The Protagonist in Coelho’s Adultery: Tracing Personality Problem and Pleasure Seeking as Hedonistic Sensations

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the imbalance in the system of the protagonist’s personality in Coelho’s novel, Adultery. The research shows that the protagonist, Linda,  is bored and she feels a lack of desire to live because of her predefined and locked daily routine which, for her, is dull, drab and has no adventure. The study is qualitative in nature and follows a psychological approach through the close reading of the textual material. Freud’s Theory of Psychoanalysis, Pleasure-principle and Hedonism has been used to analyze imbalances in Linda’s personality.  It turns out that the protagonist is bored and she feels a lack of desire to live because of her mundane routine. To escape, ‘she needs to engage herself in something more concrete-a man’. For that matter, she involves herself in the act of adultery with Jacob, a high school boyfriend turned politician, who uses her just for his sexual appetite. This new experience of having no pre-set notions and the unpredictable behavior of Jacob overjoys her to the extent that Linda experiences emotional imbalance and decides to go back to her peaceful life, realizing that ‘the world is perfect’. By providing an insight into the subjectivity of human emotions and behavior the present research focuses to build the narrative about Linda’s futile efforts to attain the desired happiness and pleasure which eventually resulted in her misery and chaos.