International Journal of Language & Literature

Tropes of Love, Representations of Pain, and Coping Strategies in Chimeka Garricks’s A Broken People’s Playlist
Ekikereobong Aniekan USORO, Boluwatife Mark OGEDENGBE

Abstract
This study examines the interlocking strands of love tropes, the depiction of pain, and adaptive mechanisms in Chimeka Garricks‟s A Broken People’s Playlist, adopting Sigmund Freud‟s psychoanalytic literary theory in its analysis. Paying close attention to the concepts of personality structure (id, ego, and superego) and defence mechanism as its conceptual frameworks, the paper identifies such tropes of love as the star-crossed lovers, the love triangle, and the second chance romance; highlights rationalisation, sublimation, and displacement as some of the coping mechanisms used by characters to deal with pain, whether physical or psychogenic. It is discovered that not only are the manifestations of pain diverse but there also are no standard coping strategies as each character consigns to themselves the most effective mechanism(s). It is further revealed that the author mostly writes about love and pain in a way that guarantees each other. Therefore, Garricks challenges the romanticised notion of love as a purely blissful state, revealing instead its complex reality where love and pain are intertwined like the warp and weft of a single fabric, the recto and verso of one page, or the dual sides of the same coin, even in the most genuine expressions of affection.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v12n2a4