she experience difficulties to escape from the peculiar world although she has great expectation toward Wonderland in the beginning.
Keywords: Psychoanalysis, Anxiety, Defense Mechanism.