In this essay we will be making a Freudian psychoanalytical reading of The Lion

King. We will be analysing Simba’s life in terms of the Oedipus complex,

including the inevitability of the complex, castration anxiety, the latency period

through to the resolution of it. We will also be observing the psychical structure

of id, ego and superego and its interrelation with Simba’s Oedipus complex and

the resolving of it.

The Oedipus complex is a theory in Freud’s work that appropriates the myth of

King Oedipus in deciphering infantile sexuality and neurosis. It is a complex that

occurs during the phallic stage of psychical development in the child where his

love/sexual object is his mother. The child is jealous of his father and

unconsciously wants him dead. Concurrently he is faced with the anxiety of the

reprisal of paternal love for having sexual attractions to his mother which Freud

calls castration anxiety. This castration anxiety leads to a latency period in the

child’s sexual development that lasts until later on in puberty when the child

finds a new sexual object. “Everyone's original object choice is incestuous and

parental. Thus, an evolutionarily developed latency period conspires with

reinforcing moral precepts and social rules to turn the child after puberty toward

non-incestuous love objects.” (Freud, 2000, p. xii)

The Lion King is very much a story of the overcoming of the Oedipus complex. In

the opening scene all the animals of the Pride Lands march to spectate the

presentation of the newly born to-be-king Simba. From this moment it is made

clear that Simba is to one day replace his father as king and reinforcing this is the

motif ‘Circle of Life’. Elton John sings “Till we find our place, on the path
unwinding, in the circle of life” foretelling that Simba’s journey is going to

ultimately end in taking his place in the ‘circle of life’. We first see the Oedipal

connotation in The Lion King when Mufasa shows the Pride Lands to Simba and

tells him that everything the light touches will one day be his, replacing his father

and taking over all that he possesses, which includes his mother.

Mufasa is saying, 'See what I see.' And in patriarchal/oedipal terms, the

father is telling the son that one day, when he takes his father's place, the
son will inherit everything the father has, including the mother.
(Lang, 2002, p. 21)

Reinforcing the Oedipal tone is the presence of the ‘shadowy place’ and Mufasa’s

warning of it “That is beyond our boarders. You must never go there.” This

implementation of fear corresponds to that of castration anxiety in the Oedipus

complex. In Freudian terms we see the predetermined future of Simba’s ruling of

the Pride Lands as the phallus, the symbol of inherent power, and that implied in

Mufasa’s words is the threat of renunciation of this power, which in turn we can

equate to the threat of castration.

The ‘shadowy place’ is also used in The Lion King as a cinematic device to invoke

Simba’s superego. The concept of the psychical structure comprising of the Id,

Ego and Superego is one that is central to Freud’s psychoanalytical theory. Id is

what we are born with. It contains libido which gives rise to instinctual drives

and it operates on the pleasure principal. We then develop the ego which acts as

a kind of middleman between the irrational id and the external world. The ego is

in charge of reality testing, balancing the needs, drives and impulses of id against

expectations of society and when it cannot fulfil the demands of id it has defence

mechanisms such as repression and sublimation to redirect those cathexis. The

superego is formed last in our psyche and it is that which is representational of

societal rules or ideals. It creates an ego-ideal that tells the ego how it should act,

allowing self evaluation and criticism and is also responsible for the feeling of

guilt when the ego fails to meet its expectations. Essentially the superego is a

parent internalised in the psyche who scolds one when they have done

something ‘wrong’.

When Simba ventures to the ‘shadowy place’ with Nala he bursts into song to

create a diversion to escape the supervision of Zazu. He sings “I’m gonna be the

‘mane’ event, like no king was before, I’m brushing up on looking down…” and

this makes it clear that he has an incredibly inflated sense of self-importance;

there is not yet a superego formed in his psyche.

Simba's feeling of phallic, narcissistic omnipotence, expressed so

exuberantly in his song, is bound to crash. It is a feeling, Freud remarks in
"Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming," that is best expressed in the
phrase: "Nothing can happen to me!" Freud adds: "It seems to me,
however, that through this revealing characteristic of invulnerability we
can immediately recognize His Majesty the Ego, the hero alike of every
daydream and of every story." (Lang, 2002, p. 23)

Simba’s action of ‘bravery’ also reflects that of a child’s Oedipal competitiveness

with his father in pursuit of his mother’s love. This display of bravery is crushed

by their encounter with the hyenas and the two are rescued by Mufasa.

When Simba is taken aside to be taught a lesson, he steps into Mufasa’s paw

print and we can observe the realisation that his father is far bigger than him not

only in size but also in an ontological sense. Here, Simba’s ego is dwarfed by

Mufasa’s authority and the threat of castration becomes evermore real to him as
he finally sees the possibility of the reprisal of paternal love. Mufasa goes on to

explain “The great kings of the past look down on us from stars. So whenever you

feel alone, just remember those kings will always be there to guide you, and so

will I.” Here Mufasa’s paternal authority is displaced onto the stars by which one

is ‘always being watched’, in other words it is the internalisation of Mufasa’s

authority in Simba. Because Mufasa, the brave and most ‘perfect’ character in The

Lion King, dies soon after, he is literally transformed from physical character to a

psychical authority; Mufasa becomes the superego and the ego-ideal for Simba.

