Abstract:
This thesis is a psychoanalytic reading of Dawit Wendmagegn’s novel ‘Alemenor’. The
main aim of this thesis is to contribute in the development of Amharic literature from
Psychoanalytic literary criticism point of view. Many researchers have been conducted
on literary works from Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism point of view, but the problem
is these studies are mostly focused on the literary works written in foreign languages like
English. Since Ethiopian literature is mostly in Amharic, those researches didn’t
adequately address them. This basic problem which is the main reason for conducting
this thesis, because it is believed that researches like this could fill the gap. In the process
of filling the gap, the thesis’s objective is to analyze the unconscious motives and defense
mechanisms of the characters in the novel ‘Alemenor’. The way to achieve these goals is
to follow a textual analysis method and analyze the extracts selected purposively from the
novel. The extracts are selected depending on their content of psychoanalytic notions.
Those extracts are critically read and analyzed from a specific angle, which bring us to
the framework this thesis used. Common psychoanalytic notions like the Id, Ego and
Super Ego, Defense Mechanism are used to frame the analysis process. After the
analytical process using the theoretical framework, it is found that for the present actions
and lives of characters in the novel, their past experiences and unconscious motives have
high influence. In relation to this, the psychoanalytical notion of ‘childhood experience
leads to adulthood personality’ was also found to be true in the case of the characters in
the novel ‘Alemenor.’
