My wonderful friend, Nikki Stone and I (Carly Taylor) watched the movie Cast Away the other night. All of the sudden a brilliant idea came to the both of us. At that very moment of enlightenment we decided coherently to do psychoanalysis on this fascinating movie. According to the American Psychoanalytic Association, the term psychoanalysis is essentially “a theory about the story of human beings, what motivates, inspires and sometimes cripples them, but it looks at these phenomena and tells a story from a unique perspective – “what lies beneath” the surface.” In our psychoanalysis of Cast Away we applied psychological concepts to the story of Chuck Noland in order to seek to explain his behavior. Concepts we mentioned include: motivation, drive-reduction theory, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, depression, psychosocial development stages, intimacy, and isolation.
Summary
Chuck Noland is a strict and
hardworking man in his late 30s. He
works for a FedEx company and is constantly changing his schedule to
accommodate for his job. On Christmas Eve
he got a page to ship some packages over seas.
He left his girlfriend, Kelly, and promised he would be back by New
Years Eve. Before he left he gave her a
box with a ring in it and told her she could open it when he got back. She gave him an antique pocket clock that was
always set on Memphis time with his favorite picture of her on the inside. During the plane ride, a bad storm came
through that killed everyone on the plane except him. He drifted in an emergency raft to an unknown
small island. He gathered all the FedEx
boxes that washed to shore, wrote “help” in the sand, and started to break
coconuts for food.
After a couple of
days he spotted one of the men on the plane with him dead in the ocean. He respectfully buried him on the island. He would constantly look at the picture of
Kelly in the clock. One night at the top
of the mountain on the island he discovered the light of a ship and tried to
ride his raft to it. The waves hit him
back and he got seriously injured. This
made him determined to survive. He began
opening packages and using the items inside.
He used the blades of ice skates to help him cut things and the lining
of a dress as fish nets. He also took a
volleyball and drew a face out of blood on it and named him Wilson. He would not open one particular package with
angel wings drawn on the front of it. He
began to track his location on the cave walls.
He also made a calendar and drew pictures of hands with faces in
them. He would also draw Kelly on the
walls.
One night he was in so much pain
from a giant mouth sore that he popped it and knocked himself out. The scene then changed to four years later
and a port-a-potty washes up to shore.
He begins to plan an escape from the island by keeping track of the
tides. It is revealed to us that he
tried to hang himself but tested it once and knew that it would just lead to
him being severely hurt so he decided not to go through with it. Then one day, he writes, “Chuck Noland was
here 1500 days. Escaped to sea. Tell Kelly Frears Memphis TN. I LOVE
HER.” Then he set off to sea in a boat
he made out of logs and the port-a-potty which he drew the angel wings from the
FedEx box on. With him he brought his
companion Wilson, empty coconuts to gather rainwater in, and the package with
the wings on it. Wilson falls off the
boat during his voyage and he fights to swim and pull the boat to Wilson. He did not have the strength and had to let
Wilson go. He just cries on his boat
without any strength left and a cargo ship found him. He then flies home to Memphis where many
people including Stan, one of his old friends, celebrated his life.
Chuck comes to realize that Kelly has gotten
married and had a daughter. Her husband
came and told Chuck that she was too confused to see him. He continues to look at the picture of Kelly
and decides to go see her at her house.
There, he gives the pocket clock back to Kelly. He finds out that Kelly quit perusing her
dreams of becoming a professor after the plane crash, that she had kept their
car all these years, and that she had been tracking his location on a map she
drew. When Chuck is about to leave Kelly
runs after him and professes her love for him.
He takes her back into the house and tells her to be with her family and
goes to see Stan.
Chuck tells Stan that he
understands Kelly’s situation. He also tells
him about his attempted suicide and that it frustrated him that he couldn’t
kill himself the way he wanted to. He
realized he had power over nothing but somehow he had to keep on breathing even
though all logic said he could not. He
also said he was so grateful that Kelly was always with him on the island (i.e.
the picture of her) but was devastated that he lost her again returning to
Memphis. But he decided that he would do
what he had been doing the past four years: to keep on breathing, “who knows
what the tide could bring.” He delivers the package he never opened to the
owner and left a note saying it saved his life.
Then the film ends with him standing in the middle of an intersection in
the road looking at the different directions he could go because who knows what
the tide could bring in next.
Concepts
There are many psychological
concepts in this film including motivation, depression, Erikson’s stages of
psychosocial development, and the need for relatedness. Motivation is a desire for something that
leads to a person being energized to obtain this desire. A concept within motivation is the drive
reduction theory. This is when a person
experiences some form of a deficit such as hunger that motivated the, to
perform a behavior such as eat that will satisfy the deficit they have
experienced. According to Sigmund Freud
who created this theory, all behavior is motivated and the purpose of our
behavior is to satisfy our needs. Also
within motivation is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It is a pyramid that starts at the base with
Physiological needs (food and water), then safety needs (shelter), then
belongingness and love needs, then esteem needs, then self-actualization needs
(finding oneself), then lastly self-transcendence needs (“finding identity beyond
oneself”) (Myers 330). In order for each
need to be met, the need before it must be satisfied.