“The ego-ideal is set up in the young child's mind as a replacement for the

infant's primary narcissism and represents an ideal image of how the person

thinks they should be." (Bocock, 2002, p. 75)

Simba leaves the Pride Lands guilted by his father’s death and spends the rest of

his childhood with Timon and Pumbaa. This is a period of the rejection of the

‘circle of life’ and we see this when Timon says “When the world turns its back

on you, you turn your back on the world.” Through Freudian lenses this part of

Simba’s life is unmistakably the latency period; a period of sexual repression that

is caused by guilt of having the mother as a sexual object. If the time spent away

from the ‘circle of life’ equates to the latency period, we can then say that the

returning to it corresponds to the resolution of the Oedipus complex. The

reunion of Simba and Nala marks the end of the latency period but we inevitably

see the Oedipal subtext of their love. When Nala pins Simba down and kisses

(licks) him is evidently the moment they fall in love with ‘Can you feel the love

tonight’ playing. This mirrors the scene where Simba is bathed by his mother and
we see that his desires for his mother are reappropriated onto Nala, as she

shows him the affection that his mother had.

The innumerable peculiarities of the erotic life of human beings as well as

the compulsive character of the process of falling in love itself are quite
unintelligible except by reference back to childhood as being residual
effects of childhood.
(Freud, 2000, p. xii)

During his latency period, Simba embraces ‘hakuna matata’, or the worry free

way of life and he shows little self-evaluation or reproach and so it can be said

that his superego had remained dormant. But this dormancy comes to an end

when Rafiki tells him that Mufasa is still alive. Simba is brought to a pond and

shown his own reflection where Rafiki explains “He (Mufasa) lives in you.” By

bringing Mufasa back into the picture, a higher authority is implemented over

Simba. This is the realisation of the superego which is, as argued earlier in this

essay, the mental projection of Mufasa. The assimilation of Mufasa in Simba’s

superego is confirmed further when Mufasa appears in the clouds and says “You

are more than you have become… You must take your place in the circle of life.”

In Freudian terms this is the ego-ideal bombarding the ego with demands and

thus the guilt of shortcoming drives Simba to take action.

It [superego] also becomes the part of the mind which carries the ego-
ideal and which criticizes the failure of the person to live up to these
ideals. This critical function of the superego is taken over from parents,
especially from the father. (Bocock, 2002, p. 76)

In making an Oedipal analysis it is useful to draw comparisons between The Lion

King and Hamlet by Shakespeare, as the former undeniably derives its storyline

from the latter. If we consider Scar from The Lion King and Claudius from Hamlet,

Simba and Hamlet respectively, as analogous characters in terms of their roles

played in the plots of both texts, we begin to see the subtext in The Lion King that

has been omitted due to its G-rated nature. What we see in Hamlet that we do not

in The Lion King is the incestuous uncle and the deep-set hatred that the nephew

has for him. MacCary writes that Claudius portrays an actualisation of Hamlet’s

repressed childhood wishes and that his virulent hatred of Claudius derives its

energy from his own repressed desire to kill his father. (MacCary, 1998, p. 106)

Here we see that Hamlet’s Oedipal hostility towards his father is displaced onto

Claudius. Respectively in The Lion King we can assume this same displacement

onto the character of Scar. Scar’s death is important because it not only means

Simba becomes king but dies with him is Simba’s displaced Oedipal hatred for

Mufasa. In other words the riddance of Scar equates to the overcoming of a

critical part of Simba’s Oedipus complex.

Through the psychoanalytical reading of The Lion King we see the Oedipal

connotations that underlie much of the plot. In analysing Simba’s life and the

events happening throughout, we start to see the connection that is made

between the resolution of his Oedipus complex and returning to the ‘circle of life’

in the Pride Lands. The final scene of the film is almost an exact repeat of the

opening scene where Simba and Nala’s child is being presented at the

promontory of Pride Rock. This forms a cyclic storyline and the message here is

that Simba had successfully ‘found his place in the path unwinding in the circle of

life’ and so the circle continues, or in other words that he had successfully

overcome his Oedipus complex and so he was able to produce progeny.

Every new arrival on this planet is faced by the task of mastering the
Oedipus complex; anyone who fails to do so falls a victim to neurosis.
(Freud, 2000, p. 92)
We see that Scar’s failure to take part in the ‘circle of life’ causes the Pride Lands

to become desolate which we can equate to the neurosis that entails the failure

of resolving the Oedipus complex. In light of this analysis we come to see that

The Lion King delivers an encrypted message of the conquering of the Oedipus

complex to its children audience who are most likely experiencing the complex

themselves.

Word count: 1973

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