THE BEAUTY OF THE DAWN SHIFT

INTRODUCTION

“The Beauty of the Dawn Shift” is a short story by Rose Tremain, an English author. Rose Tremain was born in August 2, 1943 in London. She was educated at the Sorbonne and is a graduate of the University of East Anglia, where she taught creative writing from 1988-95. She married John Tremain in 1971, and they have a daughter. Their marriages only five years last. She has lived with the biographer Richard Holmes for the best part of two decades.
She likes making story focused on home matters. But homes must always be built, and then re-built. Characters seldom belong securely and contentedly to the place, the family, or the identity that they inherit. Through fiercely imagined journeys, performances and metamorphoses, they have to make themselves up - and to make themselves at home. They cross continents, cultures, classes, even the boundaries of gender, and transsexual stuff. Rose Tremain’s stories are also like fairy tale. There is such thing like meaningless death. Characters live (and die) in places they don't belong, on impossible journeys towards happiness or God.
This kind of theme also happens in “The Beauty of the Dawn Shift” that Hector wants to have a journey to find his past in Russia, his dream to meet happiness in the dreamland because of sick over people and environment around him. Hector is a twenty-eight man, who wants to make a journey from East Berlin, across Poland, to the Russia. It’s like the other literary works of her; she usually makes a story with a theme of impossible journeys toward happiness or God, so do “The Beauty of the Dawn Shift”.
In this case to analyze “The Beauty of The Dawn Shift”, the researcher has decided to use psychological approach. It is because there are many interesting things and symbolism can be analyzed using this approach. Psychological approach based on Freud’s theories is emphasized upon the unconscious aspects of the human psyche. There are three psychic zones. They are the ID, the Ego, and Super Ego.

ANALYSIS

A. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
According to Sigmund Freud, psychological approach is emphasized upon the unconscious aspects of the human psyche. Freud believes that most of human’s actions are motivated by psychic forces over which we have very limited control. He also demonstrated that, like the iceberg, the human mind is structured that its great weight and density lies beneath the surface (or the level of consciousness). Freud’s first major premise is that most of the individual’s mental processes are unconscious. The second is that all human behavior is motivated ultimately by sexuality. He designates the prime psychic force as libido, or sexual energy.
Based on Freud’s premises, he decides these mental processes in to three psychic zones. They are the ID, the Ego, and Super Ego.
Look at this following picture:
Id
Sigmund Freud Ego
Super Ego
Id is the source of all aggressions and desires; is governed by the pleasure principle. Id is entirely unconscious. It is the reservoir of libido, the primary source of all psychic energy. It is also lawless, asocial, and amoral. Its function is to gratify our instincts for pleasure without regard for social conventions, legal ethics, or moral restraint. Or we can say in the other word that Id would make us as animals.
Ego is something what we ordinarily think as conscious mind. This ego prevent the Id’s dangerous potentialities, there is a psychic agencies function to protect the individual and society. This is the rational governing agent of the psyche. Whereas the Id is governed solely by the pleasure principle, the ego is governed by the reality principle. Ego keeps us healthy human beings by maintaining a balance between two opposing forces both animal side and angel side. In brief, the Ego serves as the intermediary between the world within and the world without.
Super Ego is the moral censoring agency, the repository of conscience and pride. The Super Ego serves to repress or inhibit the drives of the Id, to block off and thrust back into the unconscious those impulses toward pleasure that society regards as unacceptable. It is dominated by the morality principle. The Super Ego would have us behave as angels.

B. THE AUTHOR
Background Life
Rose Tremain’s literary works are dominated with theme of impossible journey, family, divorces, loss, longing, etc. such as in “The beauty of the Dawn Shift” which told about a guard on the east side of Berlin Wall finding the familiarity of the old regime threatened by the looming threat of capitalism when Germany reunites. He cycles across a wintery Poland hoping to find his past in Russia.
She seems like writing concerned on home matters. Probably it is because her short marriages, only five years, that has influenced her literary works. She believes that home has to always be built and re-built. Characters seldom belong securely and contentedly to the place, the family, or the identity that they inherit. Through fiercely imagined journeys, performances and metamorphoses, they have to make themselves up and to make themselves at home. They cross continents, cultures, classes, even the boundaries of gender and the transsexual matters.
Tremain also takes some true stories to be written and spins it into a tale filled with whimsy and irony, such as on her story “Wallis Simpson”.

