e-ISSN: 2757-9549  Volume 2.

2  December 2022

Journal
of
Literature
and
Drama
Studies
 Journal
of
Literature
and
Drama
Studies
e-ISSN: 2791-6553  Volume 2.2  December 2022
Founding Editor-In-Chief
Önder Çakırtaş, Bingöl University

Associate Editors
Gloria Lee McMillan, University of Arizona
Paul Innes, United Arab Emirates University
Nelson Orringer, University of Connecticut
Katrine K. Wong, University of Macao

Editorial Review Board
Brian Boyd, The University of Auckland
Kathleen Starck, University of Koblenz-Landau
Lorraine Kerslake, Alicante University
Mary V. Seeman, University of Toronto
Philip Zapkin, Pennsylvania State University
Anemona Alb, University of Oradea
Theodora Tsimpouki, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Mary Cappelli, University of Southern California
Aubrey Tang, Chapman University
Joanne Emmens, Auckland University of Technology
Marisa Kerbizi, Aleksander Moisiu University
Manal Al Natour, West Virginia University
Ingrida Eglė Žindžiuvienė, Vytautas Magnus University
Heather Thaxter, University Centre Doncaster
Jillian Curr, University of Western Australia
Dana Radler, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Margaret Lundberg, University of Washington
Bujar Hoxha, South East European University
Maria Luisa Di Martino, Ca' Foscari University of Venice
Pelin Doğan, Munzur University
Antolin C. Trinidad, Yale University
Ankit Raj, Government College Gharaunda
Fouad Mami, University of Adrar

Editorial Assistants
Marietta Kosma, University of Oxford
Muhammed İkbal Candan, Van Yüzüncü Yıl University

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies is a an open access, peer-reviewed,
academic e-journal aiming to publish original and international research articles that bring solutions to
issues and examines scientific issues and problems in all subfields of literatures, theatre, drama and
performance studies, and cultural studies. Each submitted article is evaluated by at least two referees of
the field expert and the final result is reported to the authors within three months. The journal is published
twice a year in June and December.

Contact:
journalofcritique.com  [email protected]
Bingöl Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, 12200, Bingöl/Türkiye
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
E-ISSN: 2791-6553  VOLUME 11.11  DECEMBER 2022

Table of Contents
Ankit Raj
Editor’s Preface ________________________________________________________________________ II

RESEARCH ARTICLES
Michael Filas
Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the
Wall_______________________________________________________________________________________ 1
Soham Mukherjee and Madhumita Roy
Ismail Kadare’s Usage of Myth in Comprehending Albania’s National Condition _26
Shuvam Das
The Symbol of Peace as a Myth: Deconstructing the Existential Problem in One-
Punch Man and My Hero Academia _________________________________________________ 42
Kelvin Ke Jinde
The Superhero Archetype as an Auxiliary Class in Marvel’s Avengers Movies______ 54
Riccardo Gramantieri
Archetypal Elements in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts_______________________________________ 70
BHISHMA KUMAR AND SOVAN CHAKRABORTY
Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative through Myth in
Mary Oliver’s Select Works ___________________________________________________________ 83
Hampton D. Harmon
Laughing Towards Bethlehem: A Critical Reading of Bill Hicks as Prophetic
Archetype _____________________________________________________________________________ 102

BOOK REVIEW
Stella Chitralekha Biswas
Review of Koral Dasgupta’s Ahalya, Pan Macmillan, 2020, 204 pages ____________ 118
The page has been intentionally left blank.
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Editor’s Preface* Myths, Archetypes and the Literary Arts

I have been fascinated with stories ever since my childhood,
*
Ankit Raj more so with the recurring nature of certain tropes and motifs
Guest Editor
that transcend geographical, temporal and cultural barriers and
surface in the unlikeliest of places. Our oldest tales hold
compelling power, for not only are they timeless enough to be
remembered down the ages, they continue to give us meaning,
purpose, guidance and solace till the present day in the form of
oral tales, songs, cinema, theatre, comic books, video games, and
literature.
When Dr. Önder Çakırtaş and Marietta Kosma asked me to
edit a themed issue of the journal, I succumbed to my fondness
for stories and proposed that we bring together an issue that

II examines how myths and archetypes, originating from our

collective unconscious, in turn shape our collective
consciousness and with it our collective knowledge, and leave
imprints in our creative expression such as literature, theatre,
film, graphic novels and comics, music, video games, and more. I
had hoped for this issue to be eclectic in its scope, and so it
turned out as we received fine contributions that delve into the
study of myths and archetypes in many forms of literary
expression—film, fiction and non-fiction, drama, poetry, comic
books, and stand-up comedy.
Michael Filas reads the protagonist Carol from Todd Haynes’
1995 film Safe as a tragic archetype, and aligns the indices of
COVID-19 pandemic life (face masks and social isolation for
safety) with Carol’s similar response to her illness. Soham
Mukherjee and Dr. Madhumita Roy analyse how Albanian writer
Ismail Kadare uses myths to make sense of the national condition
of Albania from the beginning of World War II until the early
2000s when Albania began its process of recuperating from the
Balkan Wars in the 1990s. Shuvam Das, towards his aim to
examine the superhero myth in manga, performs a
poststructuralist reading of One-Punch Man and My Hero
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
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Academia to draw parallels between Albert Camus’ The Myth of

Sisyphus and Japanese superhero manga, examining how these
works deal with the existential question about the meaning of
life. Continuing the theme of superheroes is Kelvin Ke Jinde as
he draws upon Plato’s idea of the auxiliary class and Joseph
Campbell’s monomyth to read the superhero in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe as a modern version of the auxiliary class
and shows how the MCU re-mythologises Plato’s auxiliary class
for contemporary culture. Riccardo Gramantieri studies Henrik
Ibsen’s Ghosts with the aim to use the character Osvald Alving
as a model and offer a different interpretation of the literary work
in which Osvald moves. Towards this end, Gramantieri interprets
the plot of the play and lends support to the schizophrenic theory
of Osvald’s illness using Carl Jung’s archetypal theory. Bhishma
III Kumar and Sovan Chakraborty apply concepts of primitive
mythology to discuss Mary Oliver’s fictional and non-fictional
works, concentrating on how a sense of place and nature can be
felt and treated respectively by going beyond the ego-centric
attitude of human beings. Hampton D. Harmon, in an effort to
holistically understand the influence of stand-up comedy on
American culture, identifies the religious nature of comedian Bill
Hicks’ work and self-presentation through the Judeo-Christian
concepts of “messiah” and “prophet.” Harmon presents a case
study and close reading of Bill Hicks’ televised special
Revelations, evaluating the latter’s comedy as a fulfilment of the
prophetic archetype. Stella Chitralekha Biswas reviews Ahalya,
the first novel in the Sati series by Koral Dasgupta, which is a
retelling of the well-known mythological account of a hapless
woman and her plight under the brunt of a patriarchal social
order. In her review, Biswas stresses that Ahalya can also be read
as celebrating what it means to be a “woman” rather than
emphatically laying claims on the erasure of gender differences.
I would like to thank the contributors who trusted the journal
with their fine writing. I am also immensely grateful to Dr. Önder
Çakırtaş, Marietta Kosma, the esteemed editorial board, the
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
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learned referees and the skilled technical team for helping me

bring the issue to life.
As we enter a new year with hopes for a pandemic-free era
and fears that the virus may not be gone altogether, I pray this
year brings health, happiness and fulfilment to all.

IV
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
E-ISSN: 2791-6553  VOLUME 11.11  DECEMBER 2022

Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

Michael Filas*

ABSTRACT

Todd Haynes’s 1995 film Safe depicts the demise of protagonist

Carol White as she suffers headaches, bloody noses, insomnia,
* Professor
Department of English asthma, and seizures from environmental illness, which leads to
Westfield State her social and marital demise and her taking refuge at Wrenwood,
University a sanitarium retreat in the Albuquerque foothills. This article reads
[email protected] Carol as a tragic archetype, and aligns the indices of COVID-19
pandemic life (face masks and social isolation for safety) with
Carol’s similar response to her illness. While the film has
previously been critiqued and interpreted from perspectives
including feminism, consumerism, environmentalism, suburbia,
race, heteronormativity, melodrama, plague, Whiteness, and AIDS
CITATION politics, this article performs a close reading based on Northrop
Filas, Michael. “Todd Haynes’s
Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Frye’s archetypal definition of Aristotelian tragedy, and then
Mirror on the Wall.” Essence & analyzes the differences in late-pandemic middle class American
Critique: Journal of Literature perspectives from that of Carol White as she navigates her
and Drama Studies, vol. II, no. situation. Late-pandemic middle class perspectives provide an
II, 2022, pp. 1–25,
optimistic and alternate fate to the tragic pathos depicted in Carol’s
journalofcritique.com.
story.

KEYWORDS

Safe (1995), Todd Haynes, Northrop Frye, tragedy, COVID-19,

pandemic, great resignation, environmental illness
 Michael Filas

Fig. 1. Carol White (Julianne Moore) attempts self-love at the mirror inside her isolation dome. Safe Blu-ray
DVD. Criterion Collection. 2014.

2
Todd Haynes’s 1995 masterpiece Safe reminds me of the contemporary relationship, in
2022, with the waning of pandemic quarantines and mask mandates. Previous critics have read
the film as consumerist and feminist satire1, as commentary on cultural whiteness, as critique of
suburbia2, and as commentary on the 1980s AIDS pandemic3. Safe, in 2022, can be read as a
cautionary tale, an unfinished tragedy. There are noticeable indices of contemporary pandemic
life in protagonist Carol White’s story, such as face masks and self-isolation for safety. These
similarities bring her ruin closer to pandemic experiences. The plot concerns her hobbled
struggle for healthfulness, and her unsuccessful quest for self-discovery. However, while the film
ends as a truncated tragedy, in the late-pandemic era some in the middle class are having success
with self-discovery.
Carol’s story has not come to a hard stop at the end of Safe, but there is little doubt that
she has failed to obtain healthfulness and self-love. When looking closely at Carol’s tragedy
there is an opportunity to distance her doomed fate from the emerging post-pandemic outlook,
which is empowered and reflective—decidedly not tragic. That’s not to say the 6.4 million deaths
1
See Bouchard in particular, but most critiques cited in the article recognize Haynes’s for thematic feminism and
Queercore aspects in his work.
2
See Burke, also Tougaw.
3
See Bersani; Tougaw; also Stuber.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

and millions of infirm patients have not been tragic, but there’s an alternate narrative for some.
For certain columns of the middle class, relationships with home, with nature, with family, and
with work have transformed in varying degrees. The “great resignation”4, shifting attitudes about
remote work, and a 20% uptick in both pet adoptions5 and outdoor recreation6 collectively reflect
an altered relationship with the former sense of self, of home, and with the sense of where and
how one fits in the world.
I read Safe as tragedy, and compare late-pandemic perspectives to Carol’s experiences
and fate. Safe has been read as horror7, as melodrama8, as an AIDS parable, and as a critique of
capitalist environmental destruction9—all of which are true readings in different contexts—but
I’m reading it as a cautionary tale about failing to desire a meaningful life, and failing to achieve
true self-love. Despite the shared signifiers of pandemic life and Carol’s odyssey into
environmental illness, late-pandemic trends of thoughtful life decisions among the middle class
reflect an optimistic alternative to the tragic fate of Carol White in Safe.

Reading Safe as Tragedy

In 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic in the US, critics in Vanity Fair and The
New Yorker revisited Safe via COVID-19 themes for the similarities between 2020 pandemic life
3
and the film’s depiction of environmental illness, Carol’s physical reaction to fumes, chemicals,
and industrial elements in her posh suburban world. Like us, she wears a face mask, and shelters
at home. The film’s long takes and long shots suggest that Carol’s illness, from headaches to
nosebleeds to coughing fits, panic attacks, and seizures are also, in part, a reaction to her vacuous
daily routines in a world that engulfs her. Austin K. Collins writes, “her life does seem to be
almost entirely composed of errands: organizing and overseeing house repairs, attending to the
dry cleaning, keeping tabs on the help, all while keeping fit and maintaining some vague shell of
a social life. First-world problems, yes, and that is the point.” Carol’s bland life, even her non-life
-threatening maladies make for soft tragedy, but it is the absence of an inner person that really
drives this tragedy. David Roth writes, “Even before she contracts the mysterious illness that will
send her reeling and shrinking away from this life, Carol floats through her days—and, in a white
silken robe on sleepless nights, through her icy, Kubrickian home—like a ghost.” “Ghost,”
however, doesn’t capture the full spectrum of Carol’s empty soul. It’s as if her hamartia, or

4
See Richter; also Tappe.
5
See Bogage.
6
See Wagner.
7
Wes Craven notoriously called Safe “the scariest film of the year so far” as noted by Haynes in Blu-ray
commentary.
8
See Jacobowitz and Lippe; see also Zarzosa.
9
See Hosey.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Michael Filas

tragic fatal flaw, is implicit in her emotional makeup, or, as Brian Marks wrote in 2020, “Carol is
a woman who doesn’t know how to desire.” Haynes himself, in an interview with Scott Tobias,
refers to Carol’s lack of interiority, and how Julianne Moore portrayed the character, nonetheless,
with believable humanity: “[This] role was so transparent. And I was impressed with how she
could make somebody who is that much of a cipher into somebody who you believe is a real
person, but not over imbuing it with too much editorializing or second guessing, or kind of
winking to the audience.” The subtle earnestness in Moore’s portrayal, and in Haynes’s
leveraging Carol in every scene as part of the mise en scène, are key to reading Safe as tragedy,
rather than satire or irony, where the heroine would register differently.
Northrop Frye provides a definition of tragedy as a genre, as he described it in Anatomy
of Criticism, a mid-twentieth century structuralist reading of canonical texts. Frye begins by
leveraging Aristotle’s definition of tragic mimesis, representation, primarily through plot
elements such as peripetia—a sudden reversal of circumstances—usually accompanied by
recognition, and pathos, which is an act involving destruction or pain. He locates the source of
tragic effect in plot, or mythos, which revolves around an extremely visible hero, a character
superior in degree to others, but not to her environment. When the tragic heroine falls, she falls

4 from a high place, the top of the wheel of fortune, and in falling becomes isolated from the
society over which she once reigned in some capacity. When peripetia, or a turn of events
occurs, it is accompanied by a self-recognition of some fatal error that the tragic hero has made
to bring this turnabout. The error involves a flaw or violation of moral law, but it’s an act made
of the hero’s free will. As the hero falls, she inspires in the audience a catharsis affected as pity
or fear. From Hamlet to Willie Loman to even Jesus Christ, the tragic hero, as a varied cultural
agent, inspires audience emotional response and reactions through tradition-tempered pathways.
Starting with the heroine herself, Carol White is indeed extremely visible—Julianne
Moore is in virtually every scene, and when she is briefly not on camera we are in her point of
view. While focusing on the cinematography of the film—long takes, long shots, relatively few
close ups—Roddey Reid argues that:
Haynes, far from attempting to put viewers at a “safe” remove from the temptations of
facile audience identification, draws on our own willingness to be fascinated by [Carol
White] and to identify with even the most contrived, artificial, or flat characters and
environments while at the same time denying us the privilege of ever understanding them.
(32-33, emphasis mine)
And this identification is key to a tragic narrative, even if there’s a gap in our understanding of
her motives. Her wealth and ensconced life situate Carol in a high place. In the scenes featuring a
drive up to her suburban home, we pass new construction of Spanish-style McMansions, and

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

then, on her street, several posh homes. Hers is the largest and the only one we see with an
automated gated driveway—she has the fanciest house. Austin Collins has commented that her
social position, however, makes her even more vulnerable: “Her entire lifestyle fails her. A
veritable jungle of greenery surrounds the Whites’ home; every room in their house feels both
alienatingly spacious and as safe and secure as bubble wrap. . . . [You] get a real feel for the
ways this upper-class life of Carol’s feels cordoned off. A violation of the norms of her life has
that much more impact.” Carol is superior to others in her socioeconomic station, she will be
falling from the top of the wheel of fortune. Additionally, her individuation from her community
as a lightning rod is reinforced by her physical attributes as a trophy wife. Although she is often
among her cohort of well-kept fellow homemakers, Carol stands out from them as particularly
striking in her plastic appearance, as well as in other nuanced ways. Although her friends look
and live similarly to her, they are thoughtful about their lives in ways Carol cannot achieve. At
the gym after aerobics class, she listens as two of her friends, Anita and Barbara, converse:
Anita: I just eventually found the whole twelve-step thing was like another form of
addiction that I was—-
Barbara: That’s exactly what this book is saying . . .

5 Anita: Yeah?
Barbara: Yeah. It’s about how to own your own life, you know, ‘cause it’s like, what he
says is that we don’t own our own lives. We’re told what to do, what to think, but
emotionally we’re not really in charge.
Anita: But I think that with exercise and diet and healthy foods you can really—-
Barbara: —-I just think he’s very good on certain things . . .
Anita: Yeah . . .
Barbara: (To Carol) Have you read him, Carol?
Carol: No . . .
Barbara: He’s very good on certain things, emotional maintenance, stress management.
(She stops for a moment, looking at Carol.) You know, Carol, you do not sweat.
Anita: Oh, I hate you.
Carol: (slightly embarrassed) I know, it’s true. (Haynes, Safe, 107)
Beyond Haynes’s clever metacommentary via the self-help message Barbara shares, we see here
how Carol is not a full participant in a thoughtful or reflective life the way her friends are. And
they bring her into the conversation only by enviously noticing how she is different, physically
more “feminine” per the sexist codes that stigmatize sweaty women. In a later scene among her
peers, at a baby shower when Carol is further along in her illness, they talk about her health
while she is in the bathroom. That is the only shot in the entire film where Carol is not present,

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Michael Filas

but her health and looks are the topic of her peers’ gossipy conversation. As the baby shower
continues after Carol’s return from the bathroom, they gather to watch the mom-to-be open the
big present. Carol sits apart from the group, back a couple yards with a friend’s young daughter,
Elise, on her lap. Carol has a severe asthma attack that causes panic at the party. Her best friend
Linda and another of the women run to her side and attempt to comfort her, but there’s a strange
lack of connection there, which reflects her isolation. In the Criterion Blu-ray commentary,
Haynes says of this scene, speaking to Julianne Moore, “I wanted them to be, like, touching you,
but not really touching you.” Moore replies, “Yeah, they couldn’t. Just barely making any
contact.” Haynes finishes by observing, “You’re just so alone.” Isolation from her society is
Carol’s peripetia, her reversal of fortune.
The slow-burn plot of Safe revolves around Carol’s coming to an understanding of
environmental illness while she falls into increasingly severe reactions to the toxins in her
environment. Her quest shifts from maintaining the status quo in her materialistic but
unsatisfying life, to seeking a solution for her mysterious illness, until she takes up residence at
Wrenwood, a remote New Age retreat for environmental illness patients. As she proceeds she
becomes more marginalized and separated from her society, from her family, and symbolically
even from her fellow retreat residents. And a tragic plot must involve the tragic heroine being
6
isolated, removed from society. Frye describes the tragic hero as “exceptional and isolated at the
same time, giving us that curious blend of the inevitable and the incongruous that is peculiar to
tragedy” (38). Carol is exceptional in her lack of desire, in her blankness, and this makes her
perfectly adapted to her subservient role to the domineering men in her story. Her husband Greg
(Xander Berkeley) loses his temper when her headaches get in the way of their sex life, or as he
puts it, “No one has a fucking headache every night of the fucking week!” Her paternalistic and
condescending family doctor (Steven Gilborn) loses his patience when she persists in her
symptoms despite his failure to diagnose anything he understands through his tests and
examinations. He recommends a psychiatrist, male, who stares her down like a cold-blooded
interrogator. Even her stepson Rory (Chauncey Leopardi) treats her most often with a sort of
casual irritation, but never with warmth or deference. She is exceptional in her emptiness, and
incongruous in how profoundly well she fits into her assigned role as suburban wife and
homemaker.
Carol fits in with the men in her story by virtue of her blankness, by their ability to
inscribe on her the meaning and understanding that fits their world view. Frye writes that this sort
of tragic hero experiences pathos primarily through exclusion:
The root idea of pathos is the exclusion of an individual on our own level from a social
group to which he is trying to belong. Hence the central tradition of sophisticated pathos

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 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

is the study of the isolated mind, the story of how someone recognizably like ourselves is
broken by a conflict between the inner and outer world, between imaginative reality and
the sort of reality which is established by social consensus. (39)
The imagined reality is that Carol, having achieved the American consumerist dream, should be
satisfied, but her emptiness, and her sickness, belie a different inner world. Because she does not
know how to desire, and has not learned how to love herself (which is her hamartia, her fatal
flaw), she cannot avoid the tragic fall, the terminal pathos that awaits her just beyond the final
frames of the movie.
After dead ends with conventional medicine, Carol takes matters into her own hands by
following up on a flyer she sees on her gym bulletin board that reads: “Do you smell fumes? Are
you allergic to the 20th century? Do you have trouble breathing? Do you suffer from skin
irritations? Are you always tired?” She attends a seminar about environmental illness and learns
there about the concept of managing her “load,” the level of exposure to the toxins in her
environment and diet. Joining the masked and damaged fellow sufferers of environmental illness,
(see Fig. 2), Carol is encouraged by having found others who suffer from headaches, blackouts,
nausea, and even seizures from toxins in the environment. At another meeting she learns about

7 the need to create an aluminum foil-lined ventilated space in her home, without carpet, with
minimal textiles, and with no chemicals. In the vernacular of this subculture, by eliminating
exposure to toxins Carol will “clear”, will reduce her load to zero, from which she can build back
up her tolerance to chemicals and reenter her former society. But during a harrowing seizure at
the dry cleaners, where exterminators are spraying for bugs, Carol is taken by ambulance to the
hospital, where, again, conventional medicine denies her any useful diagnosis or treatment. She
eventually ends up at Wrenwood, which is advertised in an infomercial she sees on the hospital
room TV: “Safe bodies need safe environments in which to live. Nestled in the foothills of
Albuquerque, the Wrenwood center describes itself as a nonprofit communal settlement
dedicated to the healing individual.” While validating her environmental illness as a real
condition and providing a toxin free space for Carol’s recovery, Wrenwood also provides a
community of fellow residents in search of recovery.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Michael Filas

Fig. 2. Mask wearers at environmental illness seminar. Safe Blu-ray DVD. Criterion Collection. 2014.

Carol’s Wrenwood residency takes up the second half of the film. Here, she follows the
cult-like dictums of modesty in dress, silent daytime meals where the men and women eat
8
separately, communal sermons from the founder and leader Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman),
group therapy sessions, and abstinence from sex, drink and drugs. Carol swallows the
philosophical self-help pablum of the retreat’s resident guru, Peter, with earnest conviction, or as
much as she can muster from her hollowed soul. He preaches a New Age message that his
followers’ psychosomatic immune system weaknesses are related to their own world view, and
that if they cultivate a positive outlook the world will be less toxic to their systems. Even here, in
an environment removed from the post-industrial suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, Carol’s
condition worsens, and she ends up further isolated at Wrenwood. She moves into a windowless
porcelain lined igloo and breathes from an oxygen tank that she drags with her wherever she goes
on the compound. As she undertakes to fully participate in Wrenwood’s self-love program, she
continues in a spiral of unhealthy weight loss, and develops a lesion on her forehead, an index of
her persistent physical demise. The last scene of Safe shows a depleted Carol, entombed in her
solitary and spartan igloo, feebly speaking into the mirror as she has been advised to do by the
director of Wrenwood, Claire (Kate McGregor-Stewart). Carol says to her reflection, a close up
into the camera, “I love you. I really love you. I love you” (Fig. 1). Then, the shot lingers on her
lost expression in the mirror, her forehead sullied by the lesion, her eyes puffy and red, and, after
20 long silent seconds, the film cuts to black and is over. All indications to this point are that her
plot is a tragedy, her pathos evident in her worsening physical decay, her self-love affirmations

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

unconvincing. But unlike a completed tragedy, Carol’s story doesn’t reach its implied
conclusion.
At film’s end, Carol is still in a sort of unfinished physical and spiritual death spiral. Leo
Bersani characterizes it like this:
Carol enacts a shedding of identities that is also a shedding of the film’s subjects: the
strongly legitimized identity of a middle-class female homemaker, her identity as a victim
of industrial waste, her symbolic identity as an immune-damaged carrier of a fatal
infection [AIDS], and finally, her particular (and particularly thin) psychic identity as a
person. Paradoxically, it is Carol’s stammering words of self-love at the end of the film
that signal the shedding of a person who might be loved. There is no one there. (35)
So, while Aristotle and Frye map the tradition in tragedy as featuring pathos, most often death of
the protagonist, for Carol the closing pathos is the death of her subjectivity.10
In his discussion of high mimetic tragedy Frye writes that it is “expressed in the
traditional conception of catharsis. The words pity and fear may be taken as referring to two
general directions in which emotion moves, whether towards an object or away from it” (37).
And in the case of Carol White, audiences respond with fear more than pity. We want to put
distance between ourselves and her—we are not her. But Safe refuses to provide catharsis. Frye
9
continues, “pity and fear become, respectively, favorable and adverse moral judgement [. . .] In
low mimetic tragedy, pity and fear are neither purged nor absorbed into pleasures, but are
communicated externally, as sensations” (38). In Safe, each of Carol’s episodes of environmental
illness are communicated as sensations, be they asthma attacks, lapses of consciousness, bloody
noses, a seizure—these inspire unpurged fear. If pity were the cathartic response to the singular
scene in which Carol cries, on her first night in her cabin at Wrenwood, this is undermined by Ed
Tomney’s haunting score accompanying her solitary walk to her cabin. Once inside, an extreme
long shot shows her standing in her screened in cabin from far enough away that even the
roofline and scrub brush surrounds are in the frame. The music stops and Carol lurches into a
standing, sobbing, cry, for a full thirty seconds, before she is interrupted by the Wrenwood
director, Claire, from just outside the screen door. Carol stops her crying immediately and Claire
enters the cabin, talking her through the moment by telling how she overcame her own
environmental illness by repeating to herself hourly in the mirror, “I love you. I really love you.”
Carol’s crying provides no catharsis and inspires no pity, but rather the scene leaves us with
suspicion of the ethos of Wrenwood and Claire’s domineering succor. Laura Christian has
written that the film elicits “viewer sympathy without pity, criticism without facile

10
Mary Ann Doane writes about the lack of cathartic affect, “Pathos is not so much used as a tactic within the films
of Todd Haynes ... as it is signified, without cynicism” (Doane 5).