Depression is a psychological
disorder that is present within the film.
Depressions symptoms include difficulty concentrating or making
decisions, decreased energy, feelings of helplessness, feelings of
hopelessness, restlessness or irritability, loss of interest in hobbies or
activities, “empty” feelings or anxiety, and thoughts or attempts of
suicide. Depression can lead to a
constant feeling of hopelessness and despair.
Within Erikson’s stages of
psychosocial development is the stage of intimacy vs. isolation in young
adults. The people in this stage
struggle to find close relationships and gain the ability to intimately love. If this desire is not met then they feel isolated; if it is
met then they feel like they are in an intimate relationship. Psychological needs
include autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These types of needs are
inherent in all humans. The movie best illustrates the psychological need for
relatedness. Having a need for relatedness basically means that we humans want
to feel connected to other people by developing and maintaining relationships
with other people. When this social need is met people function best and it
becomes easier to stay motivated. According to Phycology Today, “evidence has
been growing that when our need for social relationships is not met, we fall
apart mentally and even physically. Some effects work subtly, through the
exposure of multiple body systems to excess amounts of stress hormones. Yet the
effects are distinct enough to be measured over time, so that unmet social
needs take a serious toll on health, eroding our arteries, creating high blood
pressure, and even undermining learning and memory.”
Relating
The movie
accurately shows Chuck’s motivation. For
example, Chuck has to desire for love that could only be satisfied by Kelly,
his girlfriend. He tried to compensate
for love and partially did with Wilson and the picture and drawings of
Kelly. But he knew the only way he could
reach his desire for love was to be with Kelly, which motivated him to get off
the island. The movie also accurately
portrayed drive reduction theory. Chuck
satisfies his drive for food with coconut, fish, and crabs and his drive for
water with coconut milk and rainwater. Also, he satisfies his need for
belongingness with Wilson. The movie
also shows an accurate picture of the hierarchy of needs. His physiological needs are met with the food
and water he obtains and his safety need is met with the cave he made himself
at home with. He met his need for
belongingness with Wilson. He has not
met his esteem needs and therefor cannot meet any other needs on the
hierarchy. He feels like he is not in
control of his own life, not even controlling how he dies. He has not found out who he is just that he
has to keep on breathing.
For
the most part the movie accurately shows he has depression. It did not show the signs of him having
difficulty making decisions or decreased energy but all the other symptoms were
met. He felt helpless and that no one
would help him because he knew he was out of range of the search for him; he
even said, “I had power over nothing.”
He also felt very hopeless. He said, “I was never going to get off that
island, I was going to die there totally alone.” This shows that he lost all hope for ever
getting off the island. He was very
irritable. When he was frustrated he
would throw and scream at inanimate objects. He also loss interest for his job
and would no longer show emotions. He
felt empty because he knew that he would never have all of Kelly’s love. He also attempted suicide by testing to see
if he could hang himself.
As
said before, Chuck is in the young adulthood stage of Erikson’s stages of
psychosocial development. He has tried
to find intimacy with many things but has failed every time. He tried to find intimacy with Kelly but she
got married to another man and was not with him on the island so therefore she
was unable to give him the intimacy he desired.
He looked for intimacy also with Wilson but Wilson could not return love
to Chuck. He could not fill that empty
space in Chuck’s heart. Because each of
these attempts for love failed, he felt isolated. Because of Chuck’s prolonged isolation,
he experiences mental and physical breakdown. He goes crazy. For example, while
alone on the island Chuck becomes disoriented, yells at inanimate objects and
the island, makes irrational choices, draws a smiley face in blood on a
volleyball, becomes emotionally tied to the volleyball, lost personal hygiene.
These all could be effects of his isolation. The movie although did not accurately show all the effects of isolation. He should not have been able to easily interact with people. It would be something he had forgotten how to do over 4 years. This would bring him stress and cause him to not normally interact. In the movie we see that he is able to interact normally and without any stress.
In Conclusion...
Through this psychoanalysis of Tom Hank’s brilliant film, Cast Away, we were given a better understanding of human behavior and how powerfully it can be influenced by different environmental and biological factors. Chucks irregular or socially unacceptable behaviors were most likely induced by his extreme environment shift, loneliness, or his stage of life. For example, we could attribute Chuck’s attempted suicide to his depression brought upon by his lack of intimacy due to his desolate environment. This film has given us a greater has given understanding of the effects of motivation, depression, isolation, and other important concepts of psychology.
Sources:
Cassel, Elaine. "Psychology Resource Center for Students." Redirection to Equivalent @ Cengage.
Cengage Learning. Web. 18 Feb. 2012. <http://college.cengage.com/psychology/resources/
students/screen/screen_20010809.html>.
Myers, David G. Myers'
Psychology for AP. New York, NY: Worth, 2011. Print.
"Signs of
Clinical Depression: Symptoms to Watch For." WebMD - Better
Information. Better Health.
Web.
18 Feb. 2012.. <http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/ detecting-depression>.
