Between Eros and Thanatos: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Cheryl Strayed's Wild

This paper offers a psychoanalytic reading of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012) through Sigmund Freud’s theory of the death drive, as introduced in his seminal essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920). Strayed’s memoir, chronicling her 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail following her mother’s death and personal disintegration, becomes a rich site for examining the dialectic between Thanatos and Eros. The narrative reveals a compulsive repetition of pain, risk, and isolation—what Freud identifies as the psyche’s unconscious pull toward death and dissolution. However, this drive coexists with an emerging movement toward survival, connection, and pleasure, reflecting Freud’s conception of Eros as the opposing, life-affirming force. The paper argues that Strayed’s physical journey is a literal enactment of the psychic struggle between melancholia and mourning, as theorized by Freud in his essay “Mourning and Melancholia” ([1917] 1957). Through this analysis, Wild is situated not merely as a tale of healing but as a text that dramatizes the complex interplay of destructive and restorative drives within the grieving self. The study contributes to the intersection of psychoanalysis and contemporary trauma memoirs, and proposes Wild as a compelling example of the Freudian death drive at work in modern autobiographical literature.