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condemnation” (112). Even if the catharsis we expect from tragedy is withheld, and if the
mimesis of pathos stops short of portraying Carol’s ultimate demise, the tragedy remains nearly
fully formed.
Haynes, in an interview with Nick Davis, speaks to that implied tragic ending, which he
calls “false Sirkian” in reference to Douglas Sirk’s antecedent use of unconvincing happy
endings in his films:
[That] false Sirkian ending. It just goes for a more sincerely compromised and sad
ending, and an obvious sense of loss. But Safe does have one. It follows through with
narrative expectations of Carol seeming to get better, but by the time the film ends, you
have accrued so much information about Carol’s sad acquiescence to the laws of identity,
and even the new rules of identity that she accepts at Wrenwood. For her to say “I love
you” in the mirror should feel like something has resolved, but all the film language in
Safe should be telling you that nothing is resolved.
That supports the tragic interpretation. “[The] tragic hero has normally had an extraordinary,
often a nearly divine, destiny almost within his grasp, and the glory of that original vision never
quite fades out of tragedy. ... The other reductive theory of tragedy is that the act which sets the
tragic process going must be primarily a violation of moral law, whether human or divine” (Frye
10
210). The divine destiny might be Carol’s belief in an impossible formula for suburban bliss, her
mistaken insistence that she’s “fine.” Based as it is on a sexist platform of banal subservience and
empty consumerist triviality, Carol’s life has hollowed her soul and left her without the ability to
desire anything different. This, of course, belies societal violation of several moral laws around
worshipping the false god of material wealth, as well as the grotesque gender inequality
portrayed in the film.
The depiction of Carol’s marriage to Greg illuminates the domestic arc of her tragic fall.
Carol’s relationship with her husband begins in the first frame after the credits when they exit
their parked Mercedes. Carol sneezes, Greg says “bless you,” and Carol says, “It’s freezing in
here.” The film takes a beat looking at the empty parked car in the garage, then hard cuts to Greg
and Carol in mid-missionary coitus, the overhead shot is a medium close up so that we can see
Carol’s unsuffering but dispassionate expression throughout Greg’s silent convulsive climax. We
learn here, less than three minutes into the film, that Carol’s marriage is not providing her sexual
pleasure or romantic intensity. In the next scene Greg is leaving for work while Carol prunes
roses in her front garden. He says affectionately, “look at that green thumb”—the roses are a bit
droopy—and Carol says, “I wish.” He gives her a perfunctory kiss goodbye and reminds her to
check on the sod delivery, which she says she’ll do. A delivery van pulls up and Carol says it
may be the new couch. The mundane dialogue undercuts the imagery of the extravagantly

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planted front gardens and ornate architecture of their house. In another scene Carol wakes up on
the couch, alone, with a documentary on “deep ecology” playing on the television in the
otherwise dark room. She goes upstairs and takes a pill in her bathroom, then sits on the edge of
the expansive bed, turning to look at Greg’s sleeping body, curled up with his back to her. She
goes outside then to her poolside garden. A haunting passive loneliness permeates these scenes.
A few scenes later, Carol and Greg sit at a restaurant dinner with his clients from work,
where one of the clients tells a misogynistic joke about a woman getting a vibrator stuck in her
vagina and going to the ER to have it removed. Carol is portrayed here as separated from her
society: first, her hair, makeup, dress, and relative youth are mannequin-perfect compared to the
other two wives at the dinner; second, Carol is spaced out, distant, while the other two, older
wives at the table titter and bray at every pause in the piggish jokester’s crude story. When one of
the clients’ wives notices Carol’s lack of a response to the joke’s punchline, she says,
“Somebody doesn’t seem to like your joke, Ted.” And at this Greg utters a concerned, “Carol?”
Carol looks both absent and panicked even though her hair, makeup, posture and dress are in
perfect Stepfordian order. As she and Greg leave the restaurant, she apologizes and Greg is
disappointed but understanding, saying, “Just, you’re overexerted I guess.” They walk from the
restaurant slowly, arm in arm as one would with a sickly person, not with romantic heat. This
11
scene with his clients is the beginning of Greg’s supportive but hangdog disappointment with
Carol’s condition.
Among the many reasons Safe has gained wide recognition as a masterpiece is that
Haynes refused to let his characters become clichés. Dennis Lim, writing about the film for
Criterion in 2014 observed, “The film’s signal attribute is its deadpan ambiguity.” Greg is far
from a model husband, but neither is he monstrous or unfeeling about Carol’s plight. As they
walk from the restaurant he says, “Maybe the doctor can give you something for it.” The doctor
is dismissive, gives Carol some ointment for a rash, tells her to stop the fruit diet she’s doing
with a friend, and to lay off dairy. To stop eating dairy is severe advice because Carol is a self-
proclaimed “milkacholic” who doesn’t even drink coffee, but takes milk as her singular indulgent
comfort food11. Even her most mundane comforts, then, are violated by paternalistic authority.
But Greg, though he is a benefactor of paternalistic norms, remains loyal and understanding to
Carol as she navigates her illness, despite his frustration.
Carol herself is oblivious to her second-class status in her marriage, and in her society.
Her life is grotesquely unexamined, so much so that she fails to recognize the demise that her
increasingly frequent episodes of asthma, panic attacks, headaches, and rashes portend. Northrop
11
In “Health and safety in the home: Todd Haynes’s clinical white world,” Glynn Davis reads Safe as a critique of
whiteness, whereby Carol’s milk addiction is aligned with her Wrenwood wardrobe (white), her last name, and her
white igloo as the thematic chassis of the film.

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 Michael Filas

Frye speaks to this lack of recognition as important to tragedy:

Tragedy seems to move up to an Augenblick or crucial moment from which point the road
to what might have been and the road to what will be can be simultaneously seen. Seen
by the audience, that is: it cannot be seen by the hero if he is in a state of hybris, for in
that case the crucial moment is for him a moment of dizziness, when the wheel of fortune
begins its inevitable cyclical movement downward. (213)
While we can see Carol develop a “dizziness” that seems unrelenting through the end of the film,
her hubris is less apparent. It is not arrogance that prevents Carol from recognizing that an
alternate life is possible for her. It is her lack of desire for any life particularly different from the
one she is in. And perhaps this lack of desire is a way into a reading of Carol’s fatal flaw as
hubris. If she is surrounded by characters who are trying, however morally lost they may be, to
hold their socioeconomic station and she herself is merely going through the motions: is that
hubris? Perhaps that is a forced reading. Instead, I would read Carol White as pharmakos, a
scapegoat of sorts. Frye writes:
Irony isolates from the tragic situation the sense of arbitrariness, of the victim’s having
been unlucky, selected at random or by lot, and no more deserving of what happens to
him than anyone else would be. If there is a reason for choosing him for catastrophe, it is
12
an inadequate reason, and raises more objections than it answers. Thus the figure of a
typical or random victim begins to crystallize in domestic tragedy as it deepens in ironic
tone. We may call this typical victim the pharmakos or scapegoat. . . . The pharmakos is
neither innocent nor guilty. He is innocent in the sense that what happens to him is far
greater than anything he has done provokes, like the mountaineer whose shout brings
down an avalanche. He is guilty in the sense that he is a member of a guilty society, or
living in a world where such injustices are an inescapable part of existence. (41)
While Carol is empty of desire, and markedly unaccomplished in self-love, she can also be read
as a representation of a perfectly suited bourgeois wife who defers to her husband and who takes
for granted her position in society, a guilty society. But her bourgeois suitability and deference to
Greg stumble when her environmental illness interrupts their sex life. At bedtime, Greg stops
recounting a story from his workday to comment on Carol’s newly permed hair, saying he likes
it, and Carol says in a flat voice, “I’m glad honey,” and gets into bed but makes no eye contact.
Greg, off camera says “sexy,” then paces around to the end of the bed, his body language
reflecting that he’s figuring out that they won’t be having sex that evening. “How’re you feeling?
Huh?” he asks. Carol looks up from her magazine and touches her temple, wincing. “I still have
this, uhm, this head thing.” And Greg says, “Oh boy.” He turns and removes his watch. “Holy
cow, what is going on here?” “Nothing.” “Nobody has a fucking headache every night of the

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 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

fucking week!” Greg says as he throws his watch into his pillow. He sits down on his edge of the
bed, defeated, with his back to her (see Figure 4). From the initial coitus scene at the start of the
film through this muted argument in bed, Safe depicts the absence of a truly romantic
relationship in Carol and Greg’s marriage. Haynes’s staging of this story, with the long shots in
particular, imply that the context is all important. These libidinous mismatches are a byproduct of
the guilty society, an inescapable part of existence when the woman must live subserviently to
her husband, when consumerist desire and a bedroom decorated in mirrors and showroom pastels
have displaced physical chemistry.
Consumerist desire is just part of the guilty society in Safe. Her condition, environmental
illness/multiple chemical sensitivity, is caused by various types of pollution, byproducts of
runaway capitalism, the poisonous evidence of societal guilt. Roger Ebert located these themes in
the film’s soundtrack:
You don’t always notice it, but during a lot of the scenes in Safe there’s a low-level hum
on the soundtrack. This is not an audio flaw but a subtle effect: It suggests that
malevolent machinery of some sort is always at work somewhere nearby. Air
conditioning, perhaps, or electrical motors, or idling engines, sending gases and waste
products into the air. The effect is to make the movie’s environment quietly menacing.
13
And the film also features a steady rattle of noise pollution from electronic media. Whenever
Carol is at home or in the car there is always AM talk radio, television infomercials, or pop
music on the radio12. If Carol is empty inside, there are always voices and noises of the guilty
society trying to fill that void, and the sounds are often toxic.
Carol’s marriage is further portrayed as a toxin in her life in the scene that picks up the
morning after her bedtime quarrel with Greg. It begins by showing him finishing his morning
bathroom routine by spraying on aerosol underarm deodorant and hairspray while he listens to a
daunting traffic report about the clogged L.A. freeways (and scenes of freeway traffic are
featured as haunting transitions elsewhere in the film, implying the guilty society). In her
bedroom, aural and chemical toxins abound. After his toilet, Greg stands at the foot of the bed
and Carol says, “I’m sorry honey,” and he says, “me too.” She stands and they embrace, then
Carol begins to heave in what appears to be convulsive crying. Greg utters, “It’s okay,” but after
a few seconds the heaves become more violent, and she pushes him away brusquely and vomits
on the carpet. On the one hand we understand she may be responding to the film of routine
chemicals Greg has applied to his body, but on the other hand her nauseous reaction to his
embrace symbolizes her marriage’s foundational demise (see Fig. 3).

12
See Christian for a deeper discussion of polyvocal soundtrack.

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 Michael Filas

Fig. 3. Carol vomits during a hug from her husband. Safe Blu-ray DVD. Criterion Collection. 2014.

The scenes that follow portray the widening separation between Carol and Greg, and
14 between Carol and her society. Sitting up in her bed one day, Carol is penning an inquiry letter to
one of these groups when Greg comes in frustrated because he’d been calling to her and she had
not responded. When he asks her what she is doing, Carol has a total lapse of comprehension and
panicked confusion. Blubbering, she says, “Oh God what is this? Where am I? Right now?” And
Greg, standing now in stupefied shock with his arms hanging limply at his sides, says gently,
“We’re in our house. Greg and Carol’s house.” This scene reflects the “dizziness” Frye refers to
when the tragic hero fails to understand the wheel of fortune turning downwards. It may also be
Greg’s point of recognition that Carol’s situation is more serious than he surmised, but it does not
change his approach much. Greg is consistently an unquestioning agent of the patriarchy, as
many feminist critiques have argued, and he infantilizes Carol in small habitual ways even as he
supports her quest for a cure. However, Carol’s descent into her illness and search for a cure
intensifies her separation from Greg and her society. She sets up a safe space in her home where
the carpet is covered with foil-lined panels, and she has an oxygen tank. Her illness becomes her
singular focus, and when she meets her friend Linda for lunch that is all she can talk about. Her
appearance changes as she becomes a full-time patient, no longer able to wear makeup, and at
home she listens to a self-help environmental illness cassette on her Walkman™ while she takes
a battery of vitamin supplements. Carol lives under the same roof as Greg but no longer shares a
bed or bedroom.
Once Carol settles in at Wrenwood her separation from her family ossifies, as does her

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 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

separation from nature and society at large. She takes a solo walk on a nature path while she
narrates a voice over of a simple letter she is writing to Greg and Rory, reporting that she’ll be
staying the “full amount” because she’s doing a bit better, and the desert landscape is beautiful
there. When Greg and Rory make a visit to Wrenwood they attend one of Peter’s sermons where
he speaks about how he no longer reads the newspapers or watches the news on TV because that
negative energy can affect his immune system, and his flock should also not partake of the news,
“Because if I really believe that life is really that devastating, that destructive, I’m afraid that my
immune system will believe it too. And I can’t afford to take that risk. Neither can you.” He then
leads the assembled group in his closing prayer, “We are one with the power that created us. We
are safe, and all is well in our world.” The congregants repeat the prayer in churchlike
conformity. Greg and Rory sit quietly during this session, but their sidelong looks reflect cynical
doubt at the message. This scene creates a sense of dread that the New Age dogma of Wrenwood
is misguided, even if, as a viewer, I don’t want to identify with Greg or Rory’s perspective.
Afterwards, the family walks back to her cabin. Greg carries her oxygen tank, the nostril tube
strapped to her face, and he asks her if she thinks Wrenwood is working. She says she does,
although we can see she is looking even thinner and unhealthier. The next day Carol approaches
her new more isolated igloo quarters, walking arm in arm with Greg, then she stumbles in a near
15
faint and takes several definitive steps away from him. He stops and asks if she’s alright. Pausing
a minute to get her balance, she says, “I think it might be your cologne.” Hands on his hips and
agitated, Greg says he’s not wearing any. Maybe it’s on his shirt, she says, and he sniffs his
collar, shrugs, and kicks a small rock away in disgust. At this point, Greg himself is clearly
among the toxins Carol’s system can’t withstand. He says, “Well, I guess we better get moving if
we’re gonna catch a plane. You gonna be okay?” And Carol says, “I’ll be fine. It’s just for a
short time. I’m fine.” Carol’s denial is never more apparent than here, where she fails to
recognize, as any tragic hero eventually does, her inevitable demise. Greg asks permission to hug
her, and does so while her arms hang limply at her sides, one holding up her oxygen tank. In
tragedy, after the fall, the hero normally has a moment of augenblick, recognition of what could
have been but is now lost forever. But Carol’s insistence that she’s fine belies her inability to
recognize that her former life, however undesirable, is nevermore. Her story ends before she ever
recognizes that she’s really not going to be fine, but the audience sees that she’s doomed.
That is the last we see of Greg and Rory, and the next act of the film depicts Carol
bonding, to a degree, with her Wrenwood cohort. She gets cajoled into making an awkward
birthday speech during a particularly joyous evening meal that she had cooked with a fellow
resident with whom she has a platonic flirtation going, Chris (James LeGros). Her speech reveals
that she is learning the vernacular of Wrenwood, of Peter’s preaching, but the unspoken and

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 Michael Filas

obvious message is that interiority eludes her. It is after this evening that Carol speaks to the
mirror, attempting to learn self-love, but a cipher cannot know love. Her marriage with Greg,
despite their mutual loyalty, is fatally flawed, irretrievably mired in disempowerment and her
washed out desire. In the Blu-ray commentary, Haynes says of Carol in the early scenes of the
film that “She’s not connected to anybody,” that “she’s squished out of the frame,” that “she’s on
the margins.” And on the same commentary, Julianne Moore says of the voice she used for Carol
that she “wasn’t making any contact with my vocal cords.” Carol has been created as an empty
presence in the suburban environment, a feminist nightmare of total capitulation to the demands
of a rigged patriarchal society. In an interview with Oren Moverman, Moore speaks to how Carol
has been formed by her society: “It’s about a person who is completely and utterly defined by her
environment. Carol has been taught who she is supposed to be by what surrounds her. So when
each item in her life starts to make her sick, she no longer knows who she is” (217). Building on
this theme, critic Gaye Naismith reads Safe’s depiction of upper middle class White suburban
society as guilty, and Carol’s lost perspective as inextricable from it.
The film investigates the extent to which we depend on distinctions between inside and
outside and between self and other, both as a society and as individuals, in creating a
sense of order and control and in maintaining coherent belief systems. While Haynes
16
shows us how such distinctions are sustained, he is perhaps even more interested in
situations and circumstances where these rule-of-thumb distinctions become muddied or
can no longer be applied. [Safe] presents a number of “sites of confusion” where
exteriority and interiority can no longer be clearly circumscribed. (Naismith 364)
This interior-exterior confusion is perhaps most profoundly portrayed via the well-documented
feminist critique depicted through Carol’s remarkable passivity. To read Carol White’s story as
tragedy, then, we must see her lost marriage and absence of a useful role in society as a
catastrophic loss set in a guilty society. Carol hasn’t the capability to desire anything but the
situation she has, so her dying or dead marriage reads as tragedy, or at least as ironic tragedy. She
is hollow in her marriage, hollow among others, and hollow when she is alone making futile
efforts at self-love.

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 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

Safe as a Late-Pandemic Looking Glass

Fig. 4. Bedroom mirrors reflecting a hollow marriage. Safe Blu-ray DVD. Criterion Collection. 2014.
17
Like many critics and film festival curators this decade, my interest in Safe derives from
the parallels I see in pandemic life and the signifiers of Carol’s quest for achieving a healthy
distance from the environment that makes her sick. In the years since the pandemic began, there
have been phases, particularly in the earlier months in 2020, when agoraphobic quarantine,
suddenly quiet streets, and closed shops and restaurants found vast numbers of Americans
sheltering at home, afraid of contact with others, fearful of contracting a mysterious and
potentially deadly disease. The way families retreated into their “bubbles” reminds me, in some
ways, of the way Carol seeks to manage her “load” and to establish a toxin free “safe space”
where she can “clear.” In the early pandemic bubbles people managed exposure, deciding which
outsiders were good and necessary risks, figuring out who was cautious enough in their
quarantine, masking, and hand washing practices to enter their bubbles. The 2020 critical
reconsiderations of Safe, as inspired by the culture of fear, also came from a political time when
Donald Trump was president. David Roth wrote in the New Yorker of Trump’s handling of the
COVID-19 pandemic and its parallels with Ronald Reagan’s negligent approach to the AIDS
crisis in the 1980s, when Safe is set. The political climate during and since the Trump years has
marked the pandemic era with an intensified culture of division, where all politics have been
identity politics, and everything from vaccination to complying with masking rules has been
mired in polarized tension. From within that fraught vacuum prognosticators predicted a

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 Michael Filas

collective letting go of restraint and tension when the pandemic ended.

As the first wave of coronavirus began to recede, the press was emphasizing how ready
Americans were for a post-pandemic release. For example, in January 2021 Nicholas Christakis
of the Yale Human Nature Lab, discussed a hedonistic new “roaring 20s” on CNN:
We’re gonna enter a post-pandemic period, which, if history is a guide, all of us who have
been cooped-up, have been saving our money, ... people become more religious, more
abstemious, more risk averse—all of these trends will unwind. And people will
relentlessly seek out social opportunities in night clubs, and bars, and political rallies, and
sporting events, and musical concerts and so on. There might [be] sexual licentiousness.
People with a lot of pent up desire for social, that includes, of course, sexual interactions.
More liberal spending, for example. [The] economy will boom and so on. So all of these
sort of experiences that are now being constrained by the germ will reverse.
Of course, Christakis did not forecast the Delta or Omicron variants, the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, or the global economic impacts of that situation, nor did he anticipate the deeper
reflection that many people are doing in response to the pandemic going on for more than two
years. Looking back, the discussions of a hedonistic “roaring 20s13” fizzled and the conversation
has moved towards deeper, more constructive and introspective post-pandemic changes, not
18
hedonism but rather a reconsideration of foundational aspects of life like work, home, nature, and
community14.
While Carol’s affliction makes her an isolated exception, while the world continues
around her as she falls into intensified symptoms of environmental illness, Americans have
experienced the COVID-19 virus as a community—isolated from society together, collectively.
Having been through a few iterations of premature optimism that the pandemic was nearly over,
the last two years and counting of pandemic life allowed many to re-evaulate their pre-pandemic
lives, reflecting on what they’ve valued and appreciated during that time. In February 2020, Pew
Research Center reported that a small majority of all Americans were typically trying to do two
things at once, and 60% of adults said they sometimes felt too busy to enjoy life, even more so
for parents with kids under 18 years-old15. The pandemic years have slowed things down. In
February 2022, Pew reported that 64% of those working from home during the pandemic said
that it made it easier to achieve a work-life balance and 78% said they’d like to continue working
from home all or most of the time16. Although 60% of Americans have jobs that cannot be done
from home, the change among those who have been able to do so reflects an awakening. The

13
See also Coyle, and Arnold-Forster.
14
See Stanton.
15
See Van Kessel.
16
See Parker.

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 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

“great resignation” reveals a broad rethinking of U.S. citizens’ relationship with their jobs, and
the staying power of remote work is showing a changed relationship with home as a hybrid space
where professional life can occur alongside domestic life. Carol, on the other hand, lost her
community and left her home because of her peculiar illness, and found only cultish community
among fellow environmentally ill sufferers at Wrenwood.
The state of marriages provides another point of entry in considering Safe as a pandemic
looking glass. If Carol and Greg’s marriage is a casualty of her tragic illness, then, how does that
compare with the pandemic’s effect on contemporary marriages? By contrast, a 2020 study
conducted by the American Family Survey, reported that the share of married people ages 18-55
saying their marriage is in trouble declined from 40% in 2019 to 29% in 2020. Further, for most,
the post-pandemic marriage is stronger than it was previously with a majority reporting both a
deepened commitment to the marriage, and an even larger majority reporting that the coronavirus
pandemic made them appreciate their partner more17. In general, more marriages in America
have gotten stronger through the pandemic, not weaker. In another study, this one from sociology
journal, Socius, the rate of both marriage and divorce within the five states sampled, were down
during the pandemic18. This can possibly be taken as cause for comparative optimism, as another
way of putting distance between Carol White’s marital demise and late-pandemic survival.
19
Contemporary members of the laptop class may not be saying “I love you” into the
affirmation looking glass, but they might be reflecting like Carol at an earlier moment, when she
asked, “Oh God, what is this? Where am I? Right now?” And although Carol’s question came to
her in a moment of flustered and confused panic, evidence is showing that Americans are
approaching the late pandemic as a time not for panic, but to thoughtfully reevaluate life
choices—and options—around work, home, and desires for happiness. A New York Times focus
group about the pandemic experience19, reported of millennials that, “Several said they quickly
realized what they valued most in life when they found themselves working from home,” and
they found that in general the younger professional constituency in the workforce feel
empowered by the great resignation, that it empowered them to require a positive work
environment, fair pay, and a stimulating environment for professional growth. In her Washington
Post column, “’Zero Regrets.’ Six months after quitting, these workers are thriving,20” Karla
Miller spoke with workers who left their jobs six months ago as part of the great resignation and
found that most are happier in new positions or not working. Their situations have improved with
better working hours, the ability to work at home, and more healthful lifestyles with exercise and

17
See Seifman.
18
See Manning and Payne.
19
See Rivera and Healy.
20
See Miller.

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 Michael Filas

family time as big factors. In a study published in December 2020, a large majority of adults
were spending more time walking and gardening, and a smaller majority were spending more
time watching wildlife and being alone outdoors.21 By comparison, in the singular scene where
Carol is experiencing nature, walking alone on a trail at Wrenwood, her peaceful experience gets
abruptly interrupted when she inadvertently walks too close to the road and a large truck careens
past. This startles her and she runs away as best she can, but the incident triggers a setback for
having been momentarily exposed to the exhaust. It’s after this that Carol arranges to move into
the porcelain-lined igloo. Her relationship with nature, like her relationship with suburban life, is
a dead end.
I want to close this essay by considering a tertiary spectral character in Safe who haunts
the margins of the Wrenwood retreat. Seen though the film’s default extreme long shot, Lester
walks in the distance across the open spaces of the compound in only two scenes. He is dressed
in white pants and sweater, covered head to toe, his face beneath a balaclava hat and mask, his
hands in black gloves. Lester’s odd tiptoe gait makes him especially strange and mysterious,
raising his knees very high with each step as if navigating muck in a sideways sort of
locomotion, although he is moving across hardpan desert terrain. Carol first sees him while
penning a letter home on the deck of her cabin. When she pauses to watch him pass in the
20
distance, Peter approaches from behind and asks, “Is that Lester you’re watching?” and when she
asks after him, Peter says, “Lester is just. . . very, very afraid. Afraid to eat, afraid to breathe.”
The only other time we see Lester is after a subtly disturbing outdoor group therapy session at
which Peter has gone around the group asking each individual to share how they are responsible
for their ailment, how their attitude and perspective are what made them sick, and the scene
closes with Lester shambling past in the distance.
If Lester represents the crippling distortions that fear can have on an individual, it seems
Carol, before her fall, embodies a sort of delusional fantasy of being protected from risk. Agustín
Zarzosa looks at Carol’s sense of security, of safety, as a fantasy, a delusion:
[T]his fantasy does not result from a traumatic event in her life but lies at the foundation
of what little life Carol has. As a result of this fantasy, her life becomes devoted to the
creation of safe spaces, to the maintenance of privilege and contentment, to the exchange
of pleasantries, and to the rule of triviality. The source of her illness cannot be localized
because the fantasy of safety has become sutured into life, becoming almost synonymous
with it. (60)
Zarzosa’s read on safety as fantasy provides a provocative way of seeing the late-pandemic
moment as one of possible reckoning. Those who have the option to do so are reevaluating their
21
See Morse.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

life habits, even their relationship with coronavirus safeguards. As each citizen lets down their
guard and navigates increasing their “load,” letting down masks in this space or that, and re-
entering a changed society, they are being realistic. The sense of safety from coronavirus
infection, at this point, is no longer sustainable as a fantasy nor as an easily achievable way of
life. Americans are learning to live with pandemic risks in their midst instead of relying on a
false sense of security. Rather than embracing a short-sighted fantasy of a new “roaring ‘20s,”
they are rethinking the sense of home, and how that space is also a place for work. Rethinking
the sense of community, of travel, and even of marriage and relationships. In short, the pandemic
has trampled the fantasy of safety and provoked reconsideration of the idea of safety and of how
lives can be shaped. Haynes too was thinking about incorrectly shaped lives when he conceived
Safe, as he told Rob White in interview: “What interested me in Safe was how somebody could
reach an ultimate place and [be] brought to a sense of consciousness, when they found
themselves completely at odds with—constitutionally just in opposition to—that environment
and who they thought they were supposed to be” (145-6).
In reading Safe as a cautionary tragedy for this late-pandemic time, I see Carol and Lester
as two possibilities. Following Carol’s path, citizens fail to conceive for themselves a satisfying
life connected to desires based on individual needs and goals. Continuing in the work-a-day go-
21
go perspective that had engulfed so many in pre-pandemic times leads to Carol-like emptiness.
Now, in late-pandemic times, as mask mandates lift and American society begins to discover
what post-pandemic lives will look like, few want to be like Lester and remain fixated on the
threat of infection to a point of social paralysis. There is a path forward, ideally one that retains
some of the silver lining of quarantine life, some of the advantages of remote work, some of the
connections with nature, and some of strengthening of committed partnerships, while
rediscovering the pleasures of social life when risk of infection is not the focal point. Perhaps the
point is not to indulge in a hedonistic roaring ‘20s where Americans party to forget themselves,
but rather to savor the awakened, thoughtful, deeper satisfaction of being connected to their
station in life and to appreciate the re-emerging communities they’ve been missing.

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 Michael Filas

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‘20s?” The Conversation, 29 Apr. 2021, theconversation.com/will-the-end-of-the-covid-
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Pandemic Roaring ‘20s.” CNN, 2 Jan. 2021, www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2021/01/02/will-the
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Christian, Laura. “Of Housewives and Saints: Abjection, Transgression, and Impossible
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Coyle, Jake. “In visions of post-pandemic life, Roaring ‘20s beckon again.” AP News, 28 May
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Doane, Mary Ann. “ Pathos and Pathology: The Cinema of Todd Haynes.” Camera Obscura 57,
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Ebert, Roger. Review of Safe. RogerEbert.com, 28 Jul. 1995, www.rogerebert.com/reviews/safe-
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Haynes, Todd. Far from Heaven, Safe, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Three
Screenplays, New York: Grove Press, 2003.
—-, director & writer. Safe. American Playhouse Theatrical Films, 1995.

