Flood as Interpreted by Freud - Visual Imagery

Using Freud to Interpret Visual Imagery

It can be difficult to understand the motives and behaviors of characters in literary texts.  Such is the case with Flood.  Flood is a novel about a man with a depressing disposition and inability to connect with his environment.  The unique presentation of Flood is the absence of written narratives or conversations.  The reader views and interprets sequential images to establish meaning. The presentation of images and processes needed for interpretation run parallel with Sigmund Freud’s analysis of dream interpretation.  More specifically, Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams can be applied to Flood to explain the formation of meaning and causation through individual and sequenced scenes, to derive meaning from informationally dense images, and provide insights to the main character’s neurotic disposition.

            Freud suggests that dreams are unable to express logical functions like “if,” “either,” and “although” because “The incapacity of dreams to express these things must lie in the nature of the physical material out of which dreams are made” (Freud 821).  He then compares the limitations of dream work to paintings and other plastic arts.  Meaning is established when two or more objects are shown in close proximity as this suggests intimate relationships between the objects (822).   Dreams form primary messages and then add narratives and causation through additional images (823).  Like Freud’s comparison to paintings, Flood is a series of drawings within individual frames.  Natural relationships form as the reader recognizes various objects and assigns meaning to them by their relative proximity to each other.  Causation occurs in two forms.  There is the direct meaning within each panel and then there are the gaps, or empty spaces, between the panels.  Causation forms as the mind creates its own narrative to explain what occurs between the gaps (McCloud 65-67).  Forming meaning and causation in sequential imagery parallels Freud’s account of formation of meaning and causation in dreams.

Interpreting images requires understanding that individual images are informationally dense.  Freud referred to this concept as dream condensation and wrote “As a rule, one underestimates the amount of compression that has taken place … “ (819).  An example in Flood has the main character looking at a strong man at a carnival.  The man is bare chested, muscular, and flexing his biceps.   Tattoos of Christopher Columbus’s ships are positioned on one bicep, a battle ship on the other, a militaristic eagle across his chest, and a triangle with an eye is prominent on his forehead.  The author provides several panels depicting the initial American landing of Christopher Columbus, white man betraying the Native Americans and stealing their land, the enslavement of Blacks whose labor formed the economic base for the industrial revolution and then a battle ship representing the militaristic means of protecting property.   Additional meaning is implied as symbols of the boats appear on the biceps that traditionally represent strength.  Contradictory meaning occurs as the eagle is representative of justice and placed over the heart.  Meaning is further complicated as the all-seeing-eye has cultural significance associated with god, money, and secret societies and its placement on the forehead suggests new age insights.  Variant and complex meaning is formed with just several images placed in close proximity.  The following image focuses on the strong man’s eyes that contain additional symbols further compressing and complicating meaning.  The symbolic references of Flood are different from the symbolic interpretations of filtered and latent dream thought.  However, Freud’s account of dream condensation, and his ensuing advice not to underestimate its scope, provides critical insight to the deciphering and interpretation of visual imagery.

            Interpreting Flood reveals a character that is anxious, depressed, and disconnected from society.  Sequential imagery depicts the character’s depressing external world mirroring his inner world.  Spending time to analyze the complex symbolic imagery reveals anxiety towards ruling oppression and depression from the inability to challenge it.  With some assumptions, Freud might suggest the character is unable to reconcile his conscious attitudes towards oppression against his unconscious desires to control his surroundings.  He might consider the story a manifestation of the author’s unconscious thoughts moving to the conscious by symbolically speaking to its own concerns.

            Interpreting visual imagery is complex, generally has more meaning than first suspected, and can speak to the characters and to the authors that create them.  Freud’s analysis of dream interpretation provides a guide for deciphering meaning and causation in visual imagery.   At the core of Freud’s analysis are universal desires and the processes that facilitate or repress them.  It is these universals, once expressed and interpreted, that form empathy between the reader, the characters in the story, and the author.

            Works Cited

Drooker, Eric. Flood. Milwaukie, Or: Dark Horse Comics, Inc. 2002. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism.”  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 841-845. Print.

---, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams.  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 814-824. Print. 

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. 1994. Print.