Essay about Grinch Critique

Submitted By sarahreid123
Words: 316
Pages: 2

Hayley Phillips
Grinch Critique
ENG 4UE
Mrs. O’Connor
March 2015

I chose to analyze the poem How the Grinch Stole Christmas using the psychoanalytic school criticism. Psychoanalytic literary criticism is literary criticism or literary theory, which, in method, concept, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmond Freud. The Grinch is a great example of a lonely, outcast, who expresses his subconscious desire to be accepted and loved by the community. While Christmas time brings only joy and happiness to the Whos, it increases the Grinch’s feeling of loneliness, misery, and sadness, and makes him feel even less loved and accepted this causes an exaggerated hatred toward the Whos. He hates the thought of hearing the residents of Who-ville singing Christmas carols and seeing them eating together, because watching and hearing everyone else enjoying each others’ company only feeds his feeling of emptiness. On Christmas Eve the Grinch lets his emotions overcome him and he makes a mistake without thinking twice. The Grinch makes a plan to try and ruin the Whos’ Christmas by taking away their Christmas. The Grinch hopes that, by stealing their gifts, food and decorations he will make the Whos as lonely as he is. However, he is surprised when he wakes to hear the Whos singing Christmas carols. It is then that the Grinch realizes that the Whos are actually accepting and loving, and that, rather than having been rejected by the Whos, it was his own