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—-. Interviewed by Scott Tobias. “Todd Haynes on the Unsafe World of Safe.” The Dissolve, 18
Dec. 2014, thedissolve.com/features/interview/856-todd-haynes-on-the-unsafe-world-of-
safe/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2022.
—-. Interviewed by Nick Davis. Film Comment, 11 Nov. 2015, filmcomment/blog/interview-
todd-haynes/. Accessed 5 Apr. 2022.
—-. Interviewed by Rob White. Todd Haynes, University of Illinois Press, 2013, pp. 131-164.
—-, and Julianne Moore and Christine Vachon. “Audio commentary featuring Haynes, actor
Julianne Moore, and producer Christine Vachon.” Safe Blu-ray DVD. Criterion
Collection. 2014.
Hosey, Sara. “Canaries and Coalmines: Toxic Discourse in The Incredible Shrinking Woman and
Safe.” Feminist Formations, vol. 23, no. 2, 2011, pp. 77-97.
Jacobowitz, Florence, and Lippe, Richard. “Todd Haynes’ Safe: Illness as Metaphor in the ‘90s.”
Cineaction, vol. 43, 1997, pp. 14-17.
Lim, Dennis. “Safe: Nowhere to Hide.” Criterion Current, 11 Dec. 2014, criterion.com/current/
posts/3394-sfe-nowhere-to-hide. Accessed 7 Mar. 2022.
Manning, Wendy D. and Krista K. Payne. “Marriage and Divorce Decline During the Covid-19
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World, vol. 7, 5 April 2021, doi.org/10.1177/23780231211006976. Accessed 5 May
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Miller, Karla L. “’Zero Regrets.’ Six months after quitting these workers are thriving.” The
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resignation-no-regrets/. Accessed 5 May 2022.
Morse, Joshua W. et. al. “COVID-19 and human-nature relationships: Vermonters’ activities in
nature and associated nonmaterial values during the pandemic.” Plos One, 11 Dec. 2020,
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243697. Accessed 25 May
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Marks, Brian. “’Safe’ at 25: Todd Haynes’s Masterpiece is His Most Chilling Work.” Tilt
Magazine, 23 Jun. 2020, tilt.goombastomp.com/film/safe-at-25-todd-haynes-masterpiece-
is-his-most-chilling-work/. Accessed 1 Apr. 2022.
Moore, Julianne. Interviewed by Oren Moverman. “And All is Well in our World—Making Safe:
Todd Haynes, Julianne Moore and Christine Vachon.” Projections 5: Film-makers on
Film-making. Eds. John Boorman and Walter Donohue. London: Faber and Faber, 1996,
pp. 198-234.
Naismith, Gaye. “Tales From the Crypt: Contamination and Quarantine in Todd Haynes’s Safe.”
The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science. Eds. Paula A. Treichler,

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Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. New York: New York University Press, 1998, pp. 360-
387.
Parker, Kim et. al. “COVID-19 Pandemic Continues to Reshape Work in America.” Pew Research
Center, 16 Feb. 2022, www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/02/16/covid-19-pandemic-
continues-to-reshape-work-in-america/. Accessed 25 May 2022.
Reid, Roddey. “Unsafe at Any Distance: Todd Haynes’ Visual Culture of Health and Risk.” Film
Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 3, Spring 1998, pp. 32-44.
Richter, Felix, with Statista. “The Great Resignation record: How many Americans left their jobs in
November 2021?” World Economic Forum, 18 Jan. 2022, www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/the
-great-resignation-in-numbers-record/. Accessed 3 May 2022.
Rivera, Adrian J. and Patrick Healy. “What Your Younger Employees Are Really Thinking.” New York
Times, 3 May 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/opinion/millennials-office-work.html?
smid=url-share. Accessed 3 May 2022.
Roth, David. “Todd Haynes’s Masterpiece ‘Safe’ is Now a Tale of Two Plagues.” The New Yorker, 28
Mar. 2020, www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/todd-hayness-masterpiece-safe-is-now-a-
tale-of-two-plagues. Accessed 1 Apr. 2022.
Seifman, Richard. “COVID-19 Impacts on Marriage and Divorce.” Impakter, 25 Mar. 2021,
impakter.com/covid-19-impacts-on-marriage-and-divorce/. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
24 Stanton, Zack. “Post-Covid America Isn’t Going to be Anything Like the Roaring ‘20s.” Politico, 18 Mar.
2021, www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/18/roaring-2020s-coronavirus-flu-pandemic-
john-m-barry-477016. Accessed 2 May 2022.
Stuber, Dorian. “Patient Zero? Illness and Vulnerability in Todd Haynes’s /Safe/.” Parallax, vol. 11, no.
2, 2005, pp. 81-92.
Tappe, Anneken. “The great resignation continues: 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs last month.”
CNN Business, 29 Mar. 2022, www.cnn.com/2022/03/29/economy/us-job-openings-quits-
february/index.html. Accessed 30 Mar. 2022.
Tougaw, Jason. “We’re Still Vulnerable: Todd Haynes’s Safe in 2011.” WSQ: Women’s Studies
Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 1 & 2, 2011, pp. 43-47.
Van Kessel, Patrick. “How Americans feel about the satisfactions and stresses of modern life.” Pew
Research Center, 5 Feb. 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/05/how-americans-feel-
about-the-satisfactions-and-stresses-of-modern-life/. Accessed 25 May 2022.
Wagner, Aaron. “How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected outdoor recreation in America?” Penn State
University News, 24 Jan. 2022, www.psu.edu/news/health-and-human-development/story/how-
has-covid-19-pandemic-affected-outdoor-recreation-america/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2022.
Zarzosa, Agustín. “Chapter Three: Diagnosing Suffering.” Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television,
Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013, pp. 47-66.

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 Todd Haynes’s Safe and the Covid-19 Pandemic Mirror on the Wall

BIO
Michael Filas is professor of English at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. He
has recently published articles and creative nonfiction in The Information Society, The
Journal of Experimental Fiction, The Writing Disorder, Fiction International, Specs, and
Passages North among others. He is an active panelist at annual meetings of the Society
for Literature, Science and the Arts. Michael holds a doctorate in American Literature
and Culture from University of Washington, Seattle (2001), and an MFA in fiction
writing from San Diego State University (1996).

25

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
E-ISSN: 2791-6553  VOLUME 11.11  DECEMBER 2022

Ismail Kadare’s Usage of Myth in Comprehending Albania’s National

Condition

Soham Mukherjee*
Dr. Madhumita Roy**
ABSTRACT

Albania is a small country located in the Balkan peninsula on the

Adriatic coast. Its complicated political history and a cultural
identity that straddles European and Asian makes the nation an
*Ph.D. Student, interesting subject for analysis based on national identity
Indian Institute of Engineering structures. Additionally, the nation has a rich oral tradition and
Science and Technology, often claims to have been the birthplace of Homeric poetry.
Shibpur Literature from this nation, however, is neither widely read nor
[email protected] available. The only Albanian literary export of note is Ismail
**Asst. Prof., Kadare who was awarded the inaugural Man Booker International
Indian Institute of Engineering Prize for his entire body of work and his efforts to bring Albanian
Science and Technology, culture to the global masses. Kadare’s writing style involves
Shibpur creating alternate historical timelines, extensive usage of allegory
[email protected] and, most significantly for this collection, the usage, re-usage and,
sometimes, reconstruction of Balkan myths.
This essay will analyse how Kadare uses myths in order to make
CITATION
sense of the national condition of Albania from the beginning of
Mukherjee, Soham and
Madhumita Roy. “Ismail World War II until the early 2000s when Albania began its process
Kadare’s Usage of Myth in of recuperating from the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. Indeed, this is
Comprehending Albania’s not Kadare’s only motivation for writing. He also intends to
National Condition.” Essence & develop a new Albanian identity that is separate from its Ottoman
Critique: Journal of Literature history. Albania was an Ottoman colony for over four centuries
and Drama Studies, vol. II, no. and was subsequently occupied and influenced – culturally and
II, 2022, pp. 26–41, economically – by new geopolitical powers in Eastern Europe
journalofcritique.com. such as Yugoslavia and Soviet Russia. In his novels, Kadare re-
contextualises myths to allegorically critique these foreign powers
as well as native politicians. In doing so, he attempts to show the
purity and nobility of authentic Albanian culture despite its
inherent atavism.

KEYWORDS

Mythology, national myths, Albania, Ismail Kadare, national

identity.
 Soham Mukherjee & Madhumita Roy

Albania is a small country located in the Balkan peninsula on the Adriatic coast. Its
complicated political history and a cultural identity that straddles European and Asian makes the
nation an interesting subject for analysis based on national identity structures. Additionally, the
nation has a rich oral tradition and often claims to have been the birthplace of Homeric poetry.
Literature from this nation, however, is neither widely read nor available. The only Albanian
literary export of note is Ismail Kadare who was awarded the inaugural Man Booker
International Prize for his entire body of work and his efforts to bring Albanian culture to the
global masses. Kadare’s writing style involves creating alternate historical timelines, extensive
usage of allegory and, most significantly for this collection, the usage, re-usage and, sometimes,
reconstruction of Balkan myths.
This essay will analyse how Kadare uses myths in order to make sense of the national
condition of Albania from the beginning of World War II until the early 2000s when Albania
began its process of recuperating from the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. Indeed, this is not Kadare’s
only motivation for writing. He also intends to develop a new Albanian identity that is separate
from its Ottoman history. Albania was an Ottoman colony for over four centuries and was
subsequently occupied and influenced – culturally and economically – by new geopolitical
powers in Eastern Europe such as Yugoslavia and Soviet Russia. In his novels, Kadare re-
27 contextualises myths to allegorically critique these foreign powers as well as native politicians.
In doing so, he attempts to show the purity and nobility of authentic Albanian culture despite its
inherent atavism. Particular attention will be given to three specific novels, namely The General
of the Dead Army (1963), The Three-arched Bridge (1978) and Spring Flowers, Spring Frost
(2000) as these provide a good cross-section of Kadare’s depiction of Albanian culture in post-
War times.

A Brief History of Albania

Albanians trace their identity back to the “Illyrian tribesmen” who lived in a similar
geographical region. They were occupied consecutively by the Greeks, the Romans and the
Byzantines. Indeed, the region was conquered by the Ottomans in 1478 along with most of the
Balkans. The Albanians remained colonised by the Ottomans for over a century and only
achieved independence in 1912. This was followed by a period of turbulent autonomy as a
republic and then as a sort of kingdom under the stewardship of the self-styled King Zog I. After
this came occupation by Fascist Italy during the Second World War. Then, following a brief civil
war, communist partisans established the People’s Republic of Albania and placed the would-be
dictator Enver Hoxha at the head of the nation. The next few decades Albania spent as satellites
of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Maoist China. After breaking off relations with China in

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Ismail Kadare’s Usage of Myth in Comprehending Albania’s National Condition

1978, Hoxha plunged Albania into a decade of isolation until his death and the eventual collapse
of European communism in the 1990s (Cameron).
As mentioned above, Albania began the twentieth century as a colony of the Ottoman
Empire; Consequently, in 1913, much as would happen with the former colonies of European
maritime empires throughout the early to mid-twentieth century, external “major powers drew
blunt pencil lines over a map of the Balkans…[which]…left as many Albanians outside the new
country's borders as within them” (Hall 161). In 1918, some parts of Macedonia and all of
Kosovo became part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes which was later to
become Yugoslavia. During this time, the largely Muslim Albanians in these territories were not
recognised as a separate nation and there were efforts to Slavicize the Albanian Islamic
institutions. These efforts were to essentially de-Islamicise the Albanians not with the intention
to eliminate the effects of Ottoman colonisation but to assimilate them into the distinctly
Christian Yugoslav Kingdom despite significant opposition (Babuna 68).
At the same time, Albania became a monarchy in 1928 when the tribal chieftain Ahmet
Zogu declared himself king (Ahmetaj 208). He, however, disappeared seeking refuge in Britain
and other Western nations as soon as Fascist Italy invaded at the beginning of the Second World
War (Hall 161-2). Albania remained part of the Italian Empire nominally under Victor
28
Emmanuel III till the end of the war when it became a dependency of Yugoslavia. By this time,
Enver Hoxha was already Prime Minister of Albania after the victory of the communist partisans
in the Albanian civil war. As Tito and Stalin differed in their ideas of socialism, Hoxha sided
with the latter and paved the way for Albania to become a Soviet satellite which it remained so
until 1961. Khrushchev’s attempt to bring Tito back on side threatened to undermine Hoxha’s
position in Albania and, therefore, Hoxha sought new patrons in Maoist China. However, as
China’s policy towards the United States changed and it became more open, Hoxha decided once
again to break relations with Albania’s more powerful ally. This time, with no other options left,
Hoxha chose to isolate Albania from the rest of the world and pursue a programme of staunch
Stalinism (Larrabee 62; Hall 162-3).

The Importance of Myth in Nation-building

Among ethnic communities and socio-cultural groups created after cataclysmic events
such as the World Wars there is an almost Oedipus-like desire to locate and establish their
origins. Often these origins are established through myth or mythologization of history. Myths of
ancestry and national foundation are common in Africa and Asia. The story of the foundation of
Rome also falls into this category. However, when it comes to modern mythmaking, nationalism
became a central trope. National ethnic identities are established through myths of descent.

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 Soham Mukherjee & Madhumita Roy

By placing the present in the context of the past and of the community, the myth
of descent interprets present social changes and collective endeavours in a manner
that satisfies the drive for meaning by providing new identities that seem to be
also very old, and restoring locations, social and territorial, that allegedly were the
crucibles of those identities. (Smith 62)
th
A 20 century champion of the Rilindja Movement or the Albanian National Awakening,
Ismail Kadare promotes the idea that Albania was “an initial ground of Western European
civilization” (Sulstarova 395). This is a continuation of the long-established concept of
Albanianism which purportedly defines Albanian culture above all its linguistic,
geographical and religious divisions.
The aforementioned concept of Albanianism was propounded by Pashko Vasa, an
Albanian functionary of the Ottoman Empire, who was also an ethnographer, folklorist and
nationalist. His sole purpose, and that of Kadare, in constructing such an origin story was to
establish the Albanians as a people who should be recognised within Europe. Vasa places the
Albanians into a category of people “whose origin goes back to mythological times” (Bayraktar
3), more specifically the times of the Pelasgians, who were the predecessors of the Ancient

29 Greeks, and the Illyrians, who were contemporaries of the Ancient Greeks. Although his brand of
nationalism mostly called for more autonomy for Albania but within the Ottoman Empire
(Bayraktar 3), he paved the way for the Albanian revival or reawakening and influenced
contemporary and later Albanian nationalists who pioneered the Rilindja movement. From
among them, Sami Frasheri, and, perhaps more so, his brother, Naim, were significant influences
on Kadare.
Ismail Kadare is well aware of the power that literature possesses in influencing
collective memory. This is why he chooses to write historical novels mythologising and
mythifying the past where necessary. Indeed, he makes extensive use of Albanian myths and
folklore in his novels as plot points as well as to amplify Albania’s ancient culture. This is a not
uncommon practice among nationalists attempting to reconstruct their nation’s identities by
“sacralising the land as national territory” (Abrahams 4). “Both the lore and the folk became
useful to those who sought to augment the cultural value of the land” (Weiner, qtd. in Abrahams
4). Nationalism is thus directly linked to the land it grows on and requires its physical existence
to continue to strengthen. This is where folklore becomes important.
Mythification of the nation, its people and its culture is a way of “organising history so as
to make sense of it for that particular community” (Schopflin qtd. in Bayraktar 5). This
organisation of history is exactly what Keith Jenkins was referring to when he wrote: “History is
never for itself; it is always for someone” (21). Vasa was doing this to specifically give Albania

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 Ismail Kadare’s Usage of Myth in Comprehending Albania’s National Condition

an identity of its own separate from the Greeks and the Serbs. However, this recourse to myth is
significant for this thesis as “a pervasive concern with the myths of identity and authenticity are a
feature common to all post-colonial literatures in english” (Ashcroft et al 9).

Myth and mythmaking in Kadare’s Novels

Ismail Kadare first began writing in the 1950s just as a new Albanian literary scene began
to emerge after the post-War Communist reprisals. Hoxha can be given some credit in nurturing
this scene although soon he would be imposing severe restrictions on its freedoms. Having lived
through the Second World War as a child in Gjirokaster, the hometown he shared with his
country’s dictator Hoxha, Kadare only knew an Albania that was either occupied by or under the
strong influence of a foreign power (Morgan 36-37). Yet, he was also acutely aware of Albania’s
own rich culture as is evidenced by the importance it is given in almost all of his novels but
especially the three chosen for analysis in this essay. Incidentally, Kadare was chosen to study at
the Gorky Institute in Moscow where he spent two years between 1958 and 1960. There he was
taught the tenets of socialist realism but he refused to be indoctrinated and, in fact, outright stated
that the experience only taught him “how not to write” (Bellos vii).

30 All of these factors – cultural, social, political, historical and, even, academic – were
actively influencing Kadare as he began his writing career (Morgan 108). For a writer of his
ability, the ground was thus fertile to develop a writing style that was unique yet, as the Man
Booker International prize ratified, universal and relevant. Indeed, it is in order to make his
writing more accessible to and easier to identify with for the Albanian public Kadare makes
extensive use of Balkan mythology in his novels. The novels chosen for this paper as mentioned
earlier are The General of the Dead Army (1963), The Three-arched Bridge (1978) and Spring
Flowers, Spring Frost (2000). The first of these novels shows how Kadare mythifies the
Albanian people and culture; the second shows how native myths influence the population and
how they can be manipulated to meet the nefarious ends of hostile foreign powers; and the third
shows how these myths are incongruous with Albania’s march towards modernity and yet still
define Albanian national and cultural identity.
The General of the Dead Army is Kadare’s “first major prose work” and is a process of
“re-cuperation of history in the service of national identity itself” (Weitzman 283). The title itself
gives us a sense of unreality and opens up the realms of myth and myth-making. The plot is a
fictional depiction of the repatriation of the corpses of Italian soldiers who had lost their lives on
Albanian soil during the Second World War. These missions took place in the 1960s and later.
This novel follows a nameless Italian general and an equally nameless Italian priest who travel
around the Albanian countryside looking for the graves of Italian soldiers, exhuming and

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Soham Mukherjee & Madhumita Roy

identifying them, so that they can be taken back to their homelands and given a proper, perhaps
more respectful, burial. Through the general’s interaction with the natives and posthumous
testimonies of Italian soldiers found in their diaries, the true impact of the war on Albanian lives
is laid bare.
Kadare establishes the atmosphere of this novel very early. The rain and the mud that will
dominate the story are present in the first paragraph itself. Indeed, the impenetrable and hostile
nature of the “foreign soil” is established right at the beginning (The General 3). This
immediately exoticises Albania. The descriptions of the weather, the mountains, the people, etc.
place the nation at par with the Orient of imperial Europe. The urban modernity of Tirana that is
occasionally visible in the novel seems out of place. The Albanian rural landscape is omnipresent
and its hostility constantly restated. The hostility of the Albanians themselves is also ever
present. Although, for the most part, everyone is co-operative, there is ample evidence that the
general and the priest were seen with suspicion.
Since the novel is told from the perspective of the Italians, the mythification is laced with
orientalism. Discussing the fighting ability of the Albanians, the general says they are “[m]en just
like anyone else. You would never believe that in battle they would turn into wild
beasts” (Kadare, The General 23). The priest later remarks that this savagery was “ingrained in
31
their psychology" (Kadare, The General 27). He explains that the Albanians possess “an atavistic
instinct [which] drives them into war” and once they have begun fighting “there is no limit to
how far they are prepared to go.” Indeed, he further suggests that the Albanian nature “requires
war” and that, during peacetime, “the Albanian becomes sluggish and only half alive, like a
snake in winter” (Kadare, The General 28).
The most significant aspect of Albanian culture, and one that dominates much of
Kadare’s novels, which is used to mythify the people is the ancient code of honour known as the
Kanun. The priest becomes a vessel for Kadare’s own musings regarding the feasibility of the
Kanun and its ancient traditions in the modern world. The priest discusses the concept of the
vendetta with near academic rigour. He invokes an Oscar Wilde epigram which states that “the
lower classes feel a need to commit crimes in order to experience the strong emotions that we can
derive from art.” He suggests that “crimes” could be substituted for “war” or “vengeance” as he
understands that “the Albanians are not criminals in the common law sense.” All of their murders
are in conformity with the Kanun and, therefore, entirely legal. He envisions the Albanian
highlanders as living out roles in a tragic play set in the inhospitable environment of “the
plateaux or the mountains” where death comes to them inevitably if not brought by the harsh
conditions, then by “an imprudent remark, a joke that went a little too far, or a covetous glance at
a woman.” He also asserts that often vendettas have no passion attached but are simply the

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 Ismail Kadare’s Usage of Myth in Comprehending Albania’s National Condition

results of “obeying a clause of unwritten law” (Kadare, The General 134-5). The general muses
that perhaps the psychotic desire for violence among the Albanians might be a result of their
history of invasion, occupation and oppression. Once again, he likens them to animals. This time
it is one which when threatened goes into “a state of immobility in a state of extreme tension,
muscles coiled, every sense on the alert” before retaliating (Kadare, The General 136).
Although these comparisons are, superficially, demeaning to the Albanians, the reader
cannot help but be attracted to them. The condescending and brash tones of the priest and the
general respectively ensure that sympathy for the Albanians is aroused. The comparisons to
animals are intended to remove the Albanians from the realm of the human. Furthermore, the
discussion of the Kanun paints a picture of an ancient peoples living under a similarly ancient
legal framework and nobly remaining faithful to it even as it leaves a trail of blood in its wake.
This is only one half of the mythifying process. Having removed the Albanians from the realm of
humanity, he then seeks to elevate them above it.
This is done by the story of Nik Martini who tried to defend an entire beachhead by
himself. Nik Martini was merely a “peasant from the mountains” yet his exploits had become
stuff of legend. “He fought in four different places that day, until he had no strength in him left to

32 fight.” This lone sniper had become endowed with nearly magical powers as he moved swiftly
from outcrop to outcrop and even escaped shelling from a mortar. Only when his ammunition
had run out and “lorryloads of soldiers [were] still driving past towards Tirana” did he begin to
“howl with grief”, was heard by the Italian soldiers who “tore him to pieces with their daggers.”
Yet, this hero has no grave but “only a song to keep his memory alive.” Thus, Nik becomes a
mythical figure representing the thousands of Albanian peasants who fought against extreme
odds and were killed during the Italian invasion. He is almost an avatar of the great Albanian
mytho-historical hero, Skanderbeg, who tried to re-establish the nation of Albania by single-
handedly rebelling against the Ottomans in the 15th century. Much like Skanderbeg, Nik Martini
is a folk hero. It is possible that the story is older or, perhaps, the exploits of multiple men put
together, as some of the locals argued. However, the core of the myth is ancient: “the trunk goes
back a long way” (Kadare, The General 154-55).
Essentially, the myth of the lone hero has been transformed to make sense of the
contemporary condition and also to inspire others to commit similar heroic deeds. This type of
myth formation is important for the nation as it helps in building a community. Kali Tal in her
book Words of Hurt: Reading the Literature of Trauma (1996), states that individual memories
of trauma when told and re-told in various manifestations “enter the vocabulary of the larger
culture where they become tools for the construction of national myths” (Radstone 142).
Furthermore, myths allow for a “rejection of historicity” and a creation of the “past in the

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 Soham Mukherjee & Madhumita Roy

present” through rituals and cultural symbols (Wawrzyniak and Lewis 23). In this case, the
cultural symbol is the image of the Albanian mountaineer defending his land with only his rifle
and his honour. This sense of honour is significant in engendering a unified national identity. It
had driven Albanian men from their mountainous homes to the coast to fight the invading forces.
“They came from considerable distances, without anyone having organised them.” It was as if
“something very ancient…like an instinct” drove them towards the sea. These men were “not
even concerned to know what country it was now assailing them.” They were united through this
ancient instinct into one national body and were simply aware they needed to fight (Kadare, The
General 156-7). It is to facilitate such unified action that national myths exist, especially myths
about lone fighters such as Nik Martini.
In The Three-arched Bridge, Kadare reconstructs an already existing Albanian myth to
create the central plot point. He reuses the myth of Rozafa’s Castle but changes some key points
to adapt it to his story. In the original myth, three brothers were building a castle at Shkoder, in
northwest Albania. One of the walls would be destroyed overnight. No matter how many times
they re-built it, the wall kept on collapsing. They were made aware that this was the work of
angered spirits of the land from whom permission had not been sought before beginning
construction. The only solution was to immure someone within the wall and build it around them.
33
It had to be one of the wives of the three brothers. They decide that whoever’s wife brings their
lunch the next morning will be the chosen victim. They swear not to tell their wives about this
pact. But the two elder brothers do while only the youngest one does not. So, the next day, the
wives of the elder brothers feign discomfort and refuse to take lunch to the man. Rozafa, the
youngest brother’s wife, happily volunteers and is walled up. There would be no more issues
with construction and the castle stands to this day (Gould 211).
For Albanians, this tale teaches the lesson of the besa, the given word of honour, which
must never be broken and “that all labour, and every major task, requires some kind of
sacrifice” (Kadare, The Three-arched Bridge 84, 89). Rozafa’s ultimate acceptance of her
victimhood and the resulting success of the construction bears out the second lesson. The first
lesson, however, is slightly tenuous. The castle was being built to protect the city of Shkoder and,
being close to the northern border, to protect the rest of Albania as well. While the youngest
brother remained true to his word, the elder brothers did not wish to make such an extreme
sacrifice and were willing to betray their country to protect their wives (Raymond 63). In the
novel, Kadare replaces the castle with a bridge which would be the site of the first incursion of
the imminent Ottoman invasion of Albania (Kadare, The Three-arched Bridge 165).
The story is set sometime in the 14th century. With the Ottoman invasion imminent, a
foreign company, ostensibly named “Roads and Bridges” sends envoys to the local count with a

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 Ismail Kadare’s Usage of Myth in Comprehending Albania’s National Condition

proposal to build a bridge over the Ujana e Keqe, the dangerous river that flows through the area
(Kadare, The Three-arched Bridge 11-12). However, some of the locals are not in favour of
building the bridge and one man named Murrash Zenebisha single-handedly attempts to destroy
the bridge. Here, we again have the motif of the lone folk hero trying to defend his home and
culture. Every night Murrash would swim underwater and cause tremendous damage to the
bridge. He wants to put the fear of the supernatural in the hearts of the builders. Just as he
manipulates the Rozafa myth for his own ends, the construction company uses the same myth to
turn the tables against him.
“Roads and Bridges” claimed that “Ferries and Rafts”, the company whose ferry service
the bridge would render obsolete had “[w]ith the help of paid bards, …spread the myth that the
spirits of the water will not tolerate the bridge and that it must be destroyed” (Kadare, The Three-
arched Bridge 73). In retaliation, “Roads and Bridges” sent out bards of their own who sang the
ballad of the three masons essentially reminding people that the problem of spirits damaging the
bridge could easily be solved through a foundation sacrifice or immurement. Indeed, they even
offer a reward for anyone willing to be voluntarily sacrificed (Kadare, The Three-arched Bridge
96, 100). Murrash is identified as the culprit and is punished by being sacrificed as the ostensible
victim. Therefore, Murrash, who was playing the role of the spirits of the water, the supernatural
34
representatives of local culture, is himself sacrificed. Thus, this sacrifice becomes an
abomination. The death of Murrash was a result of the struggle between two foreign powers to
impose their dominance on Albanian soil and, in the midst of it, it was Albania itself that was
unfairly sacrificed.
This is an even bigger tragedy for Kadare who maintains that Albania, along with Greece,
is the birthplace of Western civilisation. Jonathan Friedman writes that “the formation of Greek
national identity consists in the internalization of the way in which Western European
intellectuals, in constructing their own ‘civilized’ origins, identified Greece” (196). By equating
Albania with the Greeks and, indeed, superseding them, Kadare wishes to establish his nation as
the origin of Western civilisation. He does this in The Three-arched Bridge by way of a
conversation between his narrator, the monk Gjon, and another monk named Brockhardt. The
narrator claims that the Albanians’ language was older than Greek and it “was proved by the
words the Greek had borrowed from [their] tongue.” Indeed, it was “the names of gods and
heroes” such as “’Zeus’, ‘Dhemetra’, ‘Teris’, and ‘Odhise’, and ‘Kaos’, according to [their]
monks, stemmed from the Albanian words zë, for ‘voice’, dhe for ‘earth’, det for ‘sea’, udhë for
‘journey’, and haes for ‘eater’” (Kadare, The Three-arched Bridge 66).
“Mythical incidents constitute archetypal situations” (Sahlins 14). Therefore, they provide
a framework for those in the real world to comprehend similar situations. The great catalogue of

