The Madman is a Waking Dreamer. A psychoanalytical and existentialist reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Unconsoled as a dream and mental universe. Using Freud, I uncover the latent content of the dream, which centers on the protagonists' repressed needs for his parents. Further, using R.D. Laing's existentialist psychology I read the novelistic universe as the redemptive fantasy of an ontologically insecure individual whose self was split in childhood.