Arevenge Endeavor (And) Unconscious Desire: Psychoanalytic Study on Mustafa Saeed in Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North

Abstract

Season of Migration to the North is first written in Arabic language by the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih and later translated into more than fourteen languages. As postcolonial novel it reflected the conflict between the West and East. Despite Sudan is an Africa country, East stands for the Arab culture that dominates the Sudanese Muslim Majority nation. Many studies endeavored to explain the ambiguity that usually dominates this novel especially the main character Mustafa Saeed. This study aims at analyzing the main character by adopting psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud and later theorist like Carl Jung to explore Mustafa Saeed's interracial sexual relations with western women. It is also attempted to find out why did Mustafa behaved differently in Sudan and London? To test whether his childhood wormless upbringing impacted his sexual relations as defense mechanism as claimed by Freud that childhood experiences crucially contribute to adulthood personality or he deliberately seduced Western women sexually as a revenge for the Western exploitation for Africa. Through the critical analysis it's apparent that Mustafa exploited English women sexually as a means of revengeful reaction to Western exploitation of Africa; but it's also his loss of maternal care and love in state of sexual fixation towards all women especially his feeling of a vague sexual yearning when Mrs. Robinson embraced him for the first time despite he was only being a boy of twelve years old.