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 Soham Mukherjee & Madhumita Roy

Albanian myths available to Kadare provides him with the best avenue to help his nation come to
terms with its reality. Kadare wrote The Three-arched Bridge as the relations between Albania
and China had begun to worsen, 1976-78, leaving Albania on the cusp of being without any
significant political and financial backing to facilitate its development. This is the major cause of
the palpable anxiety that pervades the novel. The walling up of Murrash is an allegory for the
impending isolation of Albania. It is “a perverse pregnancy” and quite contrary to the Rilindja
claims of civilisational origin this walling up will not give birth to anything fruitful. If anything,
it will work in reverse and cause the decay of the national foetus. Within the novel, it is the story
of Rozafa that helps to comprehend the events of the fictional reality. In Kadare’s contemporary
world, his reconstruction of the myth was meant to help his readers comprehend what was about
to happen to them. Soviet Russia – “Ferries and Rafts” – had been a familiar exploitative foreign
agent while Maoist China – “Roads and Bridges” – brought with it greater modernisation but was
also a far more sinister and inscrutable force to reckon with. Now that this latter force was
distancing itself from Albania, the nation would be left at the mercy of its Ottoman legacy and
ancient customs.
Through this reconstruction of the original myth, Kadare reaches the heart of the
instability that has plagued Albania for centuries. The novel, and the original myth, “celebrate the
35
self-sacrificial patriotism of Rozafa, Murrash and Gjon [the novel’s narrator who feels he must
sacrifice himself in chronicling the events], they also expose the self-serving lies that
compromise the integrity of their castles, walls and country” (Raymond 65). Kadare has a
character, ostensibly an agent of “Roads and Bridges”, remark that “all great building works
resemble crimes” (Kadare, The Three-arched Bridge 87). This includes building of nations and in
such cases the “call of duty to a higher ideal … is of such urgency murder and even the murder
of kin by one’s own hand become acceptable.” The woman’s death “precludes the death of
innocent children” whom the castle will protect from invaders (Aleksic 3). Thus, Kadare portrays
the nobility of Albanians in their willingness to make sacrifices for the supposedly greater good.
At the same time, the readers are reminded of the fallibility of human nature and the particular
propensity for breaking the besa.
This dual Albanian nature is further explored in Spring Flowers, Spring Frost which,
being written long after the end of Communism, allowed Kadare greater room to write more
critically about the Albanian people, culture and history. This novel explores the relevance of the
myth of the snake husband. A woman is married off to a snake as a punishment for an offence
“the girl’s family or clan had committed” which “no one could remember.” Yet, she shows no
signs of unhappiness. It is revealed that the snake is actually a man who would appear every
night, make love to his bride and as soon as morning came would climb back into his snake-suit

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 Ismail Kadare’s Usage of Myth in Comprehending Albania’s National Condition

and resume a reptilian life. However, one night, wanting make her husband’s metamorphosis
permanent, the young woman burns the snake suit. This causes “the young man [to fade] away
before his bride’s eyes, and then [to vanish] entirely, and for ever.” The husband explains that he
had been “sentenced to spending three-quarters of [his] life in the form of a snake.” This means
he could only “live as a man for only one-quarter of the time” and that he shall faithfully return
to his reptilian form afterwards, without fail. The destruction of the snake suit amounts to a
breaking of this faith and, therefore, destroys him completely (Kadare, Spring Flowers 13-31).
Kadare chooses this myth as a counterfoil to the socio-cultural conditions of post-
communism Albania. This was a time when Albania was once again struggling to find its identity
that did not include its former Stalinist isolationism. This post-Hoxha search for a new identity
led to a renewed enthusiasm for religious identity and a resurgence of the Kanun with its
accompanying honour killings (de Rapper 31; Voell 85). The metamorphic snake-man is a
representation of what Kadare believes is Albania’s inherent European identity which is hidden
behind the violent connotations of a snake suit. The man that emerges out of the snake suit “was
a handsome young man, with fair hair cut in the fashion of the times” (Kadare, Spring Flowers
24). Thus, he is a representation of modernity which is bound by the curse of ancient tradition.
His fair hair and complexion clearly denote his European ethnicity.
36
The importance of the Kanun as a cultural framework that has maintained its relevance
and influence on 21st century Albania is evident in Spring Flowers, Spring Frost. When the
young generation is unable to identify with post-communist modernity moving towards
capitalism, they look toward Albania’s ancient cultural frameworks such as the Kanun. In
Benedict Anderson’s words, “The idea of a sociological organism moving calendrically through
homogeneous, empty time is a precise analogue of the idea of the nation” (26). It is the Kanun
that had existed in the ancient past and has survived into the present time. It had briefly been on
hiatus during the dictatorship as Hoxha had banned it. The revival of the Kanun came despite the
dormancy of religious practice as “the Kanun was both a practical legal code and ‘source of
moral authority’, which survived in a way that formal religion did not” (Morgan 10). Therefore,
it became the unifying framework of self and cultural identity for the disenchanted modern
youth. At the same time, this meant the machinery of the Kanun was at odds with the machinery
of the State whose laws maintained that all murder was illegal.
Since Kadare is a proponent of the Rilindja movement, Albania’s European identity is a
significant issue in his political worldview and the anxiety over how much this identity may have
been dented because of Ottoman and, later, Soviet and Chinese influence is often represented in
his novels. This particular myth allows Kadare to explore this crisis of identity. There is a great
desire among those who had experienced the years of the dictatorship to envision a modern

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Soham Mukherjee & Madhumita Roy

future away from ancient bloodthirsty traditions. At the same time, he also discusses the growing
discontent among the youth over the lack of a sense of purpose which modernity had imposed
upon them. These latter seemed to be looking back to the “old ways” to discover some sort of
identity (Kadare, Spring Flowers 74, 92, 164-5). Thus, through the myth, Kadare is clearly
depicting the bind in which Albanians found themselves as a truly free and independent nation
desperate to march towards modernity without fully having come to terms with its past.

Conclusion
Albania wields little influence and is often orientalised by foreign observers (Rieff 24).
However, according to Erica Weitzman, Albania is “what one might call a ‘major’ culture”
despite its peripheral and, indeed, marginal position on the socio-political map of modern
Europe. This is because the nation is “endowed with strong national myths, heroic figures,
folkloric practices, and cultural touchstones that for better or for worse allow Albanians to
obscure internal differences and historical complexities in favor of a clear master
narrative” (Weitzman 285). This is the kernel of Albanianism that Pashko Vasa had propounded.
Myths have always been important in developing national consciousness. Often in Western
Europe, “nationalist historians [have constructed] ‘golden ages’ for their communities using
37
sagas like the Edda and Kalevala and the lays of 'Ossian' and the Nibelunglied.” In such cases,
the line between myth and history is often blurred as “for the sophisticated ‘myth’ signified a
poetic form of history” (Smith 66). The Arthurian legends in the British Isles are a good
example. Kadare is trying to create a similar bank of myths and legends, reusing and
reconstructing them to suit his contemporary society, on which a new Albanian identity can be
constructed.
Each novel examined in this paper has a specific agenda. The General of the Dead Army
explores Albania in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. In it, Kadare
mythologises the Albanians and the Albanian terrain where “the country itself never really
emerges as anything more than a grimly mysterious, inhospitable, unknowable place” (Weitzman
288). The ancient customs only glanced over in this novel are given their due significance in The
Three-arched Bridge where Kadare seeks to establish Albania’s mythical origin story and,
despite its Eastern influences, the nation’s inherent place in Western European civilisation. The
final novel examined, Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, explores Albania’s reckoning with its past
as it enters the 21st century as it finds itself caught between an unfamiliar Western modernity and
the unifying effects of the ancient Kanun.
“Despite the depredations of vendetta and the Kanun, Albanian culture exists in language
and song” as Kadare himself writes in his poem “What are these mountains thinking about?”

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 Ismail Kadare’s Usage of Myth in Comprehending Albania’s National Condition

Thus, for Kadare, Albania’s cultural identity lies not in its multiple foreign occupations,
invasions or influences but in “the mythological existence which pre-dates all invaders and which
exists at the deepest levels of the collective unconscious” (Morgan 60). Thus, However, the
stories that Kadare tells are distinctly Albanian. He represents the aforementioned ancient but
distinctly Albanian phenomena such as the Kanun, the ancient cultural code that had governed
the highlands for centuries, the numerous blood feuds that ravaged families and the various
myths that upheld the code of honour. Kadare uses these various myths to different extents
within his novels but all with the purpose of mythifying the characters and giving them an exotic
and oriental tinge. He also intends to show the diversity and strength of Albanian culture by
highlighting the nation’s oral tradition.
All of these create a culture that is wildly different from any in the West. This self-
orientalisation, otherisation from the Western civilisational ideals alongside a desire to be
represented as the original germ of the same, is specifically aimed at creating a uniquely
Albanian national identity. Kadare is not promoting a reintroduction of the Kanun in all its forms.
His main aim is to preserve these customs and ways of life for future generations and to show his
contemporaries, in Albania and abroad, the richness of Albanian culture and the importance of
honour in governance and social coexistence. He intends to reconstruct the Albanian national
38
identity in a way that did not correspond to Ottoman or Soviet modernity but neither does it fully
adhere to Western models of civilisation.

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 Soham Mukherjee & Madhumita Roy

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---. The Three-arched Bridge, Translated by John Hodgson, London: Vintage Random House,
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j.ctv9hj9xq.7. Accessed 1 July 2022.
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Voell, Stéphane. “The Kanun in the City. Albanian Customary Law as a Habitus and Its
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Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Soham Mukherjee & Madhumita Roy

BIO
Soham Mukherjee holds an MA in English Literature from Presidency University,
Kolkata and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. from the department of Humanities and
Social Sciences, IIEST Shibpur on the works of Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. His
research areas include postcolonialism, cultural studies, alternative history, memory and
myth.

Dr. Madhumita Roy works as an Assistant Professor in the department of Humanities

and Social Sciences at IIEST Shibpur, India. Her research interests include postcolonial
thought and literatures, environmental humanities and urban cultural studies.

41

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
E-ISSN: 2791-6553  VOLUME 11.11  DECEMBER 2022

The Symbol of Peace as a Myth: Deconstructing the Existential

Problem in One-Punch Man and My Hero Academia

Shuvam Das*

ABSTRACT
*Graduate Student, My Hero Academia and One-Punch Man are popular manga
Jadavpur University,
series that have amassed a global fanbase. This paper, uses a post-
[email protected]
structuralist reading to draw parallels between Albert Camus’
The Myth of Sisyphus and Japanese superhero manga, examining
how these works deal with the existential question about the
meaning of life. It observes that the superhero myth functions
with the help of several signs that construct a superhero’s
identity and that these identity markers define their take on the
CITATION
existential problem. Furthermore, the paper examines the role
Das, Shuvam. “The Symbol of
Peace as a Myth: Deconstructing played by the crowd—the in-text audience of the myth—in the
the Existential Problem in One-
process of mythologization, where they serve as a medium
Punch Man and My Hero
Academia.” Essence & Critique: between the superheroes and the actual reader.
Journal of Literature and Drama
Studies, vol. II, no. II, 2022, pp.
42-53, journalofcritique.com.

KEYWORDS

Manga, superhero, existentialism, semiotics, post-structuralism

 Shuvam Das

Introduction
What is the point of living? In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Albert Camus argues that
this question lies at the heart of philosophy. In the past, human life was guided by traditional
value systems, with questions of purpose answered by religion. With the advent of modernity,
science and philosophy replaced religious dogma in defining the world, but the scientific method
functions in a series of assumptions and hypotheses; there are no solid answers. Yet the question
remains, creating a human nostalgia for an understanding of the meaning of life (Camus 11-23).
How, then, does the popular culture of the 21st century respond to this question in
literature? We turn to hero manga, a Japanese literary genre that has taken the world by storm in
recent years. My Hero Academia, written by Horikoshi Kouhei, and One-Punch Man, written by
ONE and illustrated by Murata Yuusuke, are both manga series that started serialization in the
2010s. A semiotic reading of the superhero myth found in these series would reveal its parallels
with Sisyphus in representing humanity’s existential struggle through an allegory. By studying
individual signs crucial to the idea of the hero from across My Hero Academia and One-Punch
Man, we can further study how these relate to the existential problem of the myth of Sisyphus.
It is important to clarify some of the terms and methodologies behind such a semiotic
reading. According to the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, a sign is a link between a sound pattern
43 (the signifier) and a concept (the signified) (Saussure 75-78). For example, the word “flag” refers
to the physical object we take for a flag. Roland Barthes argues that any sign that implies an
additional concept beyond the first signified could be regarded as a myth. These are not
individual interpretations, but culturally agreed-upon conventions. For instance, he looks at a
picture of a black soldier saluting the French flag. This sign implies that the allegations of
colonialism against France are unfounded and that all subjects of France faithfully revere the
nation. For a reader unfamiliar with the colonial history of Algeria, it would be difficult to grasp
the rationale behind this piece of French imperial propaganda. The signification of a myth, in this
view, therefore depends on an understanding of the socio-political factors surrounding it (Barthes
107-115).

Sisyphus and Superheroes

Now, we return to Camus’ original question: what is the meaning of life? A child is
assured that they would know when they are old enough, and like all other lies adults tell them,
they believe in it until one day they realize that they have grown up and still have no answer.
Camus uses the Greek myth of Sisyphus as an allegory for this. Sisyphus was a man infatuated
with life and tricked the Olympian gods by escaping death. After a long life of playing catch with
death, he was cursed in the underworld to push a boulder to the top of a mountain. But whenever

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 The Symbol of Peace as a Myth: Deconstructing the Existential Problem

Sisyphus nears the peak, the boulder rolls down, thus making him repeat the action ad infinitum.
After an average adult realizes the lack of inherent meaning in life, their existence becomes a
loop of struggling throughout the work week and then getting a day off on the weekend. This day
of rest is the time when existential questions emerge. Throughout the day, Sisyphus goes through
enormous physical toil to push the boulder. It is only when it rolls off that he has a moment to
think (Camus 107-111).
The narrative situations that emerge in My Hero Academia and One-Punch Man broadly
revolve around physical confrontations; but this is not my object of inquiry. The fights
themselves, like Sisyphus’ boulder, serve an allegorical function. We should be concerned with
Sisyphus’ reaction to his ordeal, and likewise, how heroes respond to conflict. If Sisyphus is the
stand-in for the everyman, the hero represents the ideal human. Although the Japanese word used
in these works is “hero”, it refers to the archetype more commonly called “superhero” in Western
comics. This is a common phenomenon in Japanese, where katakana words (vocabulary loaned
from foreign languages) are shortened and modified to suit the Japanese phonetic system. Both
words share a link with the notion of the Greek hero (heros, literally meaning protector). This act
of protection remains the dominant meaning in the contemporary usage of the word.
For example, when we first meet Saitama, the protagonist of One-Punch Man, he is a
44
suited job seeker walking down the street. He comes across a tall humanoid crab monster who
introduces himself as Crablante. While the surrounding people scram, Saitama couldn’t be
bothered to escape. He just got rejected from a job, so he doesn’t care about what happens to
him. Crablante, out of sympathy, lets him off, and Saitama heads on with his life. Later, when
Crablante attacks a child in a playground (someone Saitama has never seen before and has no
reason to care for), he jumps to the rescue without a thought. Herein lies his origin story (ONE
Ch 2: 2-16).
Similarly, in My Hero Academia, when a sludge villain tries to take control of Bakugo’s
body, Midoriya jumps to the rescue on an impulse, although he is weaker than Bakugo himself,
and bullied by Bakugo throughout his entire childhood for his weakness (Horikoshi Ch 2: 40-48).
This action of jumping to the rescue lies at the core of both these origin stories, and therefore the
act of protection remains dominant. Peter Coogan argues that the three most important
components of the superhero are their mission, powers, and identity (Coogan 6). To protect
others, as we have discussed, broadly serves as the mission. Both Midoriya and Saitama lack
powers and identity in their origin story.
In My Hero Academia, a genetic mutation occurred a few generations ago, and now a
majority of humans develop supernatural quirks by the age of four. While some use these for
nefarious means and others to stop them from doing so, most treat it like any other accidental

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 Shuvam Das

feature in their bodies and move on with their lives. Midoriya is one of the few who isn’t born
with a power.
A combination of multiple elements makes up the identity of a superhero, but in this
section, we can examine the role played by their name and their costume. Bakugo bullied
Midoriya throughout his childhood, calling him Deku, which signifies meanings such as useless.
Midoriya later appropriates this as his hero name. Meanwhile, Saitama is assigned the hero name
“Caped Baldy”.
In terms of costume in their origin stories, these characters are defined by uniforms: Deku
is a schoolboy in a uniform, while Saitama is a job seeker in a suit. It is only later that they
acquire their hero jumpsuits. The three components of the superhero (their mission, powers, and
identity) spell out the specifics of their individual parallels to the myth of Sisyphus. Their
mission is to push the boulder, their powers define how much they struggle to reach the top of the
hill, and their identity defines how they react to the struggle. The third is the component we are
most concerned with. How do we define the identity of the hero in superhero manga?
In the world of My Hero Academia, All Might is not simply a protector, but a symbol of peace.
Nietzsche’s idea of the ubermensch, often translated as superman, is an ideal being—

45 above the grasp of man, yet an object of pursuit (Nietzsche “Zarathustra’s Prologue”). All Might
functions as an ubermensch when we look at him through the gaze of other characters such as
Deku, Bakugo, and Endeavor—all of whom strive to become as strong as him but fall short.
However, he is not literally invincible, and therefore, we can relate only his social identity to that
of ubermensch. All Might’s Sisyphian struggle is to protect this identity so that he can maintain
the symbol of peace—something that is instrumental in keeping down crime rates in his world.
Saitama, much like All Might, is the strongest being in his universe. As the title suggests, he can
defeat any enemy with a single punch, leaving him bored because of the lack of an actual
challenge. His Sisyphean task thus becomes to find purpose in life. One-Punch Man’s
interpretation of the myth of Sisyphus is unique. Although the curse remains the same, here we
find a Sisyphus who has become so strong through daily toil that the task has become too easy to
fulfill. In Camus’ interpretation, the journey uphill is one of physical toil, while the descent
makes Sisyphus reflect on the purpose. Here, we find Sisyphus plagued by ennui throughout the
day.
Ryan Johnson reads One-Punch Man as a critique of the concept of ubermensch. Saitama
reaches the status of what Nietzsche deems beyond humanity, and is still unhappy. He reaches
this through a simple training regimen: a hundred push-ups, sit-ups, and squats, along with a ten-
kilometer jog, every single day of the week. Although this is not an easy routine, it is certainly
one that professional athletes can perform (Johnson 151).

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 The Symbol of Peace as a Myth: Deconstructing the Existential Problem

However, Saitama is not literally comparable to the ubermensch, because although he

possesses superhuman strength, that is not a sufficient condition for him to be considered
ubermensch. Because of his strength, he struggles with a sense of meaninglessness, thus bringing
him closer to the same existential crisis as Sisyphus.

Smiles and Catchphrases

Now that we have seen how the myth of Sisyphus and that of the ubermensch relate to the
hero myth on a broader level, we must investigate individual signs that play a part in the process
of signification to substantiate this link. To do so, I will explore two signs that can be related to
the identity of the hero, since, as we have discussed, this can help us understand their reaction to
the Sisyphian struggle.
To understand the relevance of the smile of a hero, let us first examine a character who
lacks it. While Deku and Bakugo are young students, Endeavor is a grown adult at the peak of
his career, and although he is the number two hero, he pales compared to All Might. Despite all
of his endeavors, the general populace doesn’t view him as a symbol of peace like All Might.
This is not a result of his relative weakness. While none of the top heroes match up to All

46 Might’s strength, the public adores them simply because of their individual contributions. Why is
this not the case for the number two hero? Yoarashi Inasa was a fan of Endeavor as a child,
impressed by his flames. In “Chapter 111”, we see a flashback, in which Inasa tries to get an
autograph from Endeavor. But Endeavor shoves him aside and walks forward with hatred in his
eyes. Since then, the former fan of Endeavor started hating him. The reason behind Endeavor’s
eyes, however, is not hatred. It signifies his ambition of surpassing All Might and becoming the
number one hero. He is frustrated because even after spending his entire life trying to get
stronger, he cannot grasp All Might’s position. In the following chapter, Inasa further describes
Endeavor’s eyes as fixated on something far into the distance, and cites them as his reason for
hating him. In other words, his eyes reflect his obsession with moving forward, and his endeavor
to get stronger, a characteristic that gives him his hero name.
Camus describes a Sisyphus who descends in sorrow as such: “I see that man going back
down with a heavy yet measured step towards the torment of which he will never know the
end” (Camus 108). This matches the description of Endeavor after he wins a battle. Like
Sisyphus, he is tormented by the fate of pushing the boulder without hope of success. Thus, we
have an unhappy hero.
Lawrence Frolov claims that Endeavor’s lack of happiness comes from the spirit of
eudaimonia, and the incompatibility of the eudaimonic view of happiness with human nature.
Eudaimonism seeks to find happiness in the greater good, while hedonism seeks to maximize

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 Shuvam Das

gross pleasure. For eudaimonia to fulfill self-actualization, Endeavor would have to uphold the
three pillars that support this system: autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Frolov points out
how, by inflicting his dreams on his family and thereby abusing them, Endeavor hampers his
relatedness. Similarly, by not acknowledging public sentiment, Endeavor hampers his relatedness
with the public. Other than hurting his family, he hurts his own chance at finding happiness by
isolating himself in a solitary pursuit. Endeavor is competent as a hero, being ranked number
two, but it is his lack of autonomy that makes him disbelieve his competence. Endeavor lives in
All Might’s shadow, and since he constantly compares himself to him, he perceives himself as
weak (Frolov 32-38).
However, this reading of Endeavor’s pursuit comes with a flaw: he doesn’t strive for the
greater good but seeks the prestige of being the number one hero. Frolov argues that Endeavor
isn’t hedonistic because he doesn’t take a moment to celebrate his victories, while many other
heroes do. However, many heroes who do rejoice in their victories do so because they were able
to save lives, something that reflects the greater good. Although these heroes receive immediate
gratification, it would be odd to label them hedonistic. Meanwhile, Endeavor doesn’t save lives
simply because he wants to, but as a means to an end. And since this end is not that of the greater
good, but personal gain, we cannot see eudaimonia as the driving force behind Endeavor.
47
I would like to argue that Endeavor’s failure lies in his misunderstanding of the myth of
the hero. He has always seen the symbol of peace as simply the strongest hero and hoped that by
becoming the strongest hero, he could become that symbol. However, even after All Might
retires, leaving Endeavor the new number one hero, he fails to embody the symbol of peace. In
“Chapter 164”, he remarks that crime rates have risen since the time All Might retired, although
Endeavor has resolved more incidents than anyone. It is not a matter of strength or competence,
since, for all his might, All Might isn’t omnipresent. He couldn’t have been responsible for single
-handedly stopping crime on such a massive scale. The reason crime rates were so low during his
time was that All Might functioned as a myth, a symbol holding back villains.
How, then, does the symbol of peace function? We turn to the sign of a smile. A four-
year-old Deku sits at his computer and re-watches a video obsessively: it is All Might’s debut as
a hero, in the wake of a major disaster. We see images of victims in tears and the figure of a
single muscular man carrying them all on his back with a smile on his face. This highlights that
the hero not only saves lives but also assures them that there is nothing to fear. The symbol of
peace is a myth, that of a hero who smiles in the face of crisis. This myth holds immense power
in the world of My Hero Academia. Even after Deku finds out that he will never develop a quirk,
he is obsessed with the video clip. He is in awe looking at how All Might saves people with a
smile no matter what kind of trouble they are in. When he tells his mother that he wants to be that

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 The Symbol of Peace as a Myth: Deconstructing the Existential Problem

kind of a hero, his eyes are full of tears, but he maintains a smile on his face (Horikoshi, Ch 1: 18
-21).
Deku embodies both the sign of a victim and that of a hero. He is Quirkless (born without
superpowers), and thus a victim of fate: something that denies him his dreams. But this is not
enough to kill his dreams of becoming a hero. Such is the power of the symbol of peace. Deku
forces himself to smile, seizing an essential signifier of the hero’s identity even when he lacks the
strength to be one.
Camus argues that Sisyphus’ descent should take place in joy, as a revolt against the cruel
fate that has subjected him to such a curse. The smile on the face of a hero in the middle of a
disaster reflects the joy of Sisyphus. This is the myth that All Might tries to protect, and Deku
tries to embody. Faced with a curse that one cannot remove, the only way to show defiance is to
smile at the ordeal.
We now turn to the second sign intrinsic to the hero’s identity: a catchphrase. This is a
line that the hero shouts out loud when they arrive at the scene, inspiring hope in the distressed.
All Might’s catchphrase has been iconic ever since his debut: “Fear not! Why, you ask?
(Because…) I am here!!” (Horikoshi Ch 1: 18). And since he delivers upon the promise of safety,

48 he becomes the symbol of peace in his world.

But what would the reassuring catchphrase be worth if the concerned character cannot
live up to the promise? Let us turn to One-Punch Man for an example. A creature of superhuman
strength from the ocean, the Deep Sea King attacks City J, and when many of the strongest
heroes are dispatched to defend the city, he decimates them. Hundreds of civilians hide at a
shelter, and the only person remaining to protect them is Mumen rider, a hero several classes
below those who lie fallen at the Deep Sea King’s feet. He takes up a fighting stance and repeats
his catchphrase: “I am the bicyclist for justice known as Mumen Rider!” (ONE Ch 26: 13). The
crowd is in a state of despair after seeing so many stronger heroes fall, so they don’t believe he
can save them. Mumen Rider jumps into the fight and is immediately beaten. He is fully aware of
his weakness, but his idea of being a hero is not to win but simply stand and protect, regardless of
whether he is capable of defeating the enemy. And as soon as he stands back up to face the Deep
Sea King again, the crowd erupts in a burst of hope, cheering for him till the moment he falls
unconscious (ONE Ch 26: 10-26).
Mumen Rider is the perfect example of a hero who successfully gives hope to the public,
even when he lacks the competence to save them physically. Perhaps more than any other
element of the hero’s identity, it is the catchphrase that directly appeals to the audience, both
textual and real. Herein lies its power.

