Violence and the Oppression of Male Characters in Elnathan John’s Born On a Tuesday

Abstract

This paper has examined patterns of violent oppression against male characters in Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday (2016). The study has explored religious fanaticism and bourgeoisie’s abuse based on violence, police brutality, economic exploitation, verbal-cum-physical/psychological abuses, discrimination, and manipulation, as patterns of male oppression. The study has applied Freud’s Psychoanalysis and Marxist Critical theories in interpreting different male characters’ patterns of oppression in the proletariat domain. The paper has interpreted Althusser’s (1971) ideology of the Repressive state apparatus (RSA) such as the police and the army as a means used by capitalism in maintaining careful manipulation of people into accepting an unfair system as well as using force to control them, especially in exposing extreme violence oppressive orientation against the male gender, as they need to be subdued in order to comply. This research has also discovered through the interpretation of Freud’s psychoanalysis that violent-abusive-oppression is very traumatic to the male gender with physical, emotional and mental consequences.