C. CHARACTERS
The theme of journey to find happiness or dream is the central of Rose Tremain’s “The Beauty of the Dawn Shift”, the tale of a guard of East Berlin, Hector, who leaves his home, his sister Ute, and his father Erich, to across Poland, and makes a journey to Russia after the Wall had started to come down. He plans to cycles to the Russia during a day. We can say that the event of the terrifying day until the dawn is a classic “traumatic experience”. He finds much kind of things during his journey and many events happen. The climax is reached when he is locked in the car. And in the end he dies, lying there.
Like most of Rose Tremain’s tales that is built around cultures, classes, even the boundaries of gender, transsexual stuff, and even across continent, “The Beauty of the Dawn Shift” is also built by them. They also reflect the Id, Ego, and Super Ego.
To see what this journey means in psychological terms, we need to examine the setting, the time and place. Hector moves from a nice home, East Berlin, German to the Russia went through Poland by cycle. The home in the East Berlin is a comfortable place: He looked at the room he was in, the room where the family ate and played cards and watched TV, and wondered if, when he arrived at his destination, he would think about this room and feel homesick for the black plastic chairs and the painted sideboard and the wall-mounted electric fire (405). It is a certain place. He has sister and father. He decides to do his journey in the morning: It was the morning of 9 December 1989, one month exactly after the Wall had started to come down (404); Neighbors passed him and said, “Good morning, Hector,” and still he contemplated the metal post boxes, imagining news of his future life arriving one day inside him (405). Then he goes to the cemetery where his mother was buried. And from that place he continues his journey across Poland. This is it, the terrors and many kind uncertain things happen. On one level, then, the home/apartment (East Berlin, German) may be equated with consciousness; the journey with the uncertain condition may be the unconscious.
The home or apartment in East Berlin, German, as a place of social and moral order (and inhibition) is analogous to Freud’s Super Ego, conscience and the morally inhibiting agent of the psyche. The journey across Poland, as a place of wild, untamed passions, terrors, and uncertain, has the attributes of the Freudian Id. And Hector himself resembles the poor Ego, which tries to affect a healthy balance and is broken because it is unable to do so.
• Hector S
Based on Freud’s perspective, Hector is playing its role as the implication of the writer’s Id which is dominated by pleasure principle, sexuality (Pedophile): He was twenty eight and he’d slept with only one girl. This one girl was his sister, Ute (403); He packed no books, only a small photograph album, filled with pictures of Ute, including one her naked, developed privately by a colleague…(404); In her life, Elvira had relished confidences, licking her sensual lips… ‘Oh so delicious, Hecti! Tell me more!’ (406) , and also dream to find freedom and peace: He really didn’t want these familiar small sufferings – feeling cold inside, being ignored by people in public – to go on for the rest of his life (408). A man should out from the comfortable place because sooner or later, all men must confront reality (the impossible journey). Like what Hector does, he tries to confront the world: He was a man who had always known what was important in life and what was not. It is also determined as the Ego which keeps balancing with the Id: He knew that memory was as uncertain in its behavior as the sea; it could wash you ashore on any old forgotten beach; it could try to drown you in remorse. He himself resembles the Ego.

Terror/horror:
Hector is under the so called terror circumstance which is showed in the following paragraph or phrases from the story as follow:
His future was going wrong. Every thought that came to him, instead of being clear and precise, was clouded and difficult. (415)

Passion to survive:
When he locked in the car:
After an hour had passed, he tried to move himself towards the edge of the car, so that he could bang on the doors with his feet, but he found that his body was unwilling to move. (418)
‘Train driver!’ he said. ‘Help me!’ it was a whisper, not a shout. (418)

Liberation: struggling to do the best on the last time of his life and he free himself to be died.
It is difficult to say how long Hector S struggled to locate this perfect yellow fruit, but into his search for it he put every last ounce of his strength. (419)
From this sentence, we know that Hector has known his end of his journey, so he puts a big effort to locate the precious lemon which brings memory of the morning when he departure.

• Erich, Ute
Hector’s father, Erich and his sister, Ute are the reflection of Super Ego who like angels side wants to against Hector’s journey. It is shown on: ‘Hecti,’ she said, ‘don’t leave us behind!’ (403); Hector’s father, Erich, on the other hand, didn’t try to persuade his son to take him with him; neither did he try to persuade him not to leave.
‘So,’ said Erich ‘what are you going to become?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Hector. ‘Don’t ask me yet.’
‘All right,’ said Erich, ‘but remember, when you walk away from one place, you are inevitably walking towards another.’
‘I know that,’ said Hector. ‘That’s why I’m going east.’ (404)

• General Lassalle (super Ego): Train driver and his wife, Katarzyna
They save Hector, although the destiny says on the other way. They present the Super Ego.

D. PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUE
• Morality
- Hector: every human need to struggle finds and gets what they want like a dream, the freedom and peace. Sometimes we as human should do an impossible journey to turn something impossible to be possible. Like hector has done, he does the journey and struggles to find his purpose even though he doesn’t know what will happen next in his life. And he ends it with death bringing his idealism: patriotic.

E. INTERCONECTION
• In this story, Rose Tremain portrays a tale which is thoroughly psychological. She creates the main character, Hector who does a journey to reach his aim. Like many of her stories, Rose Tremain believes through fiercely imagined journeys, performances and metamorphoses, people have to make themselves up - and to make themselves at home.