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 Shuvam Das

Mythologization and the Collective

As Barthes stresses in Mythologies, the signification of a myth is not an individual
interpretation of it but something generally understood. The myth of the hero, therefore, depends
on the people within the crowd, the textual audience. This makes it important to inspect the role
played by the crowd in the reception of the myth.
The crowd, in hero manga, functions as a parallel to that of the chorus in Greek tragedy.
Aristotle, in his Poetics, regards the chorus as one of the actors, citing Sophocles as an example
(Aristotle 30).
Let us examine a couple of sections where the chorus plays a role in Oedipus the King.
Oedipus, suspecting that Creon has conspired against him, has decided to have him executed, but
Creon pleads innocent. At this point, the chorus pleads with Oedipus to see reason for the sake of
the city. Here, the chorus acts as a voice of reason, commenting upon the irrationality of the
tragic hero’s behavior while also impacting the actions that unfold in the scene, since Oedipus
responds to their pleas (Sophocles 197-199).
For a parallel to this function of the chorus within My Hero Academia, let us look at the
Provisional License Test, an examination all hero aspirants must pass to act as a hero legally.
During the test, Deku is tasked with saving a crowd of set-up victims. When he finds a hurt child,
49
his empathy kicks in. He forgets that it is a simulation and exclaims that it looks bad. The child, a
member of the evaluation process, takes points off Deku for not considering the panicked
situation of the crowd. Paralyzed by terror, if they see the hero panic, their hopes would be
crushed. It is in this moment that Deku fully comprehends the importance of All Might’s smile
and catchphrase in the middle of a tragedy. The symbol of peace is a myth that must be protected
for the sake of the public, to reassure the ones suffering. Deku snaps out of his panic, puts up a
smile, and announces that it will be okay, finally embodying the myth of the hero (Horikoshi Ch
109: 10-17).
The child, here a member of the crowd, has a voice to speak to the hero. Without this
interaction with the child, Deku’s understanding of what it means to be a hero would be limited,
and he would only focus on training to become stronger, thus taking the same road as heroes like
Endeavor and losing sight of the true symbol of peace. This section also reveals the crowd’s
vested interest in the maintenance of the hero myth, since here we have the child directly
describing the rationale behind it.
In other sections of Oedipus the King, such as the last chorus of the tragedy, there is no
element of interaction with other characters. Here, the chorus addresses the audience directly and
asks them to look upon Oedipus as an example of a great man who lived a remarkable life but
had tragedy befall him unexpectedly. This is the role played by the chorus in mediating a

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 The Symbol of Peace as a Myth: Deconstructing the Existential Problem

message for the audience to take away from the tragedy (Sophocles 251).
Therefore, the chorus acts as an intermediary, on one hand responding to the situation and
interacting with the actors, and on the other influencing the real audience’s reactions to what
happens on the page.
The interface of the crowd with the reader can be found in many of the sections we have
previously examined. The reactions of awe or hope evoked in the crowd when a hero like All
Might appears, influences the reader’s perception of these characters.
For an example of a section where interactions with the crowd influence the audience’s
engagement with the hero myth, let us turn to Chapter 27 of One-Punch Man. Because of
Mumen Rider’s perseverance, the Deep Sea King couldn’t deliver the final blow to kill many of
the heroes present at the scene, and Saitama arrives to defeat him in a single punch. The crowd is
in awe. A member questions the ability of the heroes who fell before the Deep Sea King. Saitama
paints himself as a fraud, pretending that the others had already weakened the enemy and that he
only delivered the final blow.
Joe Yang picks this scene to claim that Saitama embodies “salaryman masculinity”. In
other words, Saitama discredits himself so that he could preserve the image of the Hero
Association, a company that he serves, thus reflecting upon the corporate-driven ethos of Japan
50
(Yang 67-77).
I would like to argue that this scene better represents Saitama as a protector of the hero
myth and not that of corporatism. The question raised within the crowd was primarily concerning
the myth of the hero, not the institution administering said heroes. The venom was aimed, not at
an institution, but at the signification of the hero, since all the heroes before Saitama promised to
defeat the Deep Sea King and failed. It is only when another member of the crowd holds this man
by the collar that he shifts his focus to the Hero Association. His expression in this panel makes it
clear that he uses this as an excuse. This is a member of the crowd, therefore questioning the
ideology behind the myth of the hero. Saitama’s selfless act, along with a montage of pictures of
heroes who have collapsed saving the crowd, incites the reader to further believe in the myth.
Yet we must listen to the voice of the skeptic. What is the point of a myth founded upon
irrational reassurance? After all, that the hero can arrive at any moment to save everyone is
simply an overestimation of their capabilities. This issue is grave in My Hero Academia. The first
time Deku meets All Might, he witnesses his true form, a shriveled-up man with a bony frame.
The superman physique that he puts up in front of the public is a front he can only maintain for a
few hours a day. He has grown weak ever since an enemy injured him five years ago, but he held
this from the public to maintain the symbol of peace (Horikoshi Ch 1: 32-34). Unlike in One-
Punch Man, where Saitama can ultimately defeat any threat to humanity, the symbol of peace in

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 Shuvam Das

My Hero Academia is a hero whose strength is diminishing by the day. What, then, is the purpose
of such a myth?

Conclusion
The answer lies in the original subjects of Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, not the
allegorical Sisyphus, but the average human in their daily lives. We noted that the child is
constantly reassured that one day they would find out the meaning of life and that it was only
when they grew older that they realized that there was none. The adults telling the child that they
would find out, in other words, know that this is a lie. They too were children who were lied to,
grew up, and faced the full weight of Sisyphus’ existential boulder.
The purpose of the hero myth thus serves a similar purpose of reassurance, one no doubt
founded upon a lie, but one that gives the crowd hope to live on. Oedipus, raised by foster
parents, unknowingly killed his biological father and wed his biological mother, because fate
cursed him to do so. And yet, after he finds out, he defies fate by blinding himself and
announcing that all is well. Oedipus’ proclamation is sacred because it empowers humanity: “It
makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men. All Sisyphus’ silent joy is
contained therein. His fate belongs to him” (Camus 110).
51
If the symbol of peace was abandoned, it would not put an end to the villains threatening
human life. Were Sisyphus to frown, the boulder wouldn’t get any lighter. In all the battles we
have explored, physical danger is only half the picture. What lies at stake is the myth of the hero:
the only weapon humanity possesses to fight back against fate. The hero uses signs such as the
smile and the catchphrase to signify that the danger has passed, in many cases, not believing in
the myth but fully aware of their weakness. Yet, by upholding the myth, they defy fate, like
Sisyphus smiling during his descent.
Hero manga, much like Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, finds purpose in simply pushing
the boulder for one more day. This is reflected in characters like Mumen Rider and Deku in
terms of external conflict, where they cannot cope physically with the weight of the boulder but
muster the courage to keep pushing it, while Saitama’s boulder is the loneliness back home
awaiting him after a long day of saving lives. But as Camus says about Sisyphus, and because the
crowd teaches us to do so, one must imagine the hero happy.

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 The Symbol of Peace as a Myth: Deconstructing the Existential Problem

Works Cited
Aristotle, and Malcolm Heath. Poetics. London: Penguin Books, 1996. Print.
Barthes, Roland, and Annette Lavers. Mythologies. New York: Noonday Press, 1991. Print.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Harmondsworth, Eng: Penguin Books, 1975. Print.
Coogan, Peter. “The Hero Defines the Genre, the Genre Defines the Hero,” What Is a
Superhero? Ed. Robin Rosenberg and Peter Coogan. New York: Oxford University Press,
2013. Print.
Frolov, Lawrence. "Unhappiness in Japan: Failures of Eudaimonism in My Hero
Academia."Dialogues@ RU: 32. Web. 23 Nov. 2022. <https://dialogues.rutgers.edu/all-
journals/29-volume-15/59-student-research-papers-15>.
Johnson, Ryan. “In One Blow: The Futility of Nietzsche in One-Punch Man.” OSF. August 15.
2018. Web. 23 Nov. 2022. <https://osf.io/aq2wj/>.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Web. 23 Nov. 2022.
<https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm>.
Horikoshi, Kohei, and Caleb D. Cook. My Hero Academia. San Francisco: Viz Media, 2014.
Web. 23 Nov. 2022. <https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/my-hero-academia>.
52
ONE, and Murata Yuusuke. One-Punch Man. San Francisco: Viz Media, 2014. Web. 23 Nov.
2022. <https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/one-punch-man>.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in general linguistics. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Print.
Sophocles, Robert Fagles, and Bernard Knox. The Three Theban Plays. London: Penguin Books,
1984. Print.
Yang, Joe. "Salaryman Masculinity in One-Punch Man's Kynical Narrative." Panic at the
Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1, no. 1 (2019): 67-77. Web. 23 Nov. 2022.
<https://www.panicdiscourse.com/salaryman-masculinity/>.

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 Shuvam Das

BIO
Shuvam Das is a graduate student of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University. As
an oral history interviewer for the 1947 Partition Archive, he has transcribed the life
stories of migrants for preservation at the Stanford University Libraries. He has
previously presented a paper on musical traditions and the culture industry at the 11th
Debrupa Bal Memorial National Student’ Seminar. His short story “Sichuan Chili” has
been published in The Antonym.

53

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
E-ISSN: 2791-6553  VOLUME 11.11  DECEMBER 2022

The Superhero Archetype as an Auxiliary Class in Marvel’s Avengers

Movies

Kelvin Ke Jinde*

ABSTRACT
*Asst. Prof.,
Department of Media and The superhero is a much-maligned figure in contemporary culture.
Communication In what follows, I draw upon Plato’s idea of the auxiliary class and
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool
Joseph Campbell’s monomyth to read the superhero as a modern
University
[email protected] version of the auxiliary class. Focusing on the superhero archetype
that is found in the MCU or Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, I
argue that the superhero-auxiliary is underpinned by an ethos that
privileges values like public service, teamwork, social cohesion,
and self-sacrifice. The significance of this reading lies in showing
CITATION how the MCU re-mythologizes Plato’s auxiliary class for
Ke Jinde, Kelvin. “The
contemporary culture. As a corollary to that, I hope that the
Superhero Archetype as an
Auxiliary Class in Marvel’s reading will ameliorate some of the negative reception that has
Avengers Movies.” Essence & plagued the superhero archetype in literary and media discourses.
Critique: Journal of Literature
and Drama Studies, vol. II, no.
II, 2022, pp. 54–69,
journalofcritique.com.

KEYWORDS

Superheroes, monomyth, auxiliaries, heroism, public service

 Kelvin Ke Jinde

Introduction
The superhero film has become a staple of modern cinema since the turn of the century.
The superhero itself has become a cultural meme. In fact, five of the top ten grossing films of all
time are movies that revolve around superheroes. Despite its popularity and dominance in pop
culture, many still hate the idea of a superhero movie. That is largely because critics feel that the
superhero movie “speaks to nothing but its own kinetic effectiveness” (Bukatman 120).
Importantly, they feel that “every visit to the cinema leaves me, against all my vigilance, stupider
and worse” (Adorno 5). David Graber suggests that the superhero impedes progress because the
superhero is a reactionary character who acts as if “there’s nothing inappropriate if police
respond by smashing protestors’ heads repeatedly against the concrete” (The New Inquiry para
48).
In general, people hate superhero movies for the following seven reasons. The first is that
superhero movies are for kids and that they do nothing to advance intellectual or artistic
excellence. The second reason is that superhero movies glorify the use of violence to solve
problems. Third, superhero movies, particularly Hollywood superhero movies, privilege the
depiction of certain racial groups perpetrating violence against other groups. Menaka Philips
notes that violence “is a resource differentially distributed within a caste system that polices how
55
violence is deployed in constructions of the hero/villain, friend/enemy, patriot/seditionist” (472).
Specifically, the straight white male is given more space and leeway to do violence to other
people.
The fourth reason is that superhero movies perpetrate and reinforce gender and sexual
prejudices and discrimination. Tim Hanley writes that “one clear constant across all of these
superhero comics was the elevation of male fantasy [...] the men were male power fantasies [...]
the women were male sexual fantasies, objects of desire for their heroes or for the creator
themselves” (12). As a result, superhero movies reproduce and normalize a hierarchical
relationship where physically powerful and muscled males dominate females, other kinds of
masculinities and genders. The fifth reason is that superheroes valorize the concept of American
exceptionalism and nationalism, which in turn valorize authoritarianism and militarism. Indeed,
David Graber points that superhero movies normalize “a world in which fascism is the only
political possibility” (The New Inquiry para. 26).
The sixth reason is that superhero movies are only concerned with visual spectacle. It is
considered that this emphasis on the spectacle lowers the value of art and cinema as a whole.
Celebrated graphic novelists like Alan Moore claim that superhero movies have “blighted”
culture and cinema (Moore). Even filmmakers have called superhero movies “stupid” (Noe),
“childish” (Pegg), and “ridiculous” (Campion). Martin Scorsese expresses what most critics

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probably feel about superhero films when he says that they are merely “theme park” movies
(Scorsese). Lastly, critics hate superheroes movies because they are movies that flaunt American
power through cinema.
But not everyone is that pessimistic about the cultural value of superheroes or superhero
movies. Annika Hagley and Michael Harrison note that the Avengers movies “are representative
of the melding of various nationalist identities for a common cause and highlight the resilience of
the American people after the September 11 attacks” (124). Indeed, Comic Con and other comic
related events offer evidence of the communal experience and friendship that can be found
amongst comic book fans and followers. To be sure, superhero movies are escapist fun and
entertainment. But they also tap into what Carl Jung says about the collective unconscious - the
idea that certain mythic archetypes are not only present in the stories of many human cultures
and societies but “have universal meanings across cultures and may show up in dreams,
literature, art or religion” (Mcleod para 18).
It is here that I argue that superhero movies do offer people more than just escapist fun.
Indeed, I contend that they do two or three things to and for people. Firstly, they offer people a
vision of possibilities and potentials, the possibility and potential of everyone to be more than
what they are, to overcome their own conditions, and more importantly, to do something of value
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for other people, such as protecting and defending them from the evils of the world. The second
thing is that superheroes tap into our innate sense of justice, of the idea that it is not okay for the
strong to bully the weak, and at the same time, that the weak are deserving of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness on this Earth. The third and last thing that superheroes do offer people is the
hope that there is, however slight, someone or some people looking out for the well-being of the
community. In other words, superheroes speak to an innate and communal idea of the auxiliary
type.
This idea, as spiritual and religious as it may sometimes be construed by critics to be,
nonetheless speaks loudly and close to our collective world soul. In what follows, I argue that the
superhero archetype is important because it is a modern version of the auxiliary class. And it
represents societal desires of hoping and wanting to be protected by a group of people who exist
to serve and protect the well-being, safety, and security of everyone in their community and/or
society. To make my case, I examine the superhero archetype that is found in the MCU or
Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. The objective of doing so is twofold. The first is because the
subject of superheroes is too big and diverse a subject to talk about without getting lost in the
literature. Hence, the focus on the superhero archetype as seen in the MCU. The second reason is
that the superhero archetype as seen in the MCU exemplifies how Plato’s auxiliary class is
repackaged and re-mythologized for contemporary society through popular culture.

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The auxiliary archetype and the superhero

The superhero is a heroic archetype that is a modern take on the idea of the auxiliary class
in society. An auxiliary class is a class of people that protects and regulates the everyday
functioning of a society. This idea is particularly prominent in Plato’s The Republic where the
Greek philosopher divided society into three classes. They are the philosopher-kings or
guardians, the auxiliaries (warriors), and the producers (artisans). Auxiliaries are warriors who
are responsible for defending the city from invaders, keeping peace at home, enforcing the
guardians’ will, and keeping the producers in check. So, if we were to extrapolate this idea and
put it into a modern context, auxiliaries are basically people who work as security guards, police
officers, and soldiers in real life. And while some might not find security guards, police officers,
or military personnel particularly attractive as heroic figures, the fact is that they are
fundamentally auxiliaries of the state. A superhero is just a flashier variant.
Now, it is true to say that the superhero figure, as we know it, was made popular by
American comic books and Hollywood movies. But this phenomenon does not mean that the
superhero is uniquely an American thing. To be sure, the way in which superheroes are
presented, such as Superman or Batman, are American creations. But the story pattern of the
superhero can be found across and amongst the stories and myths of different cultures and
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societies. Indeed, the monomythic nature of the superhero archetype closely follows Joseph
Campbell’s notion of the monomyth and the mythic story patterns of what he calls the hero’s
journey. Joseph Campbell describes the classical monomyth as follows: “a hero ventures forth
from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there
encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure
with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (30).
While Campbell’s work on the monomyth and the hero’s journey centers on religious and
spiritual myths and stories, we, nonetheless, can find parallels in the narrative journey of the
superhero as well. Specifically, we can see how superheroes are often compelled to leave the
comfort of their previous lives (departure), and enter into a situation where they use their special
powers to stop crime, terrorism, or other atrocities from happening (initiation), and they usually
return to their own lives as a changed person. But the superhero myth, although sharing some
principles of Campbell's monomyth, has additional narrative features.
These narrative features are (a) a protagonist struggling with two identities (one real-life
and the other an alter-ego or costumed persona), (b) the struggle between hiding their real and
fake identities (c) the struggle of using their powers to benefit other people or themselves, (d) the
struggle to overcome doubts about their place in the world, and (e) the struggle to convince
others that they have good intentions. Adapting Joseph Campbell’s monomyth to elucidate the

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American monomyth and the America-centric superhero, John Shelton Lawrence and Robert
Jewett suggest that while the classical monomyth reflects rites of passage or initiation, the
“American monomyth derives from tales of redemption” (6). Specifically, the American
monomyth is about restoring “paradise”:

A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to

contend with this threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry
out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its
paradisiacal condition; the superhero then recedes into obscurity.” (Lawrence and Jewett
6)

Indeed, this redemption myth plays a big role in the story of the American superhero. It is about
trying to recover “paradise” or in less romantic terms, to return to the status quo. While
Lawrence and Jewett’s idea of the monomyth of the American superhero seems to be grounded
more by religious undertones, I argue that this idea of “recovery” or redemptive power of the
American-centric superhero translates nicely to the function of auxiliaries (that is to say, the

58 function to protect, defend, and regulate everyday life). As a result, the superhero, inasmuch as
they have a hero’s journey and that they seek to recover paradise, are people who live and exist
to perform auxiliary duties.
But the superhero is not just someone who is merely doing a job. Instead, the superhero
archetype is fundamentally a moral and prosocial person who wants to serve humanity in
whatever capacity they are allowed to serve it. According to Peter Coogan, the superhero is
someone whose “mission is to fight evil and protect the innocent; this fight is universal,
prosocial, and selfless. The superhero’s mission must fit in with the existing, professed mores of
society, and it must not be intended to benefit or further the superhero” (3). Indeed, Chris
Yogerst argues that superheroes are fundamentally people who are underpinned by moral agency
and people who exercise qualities such as “courage, humility, righteous indignation, sacrifice,
responsibility, and perseverance” (27).
Now, of course, some might say that superheroes are not a homogenous bunch. But there
are generally five types of superheroes. The first type is aliens with special powers (e.g. Thor).
The second type is humans who somehow are imbued with superpowers through either accident,
endowments, or acquired skills (e.g. Spider-Man, Captain America, or Doctor Strange). The third
type is ordinary humans with high intellect and resources (e.g. Black Panther or Iron Man). The
fourth type is supernatural or magical figures (e.g. Shazam). The fifth type is robots and artificial
intelligence (e.g. Vision). But while they might be different in terms of their powers, race, or

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even origins, it is actually more accurate to say that they are different only in terms of being
different variants of the same archetype.
Indeed, all of them, despite their different powers or origins, are fundamentally people
who seek to protect other people from harm. In relation to the idea of superheroes as being a
prosocial and moral group of beings, I shall apply this framework to the superhero group that is
the Avengers. Specifically, I argue that the grouping that is the Avengers re-orientates our view
to seeing superheroes as being an auxiliary class of people as opposed to vigilantes or “freaks”.
To be sure, superheroes do operate outside the law. But they do so because, usually, the police or
military are unable to defeat or apprehend the super-powered villains. Hence, they need someone
who is their match to recover or restore the status quo.
Now, what this means is that we can say that superheroes are, in a way, working for the
police or military. But that is not really true in the sense that while we can say that superheroes,
for example, like the Avengers are a “militarized” group (Pardy 110), they are not a part of any
recognizable wing of the police or military. In that sense, the Avengers are not a state instrument.
Rather, they are a pro-government militia. The term pro-government militia or PGM refers to
“armed groups” that are “loosely and informally linked to the government, operate with relative

59 autonomy, and perform irregular tasks such as intimidation” (Böhmelt and Clayton 199).
These functions are actually alluded to in Nick Fury’s words when he said: “[t]here was
an idea called the Avengers initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable
people. To see if they can become something more. To see if they can work together when we
need them to fight the battle we never could.” Indeed, superheroes are independent contractors
who can choose what to do with their powers. They are heroes because they choose to use their
powers for the betterment of humanity. But choosing to regulate and advance the security and
safety of humanity comes with other choices as well. This includes choosing to put aside their
own pride and arrogance to work in a team and to work in such a way that privileges the health
and safety of humanity over their own.

Teamwork, work ethic, and multilateralism

Working well with others or teamwork is one of the greatest values that is promoted by
the Avengers. In The Avengers (2012), Nick Fury unites the discrete members of The Avengers
to fight not only Loki but also his army from outer space. In Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), the
Avengers fight as a team to defeat Ultron, an artificial intelligence. In Avengers: Infinity War
(2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), the Avengers put aside their differences to defeat Thanos
and undo his cosmic genocide. In all four films, the Avengers choose to give up their own selfish
ways and learn to work together for the sake of the common good. The importance of teamwork

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is demonstrated with the death of Agent Coulson. The reason is that Coulson died because the
team was busy quarreling amongst themselves when they could have actually used their energies
to work together and to protect the people around them. Granted, they were under the spell of the
mind stone, but Coulson’s death highlights the importance of what can go wrong when team
unity is undermined by self-interests and narcissism.
Work ethic is a value that underpins the ethos of the Avengers. In fact, superheroes have
to be on standby, twenty-four hours, seven days a week. This is evidenced by how conflicted
each character feels in terms of balancing their personal and professional lives in such a way that
does not destroy their well-being. For example, Tony Stark’s obsession with finding new ways to
protect Earth is a constant source of tension between him and Pepper Potts. Indeed, Steve
Rogers’ sense of duty causes him to give up the idea of romance and marriage. It was only later
that Rogers decided to go back in time to spend his life with his true love Peggy Carter. Even
Thor’s sense of self-worth is tied to work. As shown in Endgame, Frigga had to tell Thor not to
let the label of “superhero” limit him. But the Avengers are not workaholics who have nothing
better to do with their lives. Instead, they serve because they feel that it is their responsibility and
duty to serve and to ensure that people are safe and protected from evil forces.
Multilateralism is a concept from international relations. But it is something that is highly
60
valued in the stories of the Avengers. Multilateralism prioritizes consensus, compromise, and
community above self. This concept is perhaps embodied by the work done by the United
Nations in fostering dialogue and cooperation between nations around the globe. According to
Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, “global
cooperation based on agreed rules” lowers the risk for “the law of the jungle, where problems
don’t get solved” (Security Council para 2). Indeed, UN Secretary-General António Guterres
“underscored that the world requires a multilateralism that is more effective, more networked,
and more inclusive, saying “we need to combine the strengths of existing institutions to deliver
together on humanity’s most pressing challenges” (Guterres para 22).
Multilateralism can be seen by how the Avengers submit themselves to the authority of
S.H.I.E.L.D. By doing so, the Avengers show that super heroing is not some ego-trip but a job
that is about how to serve society in the best possible way. The events of Captain America: Civil
War (2016) encapsulate the dangers of unilateralism and the benefits of multilateralism. The
following scene expresses this point.

Tony Stark: There's no decision-making process here. We need to be put in check!

Whatever form that takes, I'm game. If we can't accept limitations, if we're
boundary-less, we're no better than the bad guys.

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Steve Rogers: Tony, someone dies on your watch, you don't give up.
Tony Stark: Who said we're giving up?
Steve Rogers: We are if we're not taking responsibility for our actions. This
document just shifts the blames.
James Rhodes: I'm sorry. Steve. That - that is dangerously arrogant. This is the United
Nations we're talking about. It's not the World Security Council, it's
not S.H.I.E.L.D., it's not HYDRA.
Steve Rogers: No, but it's run by people with agendas, and agendas change.
Tony Stark: That's good. That's why I'm here. When I realized what my weapons
were capable of in the wrong hands, I shut it down and stopped
manufacturing.
Steve Rogers: Tony, you chose to do that. If we sign this, we surrender our right to
choose. What if this panel sends us somewhere we don't think we should
go? What if there is somewhere we need to go, and they don't let us? We
may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still our own.

61 It is notable that while Steve Rogers disagrees with the Sokovia Accords, he does not seek to
undermine, change or overthrow the government. Rather, he chose to respect the decision and
chose to go into self-exile. But choosing to do so does not mean that Rogers is blindly loyal to or
naive about the government. As Del M. N. Bharath argues, “Captain America’s loyalty does not
lie with the government; instead, he puts his faith in the people” (397). Indeed, Steve Rogers
chose to accept the decision of the elected officials of the people, and chose to step down and
step aside, leaving politics and policy to the officials elected by the people. This is important
because it shows the difference between villains and heroes; the former who sees themselves as
above or beside society and the latter who sees themselves as serving the desires of society.

Superheroes are public servants

Superheroes are often criticized for being one-dimensional characters. Specifically, they
are criticized for being only interested in fighting bad guys and nothing else. But we have to
remember that superheroes do not actually have to do such things in the first place. The fact that
super heroes choose to use their powers to help people says a lot about their character. By
choosing to help people with their powers, superheroes show that serving the greater good is not
about self-gratification or seeking material rewards. Instead, they show public service is about
serving the interest of the people. To be sure, there are many examples of corrupt politicians or
public servants and egregious cases of corruption in politics and government. But not all

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government officials and not all government agents are corrupted or are involved in corruption.
There exist many hardworking and honest officials and agents doing their best to serve the
public. The concept of superheroes is thus a reminder that there are good people in the world
who are constantly trying to do right by the people.
To be sure, superheroes are not perfect beings. They have their own flaws and
weaknesses. But they are heroes because they choose to serve the public interests even though
they are not paid and even though they usually have to risk their own personal well-being for the
sake of the greater good. This particular quality can be seen in the way in which Steve Rogers
and Tony Stark settle their arguments and differences in Civil War. While many enjoy the sport-
like rivalry between Team Captain America and Team Iron Man in Civil War, we must
remember that their fight was not about subversion or revolution. Rather, their argument was
about what is the best way to serve humanity. For Rogers, the best to serve humanity was to be
an independent force that could act according to their own conscience and not because of
political agendas. For Stark, it was about obeying the mandate of the United Nations.
But no matter who we might support in that argument, Civil War show that bad things can
happen when superheroes choose to do things in their own way. Indeed, in the film, you can see
that, even though they kept their fighting amongst themselves, damage was done not only to each
62
other but to public property as well. It is thus a curious note that critics of superhero movies
seldom raise this point whenever they suggest that superheroes should use their powers to usher
in revolutionary or radical changes to society. Umberto Eco, for example, seems to suggest that it
is frustrating that instead of “exercising good on a cosmic level, or a galactic level” and enacting
“the most bewildering political, economic, and technological upheavals in the world,”
superheroes are “forever employed in parochial performances” and “obliged to continue [their]
activities in the sphere of small and infinitesimal modifications of the immediately visible” (Eco
22).
But I argue that it is precisely because superheroes only concern themselves with security
and safety matters and not with societal, economic, or political problems that makes them heroic
characters. Otherwise, they are just people who are activists or politicians. To be sure, socio-
political and economic issues are important topics. But the job of an auxiliary is not to get
involved such matters. That is because their job as auxiliary is simply to make sure that the
people are safe and secure from external or internal threats. At the same time, superheroes, like
most auxiliaries, are not really qualified, be it training, education, or job experiences, to deal with
socio-political issues and problems. In fact, to ask or expect superheroes to interfere or solve
complex socio-political problems is the equivalent of asking athletes to debate fiscal policies or
asking mathematicians to win the World Series.

