Salizaliha Mustapha (1) notes that "psychological realism in literary texts offers the possibility for readers to reconstruct each aspect of information offered in a text through different angles or perspectives." In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," all three authors resort to the use of psychological realism to reinforce their themes and to provide audiences with multiple perspectives or psychological frames of reference with which to understand them and their characters. By using psychological realism, all of the authors make us identify more readily with the human beings in their works as they make choices and confront circumstances that radically transform their psychological and physical states. Macbeth's ambition will lead to his death, Gregor Samsa's transformation into a giant insect leads to his death but also to the blossoming of his sister, and the prisoner in "The Pit and the Pendulum" is terrorized psychologically before his ultimate liberation. This analysis will discuss the use of psychological realism in each of these three works and what the impact of the respective author's use is on the reader. A conclusion will address how the unvarnished nature of realism provides deeper insight and understanding into human behavior.
Macbeth provides us with realistic psychological states of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth that not only show the inherent capacity for evil in human nature but also reveal the realistic nature of a competition for power at the top levels of society. Macbeth, like "The Pit and the Pendulum," uses sounds, smells, and visual elements to portray Macbeth's psychological state and reality from his perspective. Macbeth hears the sounding of a bell and sees this as a sign of Duncan's fate, but also as encouragement for his own ambitions: "the bell invites me / Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee...