Upton Sinclair’s novel, Oil!, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s film adaptation, There Will Be Blood, both offer insightful depictions of the subjectivities of their characters. These works present characters whose identities are shaped by unconscious desires, as well as societal and cultural constructions of gender and power. Jacques Lacan’s theory of the unconscious and Julia Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic and the symbolic provide fruitful frameworks for analyzing these characters’ subjectivities. Lacan’s theory posits that the self is constructed through a complex interplay of conscious and unconscious desires. From his early days as a struggling prospector to his rise to power as an oil magnate, Mr. Ross’ identity, for instance, is shaped by his relentless pursuit of wealth and power as his desires. Besides, the conflicts he faced with other characters formed the narratives of both the novel and the screenplay. Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic and the symbolic serves as a beneficial framework in understanding the subjectivity formation of these characters. Kristeva suggests that language and culture shape our identities, and that we are constantly negotiating between two modes of meaning-making: the semiotic and the symbolic. The semiotic, for Kristeva, refers to pre-linguistic expressions of emotion and bodily experience, while the symbolic is associated with rational thought and language. In light of the aforementioned information, this thesis seeks to analyze the oscillation between the semiotic and the symbolic dispositions of the characters’ language and to consider their desires that create their subjectivities as they enter their symbolic orders. Finally, the researcher investigates whether patriarchy is supported or undermined by the novel and its film adaptation.