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Superheroes have a job to do and it is best that they stick to it and let others do theirs. As
a corollary, Steve Rogers objects whenever S.H.I.E.L.D. or any members of the Avengers appear
to be transgressing and going beyond their remit as a security force. Indeed Steve Rogers
constantly resists the idea of unelected officials meddling with policy and politics. This
resistance can be seen in two moments in the movies. The first occurs when Rogers argues with
Tony when it is discovered that he had created Ultron. The second instance is when Rogers
argues with Nick Fury about the dangers of using predictive technologies to target perceived
enemies of the state.
Thanos’ actions in Infinity War and Endgame encapsulate the horrors that can occur when
super-beings decide that they know best and that they are the only ones who can solve complex
problems that are plaguing society. To be sure, Thanos’ goals of protecting the environment and
enhancing living standards are laudable goals. But his actions or policies are totally irrational,
abhorrent and misanthropic. The reason is because his solutions are predicated upon death and
destruction. And if one’s solution to any problem is simply to just kill people and destroy
families, societies, and civilizations, then by logic, one should always just resort to death and
destruction to solve any kind of problems.
Thanos’ plan is not only immoral but it is also illogical. The reason is because life itself is
63
filled with all sorts of problems. And if one keeps thinking that death or destruction is the
solution, then the most logical solution is to simply not to have life in the first place. In fact,
Thanos should just totally wiped out life itself. Then there wouldn’t be any problems in the first
place. But the more important point is that both Infinity War and Endgames how that having good
intentions, while commendable, is not enough. One must also have proper and relevant solutions
to problems. The story of Thanos is thus a cautionary tale of what can happen when a super-
being decides to make unilateral decisions for the rest of us. Thanos is also a cautionary tale of
the horrors that can ensue when tyrants or super-beings make decisions on behalf of society
without going through consulting and working with the people.
But the Avengers movies, on the whole, are also cautionary tales of what can go wrong
when people who are successful in one field of work think that their success can be transferred or
is relevant to another field. This idea is best encapsulated by the Dunning Kruger effect. It is a
cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, experience or expertise overestimate the ability,
experience and expertise involved to do things. The consequence of this can result in negative or
fatal consequences. In Thanos’ case, he not only overestimated his ability and intelligence to
solve something as complex as overpopulation and resource exhaustion, he also underestimated
the ability and intelligence of people to solve complex problems. And this is what differentiates a
superhero and a villain, which is the idea that the former knows what he or she is good at and

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they stick to it (namely, security and safety), whereas the latter often think that they know best
and thus seek to overturn, subvert or radically change the status quo.

The Monomyth of the Superhero as an Auxiliary Class in the MCU

It is here that I turn to a particular member of the Avengers, Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man.
It is with him that we see the ideas of Plato’s auxiliary, Campbell’s monomyth, Lawrence and
Jewett’s American monomyth, and Coogan’s idea of a superhero combine and come to life. Tony
Stark was a fairly narcissistic and self-indulgent “billionaire, genius, playboy, philanthropist”
who had no qualms designing, manufacturing, and selling weapons for money (Ordinary World;
Campbell’s monomyth stages are mentioned here and henceforth in this manner). But after he
was captured and forced to use his skills and knowledge to escape from his captors, Stark
realized the harm his weapons were causing the world and decided to use them to protect and
defend society from harm (Call to Action).
He was initially aided by Ho Yinsen, a fellow scientist and prisoner, who encouraged him to
build the original prototype Iron Man suit (Mentor). After escaping and surviving the ordeal,
Stark’s decision to save the world then turned into a dangerous obsession after Thanos’ attack on
New York (Great Ordeal). The attack drove him to develop more and more sophisticated
64
weapons (Crossing the threshold). But his obsession then led to Ultron, a genocidal artificial
intelligence which caused great harm to the world. Later Stark found himself fighting against an
equally obsessive Thanos who wanted to end half of the population in the universe (Challenge).
These events and antagonists test not only Stark’s abilities, skills, and knowledge but they also
test his determination, resolve, and moral strength.
While many question and doubt his commitment to the cause, and in spite of his many personal
flaws and mistakes in life, Stark ultimately chose to give his life to save the universe. As he puts
it, “every journey must have an end” (source?). Tony Stark’s journey started with him stepping
away from his “old world” of weapons manufacturing and into a “new world” of super heroism.
He then became the unofficial leader of the Avengers. That is, he uses his wealth and scientific
knowledge to arm the Avengers, including helping out with the building of the Heli-carriers. In
fact, while Doctor Strange was the one who came up with a plan to defeat Thanos, Stark was the
one who chose to give up his life to do so.
At the end, Stark showed his true colors as a prosocial and moral person by giving the
fullest measure of himself to protect and defend humanity as he chose to place the safety and
security needs of society over his own. Tony Stark exemplifies the idea and ideal of a superhero;
one who puts his own needs below the needs of society. The key takeaway from the superhero
archetype is that while it is true that superheroes and comic-books were made initially for kids

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(they are usually depicted as wearing bright costumes, frequently stress the spectacle of
superpowers, and use violence to solve problems), the superhero archetype is fundamentally
underpinned by adult themes of societal and community security, safety, and protection. And
these themes are embedded within their roles as auxiliaries. But the superhero-auxiliary is not
someone just doing a job. Rather, they are fundamentally prosocial and moral people who
embody and practice an ethos of public service, teamwork, moral rectitude, and multilateralism.

Whither the superhero archetype

It has been argued here that the Avengers is an auxiliary and security force that is
underpinned by values of public service, teamwork, and social cohesion. But critics tend to
ignore these aspects of the Avengers. Instead, they chose to focus on the superficiality of the
superhero archetype such as their origins, commercialism, and visuality. Indeed, this resistance
towards superheroes as a whole can also be found in discussions regarding Marvel movies.
Specifically, critics argue that the MCU reflects the greed of filmmakers “racing to find the next
comparable big-budget blockbuster home run” (Katz) and that it “masks the need for cathartic
discussion about complex problems facing the United States, such as economic challenges
eroding the middle class” (Frantzman). From a sociological perspective, critics feel that
65
superhero movies promote not only violence (Muller et al. 1-10), racism (Hunt 86-103), sexism
(May), martial culture and fascism (Weldon), but they also normalize the desire for surveillance
“at the expense of individual privacy” (Schänzel 259).
But other scholars have pointed out that movies like Black Panther (2018) have helped to
subvert “stereotypes found in Hollywood movies by “presenting characters that embody complex
intersectional identities'' (Bucciferro 169). Additionally, the MCU movies show that heroism is
less about vigilantism and vanity and more about “the ability to contribute through one’s
affiliations meaningfully” (Acu 197). While superhero movies are certainly not bastions of
cinematic, cultural, or moral excellence, they nonetheless show that heroism is more than just
about superpowers or using violence to solve problems. Instead, the MCU movies show that
heroism is about protecting and upholding the safety and security of society.
While critics will continue to criticize superheroes, one is compelled to say that superhero
fans watch superhero movies not because they are fascists or sociopaths. Rather they watch
superhero stories because they allow us to celebrate values such as duty, public service, self-
sacrifice, and the work done by the auxiliary class. It is perhaps a sign of troubled times that
superhero movies are popular with audiences around the world. But unlike critics who hold that
audiences are passive and undiscerning; I argue that audiences are actually actively voting with
their money and time by supporting superhero movies. But their support comes from an innate
desire and appreciation for the auxiliary class and the good that such a class of people do for
society.

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 The Superhero Archetype as an Auxiliary Class in Marvel’s Avengers Movies

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Superheroes. Rowman Et Littlefield, 2022.

Hagley, Annika, and Michael Harrison. “Fighting the Battles We Never Could:
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Hernandez, Joe. “Gaspar Noé Asks If ‘All of America Is Getting so Dumb’ That They Need
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Hunt, Whitney. “Negotiating New Racism: ‘It’s Not Racist or Sexist. It’s Just the
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Culture 42.1 (2019): 103-122.

Philips, Menaka. “Violence in the American Imaginary: Gender, Race, and the Politics of
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Plato., and C. J Rowe. Republic. Penguin, 2012.
Scorsese, Martin. “Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren't Cinema. Let Me Explain.” The
New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Nov. 2019, https://
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Schänzel, Demi. “Spider-Man, The Panopticon, and The Normalization of Mass
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Yogerst, Chris. “Superhero Films: A FASCIST National Complex or Exemplars of
MORAL VIRTUE?” DigitalCommons@UNO, 2017,
digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol21/iss1/37.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Kelvin Ke Jinde

BIO
Kelvin Ke Jinde is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies in the Department of
Media and Communication at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

69

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  II.II
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
E-ISSN: 2791-6553  VOLUME 11.11  DECEMBER 2022

Archetypal Elements in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts

Riccardo Gramantieri*

ABSTRACT

Ghosts is one of Henrik Ibsen’s best-known dramas. The reason

can also be found in the central theme of the play that caused a
scandal to its appearance: the luetic disease transmitted from father
to son. Ibsen does not explicitly declare the pathological
*Independent Researcher, component but that critics have identified as hereditary
[email protected]
neurosyphilis. Some critics such as Derek R. Davis in the Sixties
and Russel E. Brown in the Nineties, proposed a pathology other
than the luetic one. Starting from the symptoms described by
Ibsen, they proposed that Osvald was suffering from
schizophrenia.
It is difficult to expect a literary character to behave exactly like a
person. It often represents for the author a symbol or an idea to be
developed. Therefore, it is not possible to subject a fictitious
CITATION character to a psycho-pathological analysis as if he were a real
Gramantieri, Riccardo.
“Archetypal elements in Henrik person. However, it is possible to use him as a model and offer a
Ibsen’s Ghosts.” Essence & different interpretation of the literary work in which he moves.
Critique: Journal of Literature That being said, the purpose of this work is to provide further
and Drama Studies, vol. II, no. support to the schizophrenic theory of Osvald’s illness proposed
II, 2022, pp. 70–82,
by Davis and Brown, using Jung’s archetypal theory. A
journalofcritique.com.
psychological interpretation can be provided here of what happens
on stage to the characters in Ghosts and highlight the
psychological symbol of the emerging Self.

KEYWORDS

Archetypes, Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen, Carl Gustav Jung,

schizophrenia
 Riccardo Gramantieri

Introduction
The characters that animate the works of playwright Henrik Ibsen, which are so complex
and tormented, are particularly suitable to be analyzed psychologically. Many psychiatrists and
psychoanalysts have been doing so in considerable detail since the late nineteenth century. 1
Conversely, Carl Gustav Jung only gave brief reference to the play The Lady from the Sea, by
pointing out the archetypal nature of Ellida Wangel’s2 behavior, and leaving out the rest of the
extensive, though symbol-laden, Ibsen production.
Ghosts is among Henrik Ibsen’s best-known dramas and has not gone without
psychoanalytic interpretations, mostly Freudian and post-Freudian3 in nature. The reason for
using the Freudian model is primarily due to the problematic relationship between Osvald (son)
and his mother Helene Alving during the play and, retrospectively, between Osvald and
Chamberlain Alving (father). On this last tie there is a pathological component that Ibsen does
not explicitly declare but that critics have identified as hereditary neurosyphilis. Some critics,
such as Derek R. Davis in the Sixties and Russel E. Brown in the Nineties, proposed a pathology
other than the luetic one. Starting from the symptoms described by Ibsen, they proposed that
Osvald was suffering from a serious mental illness, schizophrenia.
It is difficult to expect a literary character to behave exactly like a person. It often
71 represents for the author a symbol or an idea to be developed. Therefore, it is not possible to
subject a fictitious character to a psycho-pathological analysis as if he were a real person.
However, it is possible to use him as a model and offer a different interpretation of the literary
work in which he moves. That being said, the purpose of this work is to interpret the plot of
Ghosts and to provide further support to the schizophrenic theory of Osvald’s illness proposed by
Davis and Brown, using Jung’s archetypal theory. A psychological interpretation can be provided
here of what happens on stage to the characters in Ghosts and highlight the psychological
symbol of the emerging Self.

1
We can here remember the most important writings from the end of 19th century to the first decades of the past
century: Nordau (1892); Lombroso (1893); Rank (1912); Freud (1916); Reich W. (1920); Vogt R. (1930).
It is to be noted that Otto Rank was born as Otto Rosenfeld and in 1909 he changed his surname to Rank to
distinguish himself from an alcoholic and violent father: “Apparently Otto Rosenfled took the pen name Rank from
a character in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House”(Lieberman 4).
2
This does not mean that analytical psychology cannot be applied to the interpretation of the symbols present in
Ibsen’s works. Some literary critics close to Jung’s theory identified archetypal complexes at the base of the
behaviors of the characters that animate Ibsen’s dramas: think for example of “Archetypal Criticism: Theory of
Myths” (1957) by Northrop Frye and Mythic Patterns in Ibsen’s Last Plays (1970) by Orley I. Holtan, just to
mention the now classic critical works that are analytical in nature.
3
It may be referred to the interesting interpretation made on the basis of Freud’s death drive by Erik Østerud (1996)
“Tableau and Thanatos in Henrik Ibsen’s Gengangere”. Scandinavian Studies, 68, 4:473-489; and the Lacanian
interpretation of Anne Marie Rekdal (2005) “The Freedom of Perversion”, Ibsen Studies, 5:2, 121-47.

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 Archetypal Elements in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts

Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen

The drama Ghosts (Gengångare) was published in December 1881 and did not fail to
generate scandal. Ibsen’s previous play, A Doll’s House (1879), had also sparked great debate,
but the stir that followed rewarded the play and the performance with success. This time,
however, the play raised a scandal, especially because of the disgust that the implied theme of
degeneration due to a sexual disease aroused.4 To give an idea of the enormous scandal raised by
the text, it can be said that, following the reviews, many copies remained unsold, and it took
more than ten years to sell out the first edition. This was unusual for Ibsen whose dramas were,
and would later be, always not only awaited and read in Scandinavia, but promptly translated into
the main European languages. Such an unusual theme caused the first performance to take place
not in Scandinavia but in the United States at the Aurora Turner Hall in Chicago on May 20,
1882, staged by a nearly amateur theatre company; other amateur actors staged it in Copenhagen
and only the following year was it represented by professionals in Scandinavia: August 22 at
Stadsteater in Helsingborg and August 28 at the Folketeatret in Copenhagen.
The plot of Ghosts is as follows. The young Osvald, aged twenty-seven, returns to his
family’s house on the occasion of the inauguration of a kindergarten dedicated to his deceased
father, Chamberlain Alving. Helene, Osvald’s mother and Chamberlain’s wife, built it to
72
rehabilitate the name of the man who, though being dead for ten years, was the source of rumors
due to his vicious conduct. It was this very conduct that led Helene to give up her son when he
was seven years old, the latter leaving home at sixteen, to live in Paris where he became a
painter.
Osvald, now back home, is attracted to the maid Regina and attempts to seduce her. This
relationship, however, is promptly interrupted by his mother who reveals to her son that Regina
is actually his half-sister. As a matter of fact, she is the daughter of Chamberlain Alving and
Johanna, a maid who had served him many years before (the episode of the maid’s seduction was
the one that led Mrs. Alving to give up Osvald). This revelation, and the outbreak of a fire that
destroys the kindergarten before its opening, breaks the balance that was thought to be solid in
the house: Mrs. Alving sends Regina away from the house; and Regina, on her part, decides to go
to work in the brothel for sailors that her stepfather wants to open near the docks. Finally, Osvald
confesses to his mother that he has a fatal disease, probably transmitted to him by his father and

4
“The real shock must have been the actual experience of being confronted by a world suffused with the ugly, the
degenerate and the hopeless, and one conjured by the exercise of a complete mastery of dramatic means. In
particular, the portrayal of the dying Osvald must have seemed like a mockery of all human dignity – this ‘repulsive
mollusk in human form’. Unease at the character of Osvald was heightened by a scientific determinism that
mercilessly propels the characters in the play towards this ruin. At a time when the theory of evolution was emerging
as a threat to the prevailing view of the world and of human beings, it was difficult to see the syphilis theme as just a
simple parallel to the mental determinism involved in the power of ‘dead thoughts’ over people” (Figueiredo 429-
30).

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Riccardo Gramantieri

now in the final stage. The drama ends with Osvald being catatonic, in full hallucinatory delirium
in his mother’s arms.
To this main plot, Ibsen adds subplots and retrospective explanations. This is a usual
technique for the writer. In his dramas he always describes a past that clarifies what happens in
the present and whose function is to send forward the stage action.5 This technique makes sure
that the protagonists of Ibsen’s dramas are always forced to relive their past.
Helene Alving in the past was a religious woman who now opens up to the innovative ideas
of the time. In retrospect, it is said that she resented the licentious life that Chamberlain Alving
used to lead. However, this impatience remained within the domestic walls, so as to maintain a
respectable appearance in the eyes of the people.
This behavior prompted her in the first year of her marriage to estrange herself from her
husband and seek help from the family friend, Pastor Manders. Unfortunately, Manders proved
to advocate an outward respectability and objected to Helene’s escape. Therefore, Helene had no
choice but to return home to her husband and go along with him in order to maintain the
appearance of a respectable family. However, she managed to give her son a better chance for
honesty, by sending him far from home so that he would not imitate his father’s behavior.

73 Regina was born when Osvald was seven or eight years old. She is a young girl, little more
than a teenager, in love with Osvald, whom she met when he occasionally came home from Paris
to visit his mother. The woman kept Regina in the house as a maid and secured her a job in the
kindergarten. His mother had been a serving maid in service at the Alving home nearly twenty
years earlier and had become pregnant by Chamberlain, who managed to convince Jacob
Engstrand, for a fee, to take her as his wife and therefore to be considered as the father of the
future child. Engstrand is the carpenter who is building the kindergarten and who would like, at
the same time, to open a club for sailors, actually a brothel, in which he would like Regina to
play the role of entraineuse.
Pastor Manders is a sort of director of what is happening: he is the one who persuades
Helene not to insure the kindergarten; it is probably the one who set out the fire, and the one who
will help Engstrand to open his brothel, using the funds that, now that the kindergarten is
destroyed, are no longer usable. In the past he was a friend of Mrs. Helene, who was probably in
love with him.

5
As early as in 1895 Scalinger described with insight the structure of Ibsen’s dramas, although he considered it a
flaw because he judged it “not very useful”: “throughout its course, the drama proceeds swiftly, rapidly, without
unnecessary detours, without dangerous delays; but it never sets out from its beginning, it never begins naturally.
The causes that generated it are unknown, along with the conditions of the characters’ souls that produced it. It is
always an antecedent that must be demonstrated, a precedent that must be considered as clearly developed and that
some characters are obliged to recount in the first scenes of the drama, so that the reader or the listener participates
in an indirect way” (Scalinger 84-5). It is almost a structure of the modern detective novel.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Archetypal Elements in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts

Osvald’s illness
Osvald’s illness initially comes on as a headache when he is a teenager. There are also
other physical symptoms such as neck pain and difficulty concentrating. The symptoms are
repeated in Paris and there the young man sees a doctor who tells him that, probably, since his
childhood, Osvald must have had something like “vermoulu”. Back home the degeneration is
striking. At the end of the third act Osvald collapses, the body becomes flaccid and the behavior
(posture, language, etc.) catatonic.
The symptoms are unquestionably psychiatric (headaches, difficulty concentrating, speech
disorders, catatonia). The term “vermoulu” refers to the micro-lesions that are typical of syphilis,
which appear to be caused by the bite of a woodworm (it means worm-eaten; Hoenig 2018).
Evidence of syphilis would be strengthened by the prognosis of cerebral softening, one of the
symptoms stated in Alfred Fournier’s manual La Syphilis du cerveau. Lecons cliniques recuillies
par E. Brissaud (1879), probably consulted by Ibsen, who had also used it two years earlier to
describe the symptoms of the end-stage disease of Dr. Rank, Nora’s confidant in Doll’s House.
Ibsen did not explicitly define the disease for at least two reasons: firstly, because he wanted to
only represent symbolically the passage of blame within the bourgeois family; secondly, because

74 “in those days it could not be mentioned in print in any journal that a woman might read or in
any play that a woman might see. The word was banned [...]” (Sprinchorn 2004, 191-2).6
Back at the time of publication, there were critics who agreed with the luetic hypothesis.
There were, however, those who, even at that time, contested it:7 Max S. Nordau complained
about Ibsen’s scientific unreliability in the medical field. He cited several examples, but the one
he most emphasized was that of Osvald’s cerebral softening. Nordau pointed out that a person
suffering from congenital syphilis would not have the strong build that is described by Ibsen. For
this reason, he believed paralytic dementia to be a more plausible cause, considering symptoms
such as excitability and mood swings as described in the play.8

6
Sprinchorn adds that syphilis in the late nineteenth century was widespread in Scandinavia to the point that sixteen
to twenty percent of young men had venereal disease, one in eight had gonorrhea, and one in fifty had syphilis.
7
James Joyce imagined, albeit ironically, that Osvald’s father was actually Manders, and therefore there would be
no syphilis. In his Epilogue to Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’ (1934) he wrote that Osvald could be the pastor’s son. The epilogue
is written as if narrated by Chamberlain Alving’s ghost who points out: “My spouse bore me a blighted boy, / Our
slavery pupped a bouncing bitch. / Paternity thy name is joy / When the wise sire knows which is which” “The more
I dither on and drink / My midnight bowl of spirit punch / The firmlier I feel and think / Friend Manders came too
oft to lunch” (Joyce 384).
The clue to Manders’ paternity would be found in the scene in which Osvald comes down the stairs and, while
Manders sees in the young man the image of old Alving, his mother Helene sees in him the face of a priest: “No, it’s
nothing like him, not at all. To me, Osvald has more of a minister’s look about the mouth” (Ibsen 221).
8
Nordau also adds that “The poet has naturally no need to understand anything of pathology. But when he pretends
to describe real life, he ought to be honest. He should not get out of his depth in scientific observation and precision
simply because these are demanded or preferred by the age” (Nordau 346).

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Riccardo Gramantieri

In the Sixties, the hypothesis of mental illness re-emerged thanks to Derek Russell Davis
(1963) and was also recovered years later by Russell E. Brown (1992). According to Davis,
Osvald is not affected by syphilis but by schizophrenia. The diagnosis is made partly by ruling
out syphilis infection and partly by deciphering Osvald’s behavior. First of all, Davis clarifies the
definition he uses: “dementia, i.e., loss of mental powers” (Davis 370) emphasizing that Ibsen
speaks of “degeneration or softening – of the brain” (370). The critic points out that Paris, the
city where Osvald lived for ten years, was at the time the city of modern psychiatry with
Bénédict-Auguste Morel and Valentin Magnan studying various forms of dementia; the
physician to whom Osvald turned could follow that new paradigm for brain disorders. According
to Davis, therefore, Osvald’s disease is what was called secondary dementia” (373) in England at
that time, a chronic, hereditary form of dementia. This last factor would make it possible to keep
valid what was important to Ibsen, that is, the passing of the blame of the fathers onto the
children. Moreover, in the “Addendum” of 1969 Davis mentions precisely “disorder of the
communication between them [parent and child]” (383). In this case he refers, even if not
explicitly, to the theory of the Double Bind, developed in Palo Alto in the 1960s, according to
which schizophrenia would be caused by the conflict that the child observes in the behavior of
the parents; in this case between his lustful father and his mother fully devoted to the family.
75
Other critics examined the issue of syphilis: Brown pointed out that if Osvald had inherited
the disease from his father, then he should have contracted it when he was still in his mother’s
womb. If that were the case, then his mother should have been affected, too. Helene confesses to
Pastor Manders that she was forced “to keep him home in the evenings–and nights, I had to
become his drinking companion as he got sodden over his bottle, holed up in his room. There I
had to sit alone with him, forcing myself through his jokes and toasts and all his maundering,
abusive talk, and then fight him bare-handed to drag him into bed” (Ibsen 230), therefore she
could be sick herself, but this is not stated. Regina too, who is Alving’s daughter as well, should
be syphilitic, but she is not. Conversely, if syphilis was not contracted in the womb but
afterwards, the only contact between Osvald and his father occurred when the latter made him
smoke a pipe: the contagion is now considered highly unlikely, but when Ibsen wrote the play,
“in Scandinavia it was assumed the disease could be transmitted through oral contact, a drinking
glass or a pipe” (Sprinchorn 313).
Another theory is the one proposed by Roberto Alonge (1988): Osvald is not the innocent
person he wants to appear and possibly contracted syphilis while living a bohemian life in Paris.

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 Archetypal Elements in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts

This is ambiguous: on the one hand, we see that when the mother says her son is innocent,
heminimizes9 it as if he were indeed guilty of having led a dissolute life. On the other hand,
however, if this were the case, the symbolism of guilt being transmitted from father to son that
Ibsen was interested in would be lost.10
Nordau would then be right when he wrote as early as in 1892 that Ibsen was wrong in
representing the disease, even though the author was interested in symbolizing a family illness. 11
If the schizophrenic theory is assumed, not only can it retain the hereditary character Ibsen was
interested in, but it can also be corroborated from the standpoint of psychiatry and analytical
psychology. Davis and Brown posit a psychiatric etiology.12 What we want to assume here is a
similar diagnosis starting from the archetypal symbols that Ibsen distributes throughout the text,
symbols that, interpreted according to Jung’s way of thinking, would confirm the schizophrenic
hypothesis.
At the end of the nineteenth century, neurosyphilis was a frequent diagnosis for certain
degenerative states leading to catatonia and dementia. Mental illnesses only constituted the
subject of a small branch of medicine, and their etiology was still considered degenerative,
especially in the German school of psychiatry. Psychoses, as conceived by the French school,

76 were not considered the result of degeneration of brain tissues. Carl Gustav Jung, who was
Swiss, borrowed from this school his own ideas about brain diseases. His main area of study was
dementia praecox, the term used at the time to refer to schizophrenia, and therefore his theory of

9
MRS. ALVING (beaming with pleasure). I know one who’s kept both his inner and outer selves incorruptible.
You only have to look at him, Mr. Manders.
OSVALD (pacing about the room). Yes, all right, Mother dear-that’s enough. (Ibsen 220)
10
Many physicians of the beginning of the past century wrote on heredity. For example, Leo Loeb took Ibsen’s play
as an example for hereditary diseases; according to the pathologist, it was Ibsen’s play that made the concept of
hereditary disease widely known to the public: “the influence of a modern writer, Henrik Ibsen, who very
powerfully, although from a scientific point of view incorrectly, first presented on the stage the tragic consequences
of the heredity of disease” (Loeb 574). Lombroso was also interested in Ibsen and reviewed Ghosts: Ibsen’s
geometries (repeated words, characters’ gestures) in Ghosts, as famous Cesare Lombroso wrote: “are more than
defects, symbolic caricatures, to better fix in the spectator and reader the true and most correct idea that the defects
and diseases of the fathers are inherited as doubled or even tripled in the children, until the race is
extinguished” (Lombroso 17). Lombroso agrees that a father devoted to vice generates “a girl who, as soon as the
opportunity is offered, will subject herself to prostitution, and a boy who, even if taken away from his father when
still a child so as not to be affected by the paternal vice and environment, will still fall ill with cerebral congestion
and then paralytic dementia, abruptly subject himself to Venus and die early” (17).
11
Regarding proposals that emerged a few years after the publication of the drama, it should be noted that Paolo
Rindler and Enrico Polese Santarnecchi, in their first Italian edition (Milan: Max Kantorowicz, 1892) translated as
atavism the disease of Osvald in the first Italian edition (70). Another Italian critic, Scipio Slataper, pointed out in
1916 that the question of syphilis should be considered symbolic, and that which Chamberlain Alving transmitted to
his son closely resembled the Christian original sin, which is passed on from father to child (209).
12
The schizophrenic theory, besides being plausible from the point of view of diagnosis, also has another element to
its advantage: as Brown himself states, “With my analysis Ghosts becomes more pessimistic than Greek drama,
which isolated evil in a single individual or constellation, leaving society in general without guilt, able to regenerate
after the fall of the great ones” (Brown 102).

