Death Drive and the Heroic Ego in 1917

This essay's main theoretical frameworks are the Freudian Death Drive and Kristeva's notion of the abject. I use these to show they function concerning identity, specifically a heroic ego in Sam Mendes film 1917 (2019). In an extension to Loewald (1980) and Laplanche's ideas (1999) that suggest the Death Drive is the death of the ego, I propose the Death Drive casts a metaphorical shadow on the ego in varying degrees. I suggest it is the writers/director's projection of their Death Drive, specifically Mendes as co-writer and director.1 Consequently, the ego states of the hero explored are too a projection from the director to engage the spectator in dialogue on the status of heroism in the First World War for a contemporary audience.2 I show that Schofield, one of the main character's, presents three states of a heroic ego identity that emerge fluidly, and these are aligned with pivotal narrative turns throughout the film.3

First the wounded ego state, characterised by repression and disavowal of previous trauma, that allows some reprieve of tension in service of the pleasure principle. In this stage, Schofield's identity does nothing to serve the heroic construct, quite the opposite. In the second narrative turn, Schofield presents a liminal ego state, manifested between resisting and living the construct of the hero, consequently a crisis of identity ensues which is discussed through Kristeva's concept of the abject (1982). Kristeva's notion of the abject and identity leads to a discussion of gender relations