Edwin Drood Analysis

The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Case Closed Mystery is one of the most fascinating genres of literature, they let you examine who the culprit is. Readers analyze, investigate, and scrutinize in hopes of finding the right culprit. By the end of the book or series, the reader will know if they’re right or wrong. What if a popular book never got a true ending? In 1870, Charles Dickens died in the middle of writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood, leaving no ending for his fans. Many have desperately read and reread the book, searching and scanning for any closure of who killed Edwin Drood. After much research, it has become apparent through the Psychoanalytic lens that John Jasper is the murderer of Edwin Drood. John Jasper, is a complex character, but

The psychoanalytic lens, “argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author 's own neuroses” (Delahoyde). Jasper has a diary he keeps which doubles as, “a detailed biography of his nephew, Edwin Drood, and it celebrates Jasper 's apparent devotion to Drood” (Tracy 29). Now this is very interesting to think about, many authors kill of their characters. In fact, Dickens himself has killed off characters in the past. There’s evidence that Jasper might actually be meant to be a character based off Dickens, which perfectly fits in with the reasons already stated. There was a character in the book named Neville Landless who is a foreigner with differing opinions to Edwin. In fact he, “had thrown a bottle at Mr. Edwin Drood… had thrown a knife at Mr. Edwin Drood” (Dickens 61). This makes Landless the easiest to pin for a murder. However how do we know he isn’t the murderer? “Jasper actually admits that Landless is in fact not guilty by offering to abandon his efforts to frame his for Drood 's murder if Rosa will only give herself to him”(Tracy 33). If Jasper truly suspected Landless for the murder, why would he give up prosecution? Jasper wants to treat Landless like a character because he, “revised Landless into a projection of himself, a demon carved out of his own heart

Works Cited
"Charles Dickens." Dickens and the Comedy of Humor, by Northrop Frye, 1987. Excerpt originally published in Charles Dickens, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, pp. 75-85.
Delahoyde, Michael. "Psychoanalytic Criticism." CRITICAL THEORY, public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/psycho.crit.html. Accessed 21 Mar. 2018.
Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. E-book, London, Chapman and Hall, 1870.
"Jaspers ' Scarf." Drood Inquiry, edited by Pete Orford et al., Sept. 2014, www.droodinquiry.com/clues-and-red-herrings/jaspers-scarf. Accessed 19 Mar. 2018.
"John Jasper." Drood Inquiry, edited by Pete Orford et al., Sept. 2014, www.droodinquiry.com/characters/john-jasper. Accessed 19 Mar. 2018.
Perry, Marsha. "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." Charles Dickens Info, edited by Marsha Perry, 2018, www.charlesdickensinfo.com/novels/mystery-edwin-drood/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2018.
Tracy, Robert. "Jasper 's Plot: Inventing the Mystery of Edwin Drood." Dickens Quarterly.
"The Verdict." Drood Inquiry, edited by Pete Orford et al., Sept. 2014, www.droodinquiry.com/the-verdict/results. Accessed 19 Mar.