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 Riccardo Gramantieri

the collective unconscious is particularly suited to making a psychological interpretation of what

happens on stage to the characters in Ghosts.

Carl Gustav Jung’s psychiatric and archetypal theories

It is true that by conducting a psychological analysis we would risk treating characters as if
they were real people; it is equally true, however, that the imaginary characters of a drama can
provide examples of patterns of behavior that are typical of a given disease. In the play we see
that Osvald says he experiences a “damnable fatigue, you know” (Ibsen 224). Later, he tells his
mother: “Mother, it’s my mind that’s broken down” (249), as if to say that it is divided into
pieces, split, that is, schizophrenic.
Osvald’s illness initially shows up as a headache when he is a teenager. Then a doctor tells
him that, surely, he had been “vermoulu” (250) since his childhood. However, Osvald does not
seem to give credence to the hereditary evil received from his father, whom he considers
virtuous, but thinks he himself is the source of the problem, unable to believe “Oh, that the
beautiful freedom of that life–could be made so foul!” (224), a life he imagined his father to lead
out of home. Indeed, from an early age he was to have absorbed the gloomy family environment
that lay before his eyes and from which he was removed. The dismal atmosphere at home and in
77
the country where he lives allegedly contributed to the development of the mental disorder: “Yes,
the joy of life, Mother–you don’t know much about that here at home. I never feel it here” (256);
and on: “And this interminable rain. Week after week it can go on; whole months at a time. In all
my visits home, I never once remember seeing the sunshine” (252). Additionally, consider what
Osvald confesses to his mother at the end of the third act: his inability to work stems from
anguish, a term Osvald uses over and over in the second act: “and the great deathly fear. Oh, this
hideous fear!” (254); at the beginning of the third act: “And shut all the doors! This racking
fear!” (265); and at the end, before falling into a catatonic state, on addressing his mother: “Have
you no mother-love for me at all–to see me suffer this unbearable fear!” (274). Finally, also in
Act III, a delirious beginning foreshadows the tragic end of both himself and the kindergarten:
“It’ll burn up like all this here. […] Everything will burn. There’ll be nothing left in memory of
Father. And here I’m burning up, too” (265).
Time and again does Osvald say that the harm he has received is not his father’s illness but
is “that’s seated here” (272) and then touches his forehead, as if to say that it is a psychological
problem. To remedy this malaise, the young man gives his mother morphine so she may
administer it to him and make him lose consciousness and not suffer. In the final scene, Osvald is
catatonic and hallucinates the sun, a word he repeats at length. It is precisely this hallucination
that is enlightening in understanding the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

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 Archetypal Elements in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts

Jung states that during an individual’s maturation process, which he calls the individuation
process, atavistic tendencies may happen to exert excessive dominance and “drag the relationship
down to a primitive level” (Jung, Transference § 448). This regression can be seen in the
delusions of the schizophrenic person. Jung extensively studied schizophrenia, which was then
called dementia praecox, during his apprenticeship years and later, during his profession at
Burghölzli, the psychiatric clinic of the University of Zurich. He saw that this psychosis is
characterized by an associative tension disorder, i.e., difficulty in associating words during tests,
and by the splitting of basic mental function. With regard to its etiology, schizophrenia would not
depend on a weak consciousness but on the strength of the unconscious that leads to the splitting
of psychic complexes which, no longer linked to the ego (which is the preeminent complex)
acquire dominance over it; it could also be associated with a biological etiology, i.e., a toxin that
could cause the disease.13
The psychic split is revealed by the surfacing of images that can be traced back to
archetypal complexes of the unconscious. These are visible to the physician through the narration
of hallucinations experienced by the patient. The symbols that emerge can be related to
archetypes of the individual unconscious (closer to consciousness) or the collective unconscious
(on a deeper level). The former ones are experienced by neurotics, who are less severe patients;
78
the latter by psychotics and schizophrenics.
It is of importance here to report on a hallucination that Jung identified in a psychotic
patient. It is very similar to Osvald’s:14 “I once came across the following hallucination in a
schizophrenic patient: he told me he could see an erect phallus on the sun. When he moved his
head from side to side, he said, the sun ‘s phallus moved with it, and that was where the wind
came from” (Jung, Symbols § 151).
Jung’s patient was a schizophrenic in his early thirties (thus, about Osvald’s age), suffering
from a paranoid form of dementia praecox since his early twenties. He spent a modest life, as he

13
Even the physiological degeneration of the brain is not entirely alien to Jungian thought: he always thought that
among the causes that justify the severity of schizophrenia, the psychological causes also went along with the use of
some toxic substance. In his letter to Freud of April 18, 1908, Jung writes: “But I won’t go on philosophizing. You
yourself will have thought out the logical consequences long ago. The whole question of etiology is extremely
obscure to me. The secret of the constitution will hardly be unveiled from the psychological side alone” (Jung, Letter
83J). This is because he does not know whether it is the toxin that enhances the strength of the archetypal complex,
or whether it is the complex that induces the release of the toxin into the organism.
14
That very hallucination convinced Jung of the existence of a collective unconscious. The observation of the patient
took place in 1906. A few years later, in 1910, Jung came across the so-called Paris magic papyrus, a papyrus
reporting a ritual of the cult of Mithras, which describes a reed, the origin of the beneficial wind, hanging from the
sun disk. The patient’s vision was dated 1906 and the Greek text was edited in 1910; therefore, any assumed case of
cryptomnesia on the part of the patient could be ruled out. Besides being a publication for specialists, the article was
also recent and therefore his patient would be unable to have come across it. Therefore, it had to be the symbol of the
solar phallus in the unconscious of every man; it had to be a collective symbol. The famous hallucination of the solar
phallus has been attributed to Johann Jakob Honegger, a young and brilliant psychiatrist and Jung’s assistant at
Burgholzli who had had psychological crises and committed suicide on March 28 (Noll).

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 Riccardo Gramantieri

was suffering from hallucinations. Once Jung saw him standing at the window while watching
the sun. As he looked out, he moved his head in a strange way and said that he was seeing the
sun’s penis. One can interpret the symbol of the sun as the father. The sun, but also the rays and
the flames are the symbols of the paternal figure, one of the archetypes of the collective
unconscious. In the book, the flames that destroy the kindergarten, the attempt to redeem it in the
eyes of the community but also of the family, are the rays of this symbolic image. Osvald’s
deification of his father, whom he always seeks to justify by minimizing his faults, generally
results in an increase in the importance and power of the individual who performs it.
However, Osvald has a weak Ego and introverts his own libido; that is, using classic
psychoanalytic terminology, he removes his libido from the external object, and reverts it to the
past, to the paternal image. The slightest difficulty is enough to reawaken and reactivate the
ancestral image of the sun, which precisely represents the paternal figure. This psychic activation
annihilates consciousness, that is the word.
According to Jung, in psychosis a private world emerges that is characterized by non-
individual images, which have nothing to do with consciousness (Forrester), and therefore have
nothing to do with the word (logos). Thus, in the end, Osvald, in his mother’s arms, can only
utter a few words, and those words are “The sun– the sun” (Ibsen 276).
79
Conclusion
Among the many dramas by Ibsen that are liable to psychological interpretation, Ghosts is
the most exemplary one, so much so that Halvdan Koht defined it as “hospital literature” (Koht
328), that is, a clinical case in which a pathological behavior unfolds as in an extremely precise
theatrical mechanism: Helene, who had given little Osvald in foster care, at the end can have him
back physically and mentally regressed to a child-like state, in her arms.
The interpretation given of Osvald’s hallucination does not conclude the issue of Ghosts
and Jung’s psychology. Jan Knott notices the correlation between the onset of psychoanalysis
and Ibsen’s modern dramas (Knott). Here we want to further highlight how Ibsen had posited
that there were older thoughts and ideas in people’s minds than those learned from their parents.
This concept calls to mind that of Jung’s collective unconscious: at a certain point Osvald tells
his mother that the idea of the father as a figure to admire is “one of these ideas that materialize
in the world for a while” (Ibsen 270), as if to say that a collective idea can exist. This statement is
just one of the ideas that Ibsen introduces here and there in the text regarding the functioning of
the mind and the symbols it uses in mental processes. The playwright can be said to have had his
own theory on how the mind works. This is what Mrs. Alving tells Manders at one point:

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 Archetypal Elements in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts

But I almost believe we are ghosts, all of us, Pastor. It’s not only what we inherit
from our fathers and mothers that keeps on returning in us. It’s all kinds of old
dead doctrines and opinions and beliefs, that sort of thing. They aren’t alive in us;
but they hang on all the same, and we can’t get rid of them. I just have to pick up a
newspaper, and it’s as if I could see the ghosts slipping between the lines. They
must be haunting our whole country, ghosts everywhere–so many and thick,
they’re like grains of sand. And there we are, the lot of us, so miserably afraid of
the light. (Ibsen 238)

Ghosts can therefore be understood as patterns of behavior that return from the world of the
dead; and the dead are those who, through the memories of their existence, created the collective
memory to which each person links his or her own existence.

80

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 Riccardo Gramantieri

Works Cited
Alonge, Roberto. 1988. “Introduzione a Spettri.” In Spettri by Henrik Ibsen, 5-36. Milano:
Mondadori.
Brown, Russel E. 1992. “Taking Ghosts to the Doctor.” Tijd Schrift voor Skandinavistiek 13 (1):
91-103.
Davis, Derek R. 1963. “A Re-Appraisal of Ibsen’s Ghosts.” In Henrik Ibsen. A Critical
Anthology, edited by James McFarlane, 369-83. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
Figueiredo, Ivo de. 2019. Henrik Ibsen: The Man and the Mask. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Forrester, John. 1980. Language and the Origins of Psychoanalysis. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Freud, Sigmund and Carl Gustav Jung. 1974. The Freud/Jung Lettes. The Correspondence
between Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung, edited by William Mcguire. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Hoenig, Leonard J. 2018. “The Meaning of Vermoulu in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts.” The American
Journal of Medicine 131 (12): 1524-5.
Ibsen, Henrik. 1881. Ghosts. In The Complete Major Prose Plays, edited by Rolf Fjelde, 197-
81
276. Plume: New York 1978.
Joyce, James. 1934. “Epilogue to Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’.” In Henrik Ibsen. A critical Anthology, edited
by James McFarlane, 383-5. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
Jung, Carl Gustav. 1912-52. Symbols of Transformation. CW 5.
Jung, Carl Gustav. 1946. The Psychology of the Transference. CW 16.
Knott J. 1986. “Ibsen Read Anew.” In The Theatre of Essence, and Other Essays, 31-60.
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Koht, Halvdan. 1971. Life of Ibsen. New York: Benjamin Blom.
Lieberman, E. James. 1985. Acts of Will. The Life and Work of Otto Rank. The Free Press, New
York 1985.
Loeb, Leo. 1923. “Disease and Heredity.” The Scientific Monthly 16 (6); 574-87.
Lombroso, Cesare. 1893. “Gli Spettri di Ibsen e la psichiatria.” Vita moderna II (3): 17.
Noll, Richard. 1999. “Jung the Leontocephalus.” In Jung in Contexts. A Reader, edited by Paul
Bishop, 51-91. London: Routledge.
Nordau, Max S. 1892. Degeneration. Frankfurt am Mein: Outlook Verlag.
Østerud, Erik. 1996. “Tableau and Thanatos in Henrik Ibsen‘s Gengangere.” Scandinavian
Studies 68 (4): 473-9.
Scalinger, Giulio Massimo. 1895. Ibsen: studio critico. Naples: Fortunio.
Slataper, Scipio. 1916. Ibsen. Turin: Fratelli Bocca.

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 Riccardo Gramantieri

BIO
Riccardo Gramantieri is an independent researcher.

82

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
E-ISSN: 2791-6553  VOLUME 11.11  DECEMBER 2022

Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative

through Myth in Mary Oliver’s Select Works

Bhishma Kumar*
Sovan Chakraborty**

*PhD Research Scholar, ABSTRACT

Patna University, Patna.
Assistant Professor, Department of
English, In this paper, we have strived to decode the sense of place in Mary
Nava Nalanda Mahavihara (Deemed Oliver’s select works through the optics of primitive mythology.
to be University),
Ministry of Culture, Government of Primitive mythology unveils the primordial human culture and
India, Nalanda
[email protected] human relationship with the non-human world. It silently
advocates posthumanism, immersive installation, intercorporeality,
**Assistant Professor, Department
of English, Patna Science College, and resists the dyadic approaches of human culture as well as the
Patna University, Patna. model of two worlds – the human and the non-human. In the
[email protected]
context of Oliver, we find that she has given primitive myths an
apt place in her poetry and non-fictional works and has talked of
how these myths connect human culture to that of nature by
CITATION striking out ego-centric attitudes of Renaissance Humanism. The
Kumar, Bhishma and Sovan poet has rejected such beliefs that promulgate the schools of
Chakraborty. “Whiffing the
Sense of Place: Breaking the anthropocentrism, ego-centrism, pseudo-spiritualism/centralism
Anthropocene Narrative through and the notion of Self/Other binary. She has rather favored the
Myth in Mary Oliver’s Select concepts of posthumanism and eco-centrism, which deny any
Works.” Essence & Critique: privileges given to human beings. We have used the mythological
Journal of Literature and Drama
concepts of Joseph Campbell, Steven B. Harris and David
Studies, vol. II, no. II, 2022, pp.
83–101, journalofcritique.com. Leeming in this paper.

KEYWORDS

Mythology, sense of place, anthropocentrism, self/other

 Bhishma Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty

Introduction
We have applied concepts of primitive mythology1 in this paper to discuss Mary Oliver’s
fictional and non-fictional works, concentrating on how sense of place and nature can be felt and
treated respectively by going beyond the ego-centric attitude of human beings. Mythology is a
body of theories that deny the anthropocentric mindset of human beings, pseudo-spiritualism and
pseudo-centralism, and propose intercorporeality through immersive installation, i.e. the
dissolution of human world within nature as one primitive and porous body. This implies a
hypothetical stand against any such idea that considers the human psyche as the center of all of
existence. One thing that we cannot fail to notice here is that we, the human beings, cannot be
separated from the influence of myth, and neither can Oliver. The influence of myth on her can
be seen in her literary works which deny any hierarchical attitude of the human world.
Born in Ohio, Mary Oliver has secured many literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize
in 1984 for her outstanding anthology, American Primitive, and the National Book Award in
1992 for New and Selected Poems Volume 1. Having published over thirty books, Oliver has
earned an invaluable place among literary figures.
Oliver’s poetry and essays expose masked facts of her private life as well as human
culture. She does not draw a line between human and non-human worlds; rather she makes
84 efforts to fill the gap between the two without any presumptive bias or prejudice. In the poem
“The Chance to Love Everything” which appears in her anthology The Truro Bear and Other
Adventures, she writes, “All summer I made friends / with the creatures nearby” (1). Oliver
words uncover her psychosomatic sense of love towards the natural world. Her admiration for
every object of non-human life reveals her wild connectedness with it. Maxine Kumin in the
book Women’s Review of Books writes, “She was an indefatigable guide to the natural world,
particularly to its lesser-known aspects” (16).
For Oliver, the vegetal and the animal bodies are not separate entities. In her opinion,
every particle of the cosmos is interconnected to each other through their porous body. In her
poem “White Flowers” (anthologized in her book New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1), she writes,
Never in my life
had I felt myself so near
that porous line
where my own body was done with
and the roots and the stems and the flowers

1
By primitive mythology, we mean the pre-Christian and non-Western mythologies which operate not on the Judeo-
Christian belief of “man” having been created by God as superior to all other species. Primitive mythologies, on the
other hand, deem the human as just another part of the planet (neither superior nor inferior to non-human species),
and promulgate a harmonious coexistence among humans and nature. We use the terms “myth” and “mythology”
here and henceforth in the article to mean “primitive mythology”.

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 Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative through Myth

began. (59)
Everything on the Earth or beyond has its own unique and significant value in regard to each
other because their existence rests on their common bonding.
In another poem, “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?” (which
appears in Devotions), Mary Oliver has made an outstanding effort to feel the sense of place
secluding her physical existence entirely from human culture. She writes,
Have You Tried to Enter the Long Black
Branches of other lives –
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes (245)
For her, human beings are not separate entities; instead, they are part of their outer phenomena.
We have observed in the above poems good evidence of the profound influence of mythology
upon the poet, wherein we find that the human and the non-human worlds are connected.
The current body of secondary literature on Mary Oliver’s works focusses primarily on the
poet’s works in connection with ecological ethics. We find this in the paper titled “‘An Attitude
of Noticing’: Mary Oliver’s Ecological Ethics” by Kristin Hotelling Zona, and the convention of
writing Romantic poetry in general in the paper “Mary Oliver and the Tradition of Romantic
Nature Poetry” by Janet McNew. The paper “Nature, Spirit, and Imagination in the Poetry of
85
Mary Oliver” by Douglas Burton-Christie also, to a great extent, discusses the trend of writing
poetry following the Romantic tradition. “The Language of Nature in the Poetry of Mary Oliver”
by Diane S. Bonds predominantly deals with the language of nature. The paper titled “Generative
Tension between ‘God’ and ‘Earth’ in Mary Oliver’s ‘Thirst’” by Paul T. Corrigan deals with the
religious undertone in Oliver’s poetry. The paper “To Live in This World: An Eco-feminist
Study of the Poetry of Mary Oliver” by Irina Ishrat, and the research thesis Bride of Amazement:
A Buddhist Perspective on Mary Oliver’s Poetry by G. Ullyatt explore Oliver’s poetry from the
perspectives of eco-feminism and Buddhism respectively. In this article, we, instead, have tried
to look into Mary Oliver’s poetic and non-fictional works placing them under the lens of the
theoretical model of mythology and related concepts like intercorporeality and immersive
installation.
Mary Oliver, in this context, has attempted to negate the concepts of ego-centrism,
pseudo-spiritualism/centralism and anthropocentrism in her works by giving a mythological
touch to them. Through the mythical narratives, the poet has made an attempt to feel the sense of
place and to bridge the rift between the human and non-human worlds.

Myth and the Anti-Anthropocene

John P. Rafferty in his paper titled “Anthropocene Epoch” writes: “Anthropocence is

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 Bhishma Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty

derived from Greek and means the ‘recent age of man’” (1). It is clear from the term that humans
have put themselves into the center of the entire existence and have started treating themselves as
superior to others. This attitude is seen first, and most notably, in Renaissance Humanism. This
superiority of the “man” over the rest of creation fueled the ideology of egoism into humans,
which later proved to be of disturbing consequence to ecological balance.
Yadvinder Malhi, in his paper titled “The Concept of the Anthropocene,” defines the
anthropocene in the following words:
“The core concept that the term is trying to capture is that human activity is
having a dominating presence on multiple aspects of the natural world and the
functioning of the Earth system, and that this has consequences for how we view
and interact with the natural world – and perceive our place in it. (78)
In Malhi’s words, human activity is governing non-human activity. This means that humans have
placed themselves at the center of the Earth, and they are looking into natural resources as meant
for their exclusive use. This attitude of humans towards the non-human world has brought about
ecological disturbance and environmental degradation.
Eckart Ehlers and Thomas Kraft, in their edited book Earth System Science in the

86 Anthropocene, define anthropocene in this way: “… the term Anthropocene has been suggested
to mark an era in which the human impact on the Earth system has become a recognizable
force” (3). They are also of the view that the anthropocene gives privilege to the human beings
over the non-human entities. In the definition of anthropoecene given above, it becomes explicit
that they all talk of human-centered earth. Mythology does not favor such ideology of human
beings, and goes against what the anthropocene proposes.
In this paper, we have considered mythology and the anthropocene as opposites to each
other. Whereas mythology promulgates to connect the human body to the other-than human
body, the anthropocene comes forward to refute such notions. The analyses of myth by the
theorists we have studied in this article advocate the concept of breaking up the narrative of
anthropocence by demolishing the Self/Other binary. In this article, we strive to demolish the
anthropocene through the use of myth in the works of Mary Oliver.
By now, we have seen that myth discards the notion of anthropocentrism, ego-centrism
and ego-logical attitude of human beings. It denies any dyadic views of Self/Other in the context
of human-nature relationship. It is one of the best and primary data for carrying out the history of
the entire existence even if it has been with the human beings in the form of oral narratives.
Whatever is known about our culture, our way of living and so on, it is not wrong to assume that
it is mostly due to the mythological accounts we have in the form of fables, folklores and other
forms of oral narration. Myth uncovers many of the untouched facts related to human culture

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 Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative through Myth

which are beyond the reach of historically written documents. Myth does not propose any
hierarchal model in human society, which probably later became one of its major parts.
‘Myth’ is not just a simple word as we consider it today; rather it is a comprehensive term
with inclusive meanings. Myth is someone else's religion. Religion signifies every activity of a
community within, not secluding itself from the influence of its outer phenomenon. And to make
it clear, “community” signifies not just the different human communities, but also the community
of the natural world.
Myth reveals the history of the entire existence, and unveils how the whole body of the
human and the non-human community is interconnected. During primordial times, there was no
concept of two worlds. There was no demarcation in antiquity between them. Stevens in his book
titled Ariadne’s Clue: The Symbols of Human Kind gives an example of a story taken from Hindu
mythology which supports the above statement. He writes,
The thread (sutra) is described as linking this world to the other world and
all beings. The thread is both atman (self) and prana (breath) and is linked to the
central point in the cosmos, the sun. It is written that the thread must in all things
be followed back to its source. . . . The thread, therefore, may be understood as an

87 archetypal symbol of the life principle stretching through time as a means of

conscious orientation and a guide to understanding. (4)
The excerpt of the myth given above is one of the best examples that makes it clear that the
living and non-living things on the earth or beyond are not separated. They are linked to each
other in every aspect. And thus, it can be affirmed that the actions the human beings carry out
affect their surroundings. They affect each other abstractly as well as physically, and in two
ways. Firstly, the effect of our actions on the sense of place where we live, and on the things
including the human beings themselves due to the extreme ecological disturbance and vice versa,
and secondly, the effect on our inner sense of self because of the reactions supplied by the outer
world, especially the world other-than-human in response to our movements. It happens not only
because of our inherent relationship with the non-human world, but also because of our intense
attachment with it through our spiritual inner sense of self, which demolishes the human’s
anthropocentric attitude towards the natural world. Myth provides this information related to the
bonding between the human and the non-human kingdoms. Myth does not allow any notion of
separation between the things or ‘Self’ or ‘I’ and the ‘Other.’
We know that the concept of ‘Self’ or ‘I’ entered human civilization for the first time
during the period of Renaissance Humanism. During this time, human beings began to be
considered superior to the others, and putting themselves at the center of the organic and
inorganic world. This ‘egoism’ of the humans led to nature being considered as the ‘Other,’

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 Bhishma Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty

which further proved to be a major cause of environmental crisis.

In this article, as we have already made it clear in the abstract, we would be using the
concepts on mythology as studied by Stevens B. Harris, Joseph Campbell and David Leeming.
Harris, in his paper titled “Immortality Quests in Story and Life: Cryonics, Resuscitation,
Science Fiction, and Mythology,” has defined myth as follows:
Myth is not only religion, of course, but something more inclusive. Myth might
broadly encompass such things as rituals and beliefs, but most especially myth is
the collection of primitive stories that we tell ourselves in order to have a narrative
psychological framework with which to deal with the world. (1)
Myth is, in fact, a good source of information about the primitive culture wherein we see how the
human and the non-human worlds were tied to each other. Mythological stories reveal to us that
human civilization is not a distinct body in itself; instead, it is a part of the whole existence.
Harris talks of “narrative psychological framework” to deal with the world that clearly unveils
the essence of myth, which rejects any notion of dualism between the beings. They all have a
common bonding and a common sense.
Joseph Campbell, in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, writes about myth:
It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through
88
which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural
manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and
historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that
blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth. (xl)
Campbell makes it clear in his definition of myth that the human and the natural worlds are
interlinked. There are no dualistic approaches between them. It can be sensed here how the
human and the non-human kingdoms are merged with each other without any distinct line
between them. Campbell’s statement that “myth is the secret opening through which the
inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation” makes it explicit.
According to Campbell, whatever is in the human domain is because of myth: development in
science and technology, the existence of different religions, philosophies, arts, and the social
forms of primitive and historic man.
David Leeming, in his book titled The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, defines
myth in the following words:
Myths are for the most part religious narratives that transcend the
possibilities of common experience and that express any given culture’s literal or
metaphorical understanding of various aspects of reality. . . . mythic narratives are
the sacred stories that are central to cultural identity because, for the cultures to

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 Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative through Myth

which they belong, these religious myths convey some significant truth about the
relationship between human beings and the source of being. (xi)
Leeming, in this definition, has observed of the myths that they are the source of cultural
identities of different cultures, and these myths according to him convey those truths, which are
beyond the reach of historically documented documents, as even these documents are because of
these myths. These myths tell us that the human and the non-human worlds are not a separate
existence; instead, they are one body of the entire existence.
Observing the definitions or the opinions on myth proposed by the above scholars, we
find it common in all of them that myth reveals our primitive relations with the non-human
world, that myth unveils our past history, that myth expresses any given culture’s literal or
metaphorical understanding of various aspects of reality, and that myth is the secret opening
through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.
Mary Oliver throughout her works has tried to bring the human consciousness close to the
non-human life by adopting mythology in her poetry and non-fictional works. She has not
demarcated any boundary between these two kingdoms. Rather, she has proposed that they
should be treated as one by undermining any dyadic ideologies in the human culture against the

89 world other-than human.

Critiquing Mary Oliver’s Poetry through Myth

In contrast to the pseudo-spiritual involvement of the human beings with the non-human
life, Oliver is very much inclined spiritually to it. She is, of course, a divine soul in her physical
body. In the poem “Six Recognitions of the Lord,” which is one of the best poems of her book
Devotions, she writes, “Lord God, mercy is in your hands, pour / me a little” (125-128). She has
never distinguished herself as superior to “Other”. Instead, she has found herself invisible “in the
family of things” (110). She writes this in the poem “Wild Geese,” which has appeared in New
and Selected Poems, Vol. 1. She admits that the human beings by birth are an integral part of
their surroundings. There is an intrinsic relationship of the human beings with the place where
they reside. In the same poem, she writes,
You only have to let the soft animal
of your body
love what it loves (110).
Oliver had spent most part of her life with the natural world. The world other-than-human was
for her a place for getting mental peace and developing a spiritual sense of self for the place
wherever in the natural world she moves to. Her spiritual adherence to the sense of place is
explicit in the poem “Yes! No!” that has appeared in Devotions. She writes, “To pay attention,

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 Bhishma Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty

this is our endless and proper work” (264).

Mary Oliver mocks the current structure of the present world and the steps taken by it
against the other-than-human life. She denies the human-centered culture as well as the self/other
binary. She endorses the ideology of immersive installation and intercorporeality (immersive
installation represents an image of the non-human kingdom wherein the human finds entirely
dissolved with it without any demarcation between them, and intercorporeality has the concept of
being one in the entire organic and non-organic whole through the permeability of the human
bodies).
Maxine Kumin, in the book Women’s Review of Books, says that Oliver is an
“indefatigable guide to the natural world” (16). Oliver’s dissolvement with the natural world
tirelessly goes beyond the ego-centric mindset of the human beings. She does not favor pseudo-
spiritualism that she has found in human society. Oliver is not like those persons who treat nature
and its entities as resources for their use. Rather, she looks into them as the primary source of the
entire existence.
In the poem “Black Oaks,” which is one of the best poems of her anthology Devotions,
Oliver writes, “I don’t want to sell my life for money” (253). This reveals the poet’s spiritual
attitude and rejection of worldly desires. She is spiritually connected with the other-than human
90
world, as the mythological stories of different cultures expose how and in what way the primitive
human system breathed with nature in harmony in antiquity. For Oliver, nature resides in her
heart. This character of the poet we can find in the poem titled “The Mangroves” (in her
anthology Blue Horse), wherein she writes, “The black oaks and pines / of my northern home are
in my heart” (35).
Mary Oliver loves equally all the things that exist in the physical world. To her, nothing
is superior or inferior. In “Hum” (from her anthology Devotions), she writes, “I think there isn’t
anything in this world I don’t admire. / If there is, I don’t know what it is” (145).
Going beyond the modern practice of the human community of overlooking nature,
Oliver has excellently touched and felt the emotions of the natural world with her spiritually
conscious mind and heart. She has been to a great extent able to feel the sense of place with her
primitive mind. For her, the houses decorated and filled with modern equipment do not supply
spiritual satisfaction and perpetual harmony to the mind and the body. In its place, she admits
that they give her psychological pain. In the poem “The World I Live in” that has appeared in
Devotions, Oliver unveils her inner disappointments against the modern pace of living. She
writes,
I have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of

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 Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative through Myth

reasons and profits. (5)

Mary Oliver transcends the ideology of Self/Other, and brings humans’ souls nearer to the souls
of vegetal and animal body. Her eco-spiritual sense of self exposes this ideology, and allows the
human to immerse entirely with the non-human world transcending the Self/Other binary. Oliver
talks of immersive installation with the other-than-human inhabitants. In the poem “When Death
Comes” (collected in Devotions), she writes,
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. (285-86)
Oliver has observed life in everything. She treats the non-human inhabitants not as others but as
one of the important parts of her life. Her body, she acknowledges, is not a separate object. It is a
part of a bigger whole. She puts it in the same poem, “When Death Comes.” She writes, “And
therefore I look upon everything / as a brotherhood and sisterhood” (285-86).
In the poem “The Fish” (part of her collection of poems American Primitive), Oliver has
dissolved herself completely in the sea, and her becoming fish in this poem reveals the poet’s
departure from the human world to the world of nature. She has removed the notion of the Self
and the Other. She writes,
91
Now the sea
is in me: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me
tangled together. (56)
The non-humans are not speechless or dead, as we perceive them. They are, in fact, living
organisms. Mary Oliver, through her fictional and non-fictional works, has proved it. In her
opinion, non-humans feel the pathos and pleasures in the specific codes of their language, even if
we can decipher it or not. But as a poet, she has gained this ability to decode the codes of their
language. She can communicate with them in her own poetic way. In “Aunt Leaf” which appears
in Devotion, she says that the non-humans “whisper in a language only the two of us
knew” (421).
In Mary Oliver’s view, human beings have demolished their primordial and spiritual
relationship with the other-than-human world, and created a rift between the two worlds because
of the development in science and technology. This destruction of the relation of the two worlds
led to anthropocentrism. Oliver writes in the poem “Lines Written in the Days of Growing
Darkness,”
Every year we have been
witness to it: how the

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 Bhishma Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty

world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume. (Devotions 49)
Oliver, in her works, has discarded the ideology of “Self” or “I” in order to propagate the
posthumanistic and eco-centric thoughts to the human culture that incite the readers to consider
nature not as Other, but as an integral part of their social structure. It rejects the humanist
approach and appraises posthumanism that promulgates for the elimination of any such notion
from the social discourse which comes in support of anthropocentric and ego-centric mindset of
humans. Ankit Raj and Nagendra Kumar, in their paper titled “Dissecting the Doubtful Darwin:
Kurt Vonnegut’s Humanist Posthumanism in Galapagos,” observe this about posthumanism:
“Among the many ideologies seeking to refute and replace humanist thought for good,
posthumanism has emerged as the most comprehensive and inclusive” (79). They are clear and
certain to propose that posthumanism is the most “comprehensive and inclusive” ideology that
can see the two worlds coming at a place for their immersion. And the poet, Mary Oliver, can be
seen following the same posthumanistic doctrines. She is trying to be part of the non-human life
in the poem “It was Early,” included in her anthology Devotions. She writes, “Little mink let me
watch you. / Little mice, run and run” (71-72).
92
Oliver’s poetry is against the worldly comforts brought about by the new technologies
that have awarded human beings more mental predicaments than happiness in life. She denies
these momentary pleasures. In the poem “With Thanks to the Field Sparrow, Whose Voice is So
Delicate and Humble” (from Devotions), she writes “I do not live happily or comfortably / with
the cleverness of our times” (73). She makes an argument over the development in science and
technology and reveals her disappointments along with the disastrous outcomes of the former. In
the same poem she writes, “The talk is all about computers, / the news is all about bombs and
blood” (73).
Oliver dislikes skyscrapers and highways, which the humans think are symbols of power
and progress. According to her, skyscrapers and highways are nothing but the deception of our
minds that give way to the dualistic approach of Self/Other along with ecological disturbance.
The poet affirms that these objects have fueled the human-centered ideology and destroyed the
tranquility of human minds. One of her poems, titled “The World I Live in” (anthologized in
Devotions), discloses Oliver’s distaste over all these things. She writes, “The World I live in and
believe in / is wider than that” (5).
“The Bleeding Heart” (anthologized in New and Selected Poems, Volume 2) divulges
Oliver’s psychology that shows her divine mindset towards the other-than-human world where
she looks into the pains of the natural world through her own. She compares herself in the poem

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 Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative through Myth

to a bleeding-heart plant, which reveals many things about her inner sense of self as well as the
outer world. This metaphor also uncovers her sad childhood days.
“A bleeding-heart plant” exposes the bitter grief that she had experienced as a child. This
“plant” is not anyone else but the poet herself. Autobiographical in nature, the poem tells how
Oliver had devoted all her life into the lap of nature in search of redemption andenlightenment.
And beyond doubt, she finds these later in her life when she makes the whole world of nature her
friend. In “In Black Water Woods” (Devotions), she hails the natural world “[w]hose other side /
is salvation” (389-90).
Oliver never missed experiencing the spring. She was much dedicated to it, as is quoted
in the poem “The Bleeding Heart”: “For sixty years if not more, and has never / Missed a
spring” (61). Moreover, She, in this poem, speaks also about the cycle of life and death when she
wishes to be like her grandmother in her long life. Long life here is a metaphor for rebirth. In
fact, Mary Oliver wants in her every birth to be like her grandmother: “And more than / once, in
my long life, I have wished to be her” (61). The influence of myth and nature over Oliver’s inner
sense of self is quite explicit in this poem. With the help of nature’s divine beauty, she is able to
come over the twinges of her life given not only by her family, but also by the outer materialistic
world.
93
In “Of What Surrounds Me” (New and Selected Poems, Volume 2), Oliver uncovers the
humans helplessness to utter anything without the aid of nature. This is clear in the following
lines:
Whatever it is I am saying, I always
need a leaf or a flower, if not an
entire field. (33)
This shows her deep connectedness with the non-human world, which strengthens her belief of
denying the Self/Other binary.
‘Water’, ‘a creek,’ ‘well,’ ‘river’ or ‘an ocean’ help bring ideas of her inner spirituality
that transcends the ideology of Self/Other. All these elements of nature indicate Oliver to be a
wild lover of the world other-than-human. She writes, “[f]or the heart to be there” and “[f]or the
idea to come” (33).
The way Mary Oliver has opted for transcending the concept of Self/Other is remarkably
astonishing. This is overt from her fictional and non-fictional works. The natural world has
influenced the poet so much that she is unable to set herself aside from it even for a short
moment. If by chance it happens to her, it begins to enter into her dream. It shows how widely
she had merged with it. In “The Faces of Deer,” she writes,
When for too long I don’t go deep enough

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 Bhishma Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty

into the woods to see them, they begin to

enter my dreams. (44)
“Them” in the lines signifies all the living and non-living organisms of nature. Oliver has
portrayed a live picture of the natural world where nothing is wrong, and where there is always
movement. She has entirely devoted her life to the service of observing and touching nature’s
mysterious divine beauty. She writes in the same poem: “Each hoof of each / animal makes the
sign of a heart” (44).
For Mary Oliver, the natural world is like a heaven where everything is arranged in the
proper way. For her, nature is a priceless medicine for all kinds of sorrows and distress. We can
come over them, as the poet indicates in this prose poem, if we open our spiritual and divine eyes
for accumulating the fragrance of the natural world she has found, and so, she has released all her
sorrows, and everything which would disturb her. She has found salvation in nature. In “Of What
Surrounds Me” (in New and Selected Poems, Volume 2), she writes: “Unless you / believe that
heaven is very near,” and “to swim away through the door of the world” (33). Oliver’s closeness
with the non-human world has molded her inner sense of self deeply, and felt pleasures in nature.
She has been able to get over all her personal calamities when closer to the natural world.

94
Oliver’s Non-fiction in Relation to the Posthuman
Mary Oliver has represented vegetative and animal bodies in her non-fictional works in
an appropriate manner breaking up the convention of looking at them as commodities for human
use. Without any prejudices, the poet has opened the door of her heart for all non-human entities.
In this way she has presented a good example of the primitive human culture. “Bird” is one of
her best essays (in Upstream: Selected Essays) which is based on her subterranean inclination
towards the non-human world. The essay tells the story of a young injured black-backed gull, and
how with Mr. M., Mary Oliver brought the injured bird back to health. Mary Oliver had found
the innocent bird lying wounded on the sea beach. Surprisingly, the gull does not make protest
when she comes close to lift her: “[…] it made no protest when I picked it up, the eyes were half
shut, the body so starved it seemed to hold nothing but air” (127).
The actions being performed by these two people indicate their eco-centric mindset going
beyond the psyche of human culture. In this essay, Oliver has crossed the limit of the humans’
almost statutory convention of becoming cruel to the animal world. She has demolished the wall
and filled the rift between the human and non-human kingdoms with her deep compassion.
She brings the gull home and looks after it extensively. She provides it a bathtub. She treats it in
accordance with the level of her medical knowledge. Later she finds some improvements in the
gull. She writes: “But the next morning, its eyes were open and it sat, though clumsily, erect. It

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 Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative through Myth

lifted its head and drank from a cup of water, little sips” (127). In this way, we can affirm that her
benevolent attitude towards the helpless natural world brings the poet very close to the characters
of the mythical tales.
The treatment of nature as ‘Other’ by the human beings due to their egoistic sense of self
that separated them from the rest of the world and created a binary of Self/Other surely hurts her
too much. In her view, not only has it separated humans from the vegetative and animal bodies,
but also brought about an anthropocentric attitude into the humans’ unconscious mind.
“Upstream” is another of her essays, included in Upstream: Selected Essays, and it
presents a true picture of nature and the live bustle of living organisms. In Oliver’s opinion,
nature has power to cure a person’s abstract distress as well as physical calamities. She
acknowledges that the remedy for this type of difficulty lies in nature, not in the medical
sciences. She believes that nature has the capacity to make one happy and healthy. She has put an
example of a “fierce-furred bear” in this essay. She adds that when the bear becomes sick, he
“travels the mountainsides and the fields, searching for certain grasses, flowers, leaves and herbs
that hold within themselves the power of healing. He eats, he grows stronger” (4).
Mary Oliver resists dogmas that prevent human beings from being a part of the outer
world. She rejects the materialistic comforts which she thinks are nothing but the illusion of the
95
human minds. In her view, these comforts cannot equate with those provided by the other-than-
human world. She takes a deep dive into the world of nature and finds herself satisfied and full of
joy. She likes playing with the natural world, so she has detached herself entirely from the
modern human culture. In “Upstream,” she gives a short but beautiful account of her
conversation with the bear. She writes: “Could you, oh clever one, do this? Do you know
anything about where you live, what it offers?” (6).
In “Waste Land: An Elegy,” (in Long Life), Oliver describes a waste land taking shape into the
sewage of her town. She wants to talk about flowers, rejecting the city life, which is supposed to
be full of joys and comforts. She does not favor this development that harms the non-human
system. She writes:
On the few acres of land, and more, will be established the heartland of our town’s
sewage, where the buried pipes will converge with the waste of our lives. What a
sad hilarity! I want to talk about flowers, but the necessity has become, for our
visitor-rich town, how to deal with the daily sewage of, it may me, sixty thousand
souls. (36)
Mary Oliver further adds that she is distressed by this transformation because she is worried
about the lives that live there. She apologizes to the lives whom the system has driven from their
abodes. She writes: “I apologize to the hummingbird. I hope the snakes have found a new

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 Bhishma Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty

home” (40).
“Staying Alive,” which appears in Upstream: Selected Poems, narrates her life’s story in
brief. She likes writing and the natural world. For her, these are the ways of redemption. For her,
these are the ways to remove all her worldly and internal pains. Oliver makes it clear that she has
got over her troubles through her engrossment in the natural world, and with her writings based
on her vivid experiences with it. She writes in this essay: “I quickly found for myself two such
blessings – the natural world, and the world of writing: literature. These were the gates through
which I vanished from a difficult place” (14). The difficult place for her is the non-human world,
which she undoubtedly wants to escape. She wants to merge herself with the other-than-human
inhabitants. And to a great extent she had been successful. The poet’s profound proclivity
towards the natural world is very clear from the consequent lines when she, by hiding herself
from her parents, used to go to the woods by day or darkness: “I thought about perfectibility, and
deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and the foxes. I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped
from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness” (15).
Mary Oliver had been a very kind and generous person since her childhood. She felt the
torture and blow of an unspeakable life. She tells a story in this essay about her childhood days
when she was only twelve or thirteen years old, and went to her cousins’ house where she sees a
96
fox chained. Oliver feels the fox’s helplessness and pains, and becomes much disappointed. She
narrates: A summer day – I was twelve or thirteen- at my cousins’ house, in the country. They
had a fox, collared and on a chain, in a little yard beside the house. All afternoon all afternoon all
afternoon […] it kept running back and forth, trembling and chattering (17).
She was an unfortunate child and had met with nothing but calamities in life. Her father
did not like her much. It is explicit when she narrates an incident when she was left alone
intentionally by him on an ice-skating trip:
Once my father took me ice-skating, then forgot me, and went home. He was of
course reminded that I had been with him, and sent back, but this was hours later.
I had been found wandering over the ice and taken to the home of a kind, young
woman, who knew my family slightly; she had phoned them to say where I was.
When my father came through the door. [...] He had simply, he said, forgotten that
I existed. (17-18)
Mary Oliver in this essay has drawn a picture of the mourning of her past days. She has not only
done this, but has also tried to show us how she had been able to come to terms with her distress
with the help of her extreme connectedness and experiences with divine nature, and writing them
in her prose and poetry. Oliver’s interview with Krista Tippett is a fine example of how she
acknowledges the power of healing in nature: “[A]nd I got saved by the beauty of the

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 Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative through Myth

world” (“Mary Oliver: Listening to the World”).

Kumin in Women’s Review of Books has noted that Oliver “stands quite comfortably on
the margins of things, on the line between earth and sky” (19). This is a good statement observed
by Kumin on Oliver’s personality that denies any boundary between the two worlds – the human
and the non-human.
Mary Oliver denies human-centered concept of today’s world. She admits it in one of her
interviews with Maria Shriver.
Mary Oliver: Probably walking in the woods, because I do feel like vanish and
become part of the natural world, which for whatever reason has always self safe
to me. (“Shriver Interviews the Poet Mary Oliver”)

Conclusion
Through the optics of the mythological paradigm applied to this paper, we observe that
Mary Oliver has rejected the concept of the existence of two separate worlds – the human and the
non-human. She has not demarcated any boundary between them. She has, instead, talked of the
significance of the world other-than human that we often find in most of the primitive
mythological narratives. The poet has transcended the belief of any dyadic thoughts prevailing in
97
the human society by bringing out thoughts of posthumanism and eco-centrism. She has moved
backward to look into the primordial structure of human culture wherein the entire existence was
one in the organic and inorganic whole without any dividing line between. She has searched for
redemption and enlightenment in nature by overcoming all her miseries and calamities awarded
by the present world. During the discussion, we have found that she has not considered nature as
Other. Instead, she unquestionably has demanded a built-in value in nature and a return to a
monistic, primal recognition of humans and the ecosphere. She has called for the shift from a
human-centered to a nature-centered system.

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 Bhishma Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty

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Campbell, Joseph. “Myth and Dream.”The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton
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 Bhishma Kumar & Sovan Chakraborty

US, 2007, p. 33.

---. “The Mangroves.”Blue Horses.Corsair Poetry, UK, 2018, p. 35.
---. “The World I Live in.” Devotions: the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. Penguin
Press, USA, 2019, p. 4.
---. “Upstream.” Upstream: Selected Essays. Penguin Press, 2016, pp. 3-8.
---. “Waste Land: An Elegy.” Long Life: Essays and other Writings. Da Capo Press, US,
2004, pp. 36-40.
---. “When Death Comes.”Devotions: the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. Penguin
Press, USA, 2019, pp. 285-86.
---. “With Thanks to the Field Sparrow, Whose Voice is so Delicate and Humble.”
Devotions: the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. Penguin Press, USA, 2019, p.
73.
---. “White Flowers.”New and Selected Poems, Volume 1.Bacon Press, USA, 1992, p.
59.
---. “Wild Geese.”New and Selected Poems, Volume 1.Bacon Press, USA, 1992, p. 110.
---. “Yes, No.”Devotions: the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. Penguin Press, USA,
2019. 264.
100
Rafferty, John P. “Anthropocene Epoch.” Britanica, 13 September 2022.
https://www.britannica.com/science/Anthropocene-Epoch
Accessed 27 October 2022
Raj, Ankit and Nagendra Kumar. “Dissecting the Doubtful Darwin: Kurt Vonnegut’s
Humanist Posthumanism in Galapagos.”Scrutiny2, Vol.26, no.1, pp. 76-90.
DOI: 10.1080/18125441.2022.2050800.
https://doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2022.2050800.
Accessed 01 October 2022
Ryan, John Charles. “The Porous Line: Mary Oliver and the Intercorporeality of the
Vegetal Body.” In Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the
Botanical Imagination, Routledge, New York, 2018, pp. 53-81.
Stevens, A. Ariadne’s Clue: The Symbols of Humankind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1998.
Taylor W. Paul. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. Princeton
University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. 1986.
Ullyat, G. Bride of Amazement: A Buddhist Perspective on Mary Oliver’s Poetry.
Dissertation submitted to Potchefstroom of North-West University, South
Africa, 15 October 2012.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Whiffing the Sense of Place: Breaking the Anthropocene Narrative through Myth

BIO
Bhishma Kumar is a NET-JRF qualified Research Scholar in the Department of
English, Patna University, Patna, India. He also serves as an Assistant Professor in the
Department of English, Nava Nalanda Mahavihara (Deemed to be University), Ministry
of Culture, Government of India, Nalanda, India. He has an anthology titled TULSI: The
Heart of My Old Lady to his credit. Apart from that, he has also published a few research
articles in nationally recognized peer reviewed journals.

Sovan Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Patna

Science College, Patna University, India. Prior to joining this post, he worked as a
Research Scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute
of Technology Roorkee, India. In 2017, he was awarded the Dora Plus Visiting Doctoral
Fellowship (part of EURDF Erusmus+ grants) to the Department of Estonia and
Comparative Folklore, Institute of Cultural Research and Arts, University of Tartu,
Estonia, Europe. Some of his publications feature in internationally recognized journals,
indexed by Web of Science, Scopus, and European Reference Index for the Humanities,
101 and are published by such globally acknowledged publishers such as Taylor and Francis
(Routledge), John Benjamin Publishing Company, and Roman Books (London) among
others.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
E-ISSN: 2791-6553  VOLUME 11.11  DECEMBER 2022

Laughing Towards Bethlehem: A Critical Reading of Bill Hicks as

Prophetic Archetype

Hampton D. Harmon*

ABSTRACT
The performative value of standup comedy is in its inclusion of the audience in
the communicative moment; the audience member, at-home and live, exists as a
witness to the presentation of the comedian in the involuntary response of
laughter, an active and realized part of the comedic event. While there has been a
burgeoning amount of scholarly work surrounding the cultural significance of
* M.A., standup comics and the literary implications of their work, there has been very
little scholarship assessing the work of comedian Bill Hicks, and none regarding
University of Colorado at the final special filmed before his death, Revelations. In a world where a standup
Denver comic has become the most popular interviewer of all time, and seven of the
most downloaded twenty-five podcasts in America are hosted by current or
[email protected] former standup comedians, the link between the actual comedic event and the
larger scope of the comic’s influence is clear. Although scholars have correctly
identified standup comedy as a new literary and rhetorical form directing
consumers toward cultural and social change, and heterodoxic formulations of
thought, I will argue that this framework is incomplete. In order to wholistically
understand the influence of standup comedy on American culture, one must
correctly identify the religious nature of the comedian’s work and self-
presentation, specifically through the Judeo-Christian concepts of “messiah” and
“prophet.” Such a framework provides a language for the ritualistic response
within the prophetic moment, as well as the dual nature or reverence and
revulsion that consumers have for comedians. These concepts are archetypes,
CITATION and provide new language for interpreting both the work of Bill Hicks and the
Harmon, Hampton D. “Laughing standup comic in general. The comic claims to bear witness to the truth, and the
member of the audience participates in the prophetic moment by bearing witness
Towards Bethlehem: A Critical to the comedian, acting with him in ritualized movement. I will present a case
Reading of Bill Hicks as study and close reading of Bill Hicks’ televised special Revelations, evaluating
his comedy as a fulfillment of the prophetic archetype. When the standup comic
Prophetic Archetype.” Essence & is understood prophetically, and the material understood through the lens of the
Critique: Journal of Literature prophetic message, the consumer and the scholar are able to grasp the
and Drama Studies, vol. II, no. foundations of the larger movement centered around the cultural figure of the
standup comic beyond the performative work; the larger movements amount to a
II, 2022, pp. 102–117, form of religious devotion, and the comic’s social commentary ceases to be
journalofcritique.com. performative, but transformative. The devotion of acolytes to the extra-
performative catalogue of comics like Dave Chapelle, Joe Rogan, and Hannah
Gadsby form a larger cultural moment, for which Bill Hicks presented himself as
a forerunner and prototype.

KEYWORDS
Prophetic archetype, prophet, messiah, theology, literature, standup comedy,
cultural studies, performance, masochism, ritual response, Bill Hicks
 Hampton D. Harmon

Introduction
In an article published in The Guardian twenty years following the death of Bill Hicks, an
admirer and fellow standup comedian Brendon Burns described his relationship to Hicks in this
way, “And after he died, I did what I think a lot of people have done – I turned Hicks into a
replacement messiah. Quoting his jokes as if they were gospel, quoting his routines to answer
any of life’s questions as if they were a self-help programme.”1 Burns speaks colloquially to
indicate his love for an idol and pioneer in his field, but the specific words he uses tell us
something about Hicks’ own identity. On examining Hick’s presentation in his final special,
Revelations, it becomes clear that this conception of the comic as messianic transcends the
colloquial, and functions as a signifier of his personal self-image. Hicks intentionally makes use
of the characteristics of codified prophetic figures found in religious texts, and in the common
versions of these figures parodied in popular culture. What the prophet does for the purpose of
moving a religious people to worship and repentance, Hicks does in order to drive an audience
seeking to be entertained to transformative action. Hicks recognized before Burns and other fans
and peers that the standup comedian is engaged in a form of religious identity-making, namely,
that of the prophet or messiah. Hicks’ presentation is not the assumption of a persona, but an
acknowledgement of a larger transformative moment within standup comedy.
103 The existing scholarship recognizing the cultural influence of standup comedy, especially
in terms of psychological studies of response and laughter, and in literary or socio-linguistic
constructions of humor and the joke, while valuable, has not adequately addressed the form of
the communicative event and the presentation of the self for the comic. The purpose of this paper
is to demonstrate an additional and necessary interpretive element in understanding the form. By
understanding standup comedians through the lens of the theological concepts of prophet and
messiah scholars are provided with a language for the ritualistic response within the prophetic
moment, as well as the dual nature of reverence and revulsion that consumers have for
comedians. Scholars have already used this idea of an archetypal prophet to interpret literature, 2
music,3 and history.4 The comic communicates a message through both the live performance
medium and audio or televised documentation. The audience participates in a collective response
by listening to the material, watching the performance, and responding with laughter, disgust, or

1
Burns, Brendan. (2014, February 19). Brendon Burns on Bill Hicks: ‘I felt like he was speaking directly to me’. The
Guardian. Retrieved November 9, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/feb/19/brendon-burns-on-bill-
hicks.
2
Wu, Zhi-fang, and Wen-li Pi. “Prophet of Doom Analysis of Archetype of Raven in Allan Poe’s” The Raven
“Through Mythological and Archetypal Approach [J].” Journal of Chongqing Jiaotong University (Social Sciences
Edition) 4 (2009).
3
Kravchenko, Nataliia, and Valentyna Snitsar. “Cultural Archetypes in the Construction of “Possible Worlds” of
Modern African American Rap (Based on Kendrick Lamar’s Texts).” Euromentor 10.4 (2019).
4
Smylie, James H. “The President as Republican Prophet and King: Clerical Reflections on the Death of Washing-
ton.” Journal of Church and State 18.2 (1976): 233-252.

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 Laughing Towards Bethlehem: A Critical Reading of Bill Hicks

an array of other emotions. If the comic does indeed fulfill the prophetic archetype then the
audience by consequence participates in the prophetic moment through response.
There is almost no scholarship assessing the work of comedian Bill Hicks, and none
analyzing his special Revelations. This comedy special features Hicks presenting a bevy of
transgressive comedic material, particularly around the subjects of religion, political discourse,
war, and consumerism, all of which were taboos of the early 1990s in Hicks’ home country of
America. Hicks does not only present jokes associated with the form of standup comedy, but
packages the material within an artistic framework featured on religious themes from scriptural
texts and popular culture. This is especially true of Hicks’ persona and attire, the cold open to the
special, and the closing remarks and montage of the project. I will present a case study and close
reading of Bill Hicks’ televised version of the special, evaluating his comedy as an essentially
religious self-presentation akin to the delivering of the prophetic word. If Bill Hicks positions
himself as prophet in acknowledgment of the nature of the form, then the performance of the
standup comic as a general entertainment figure ceases to be performative, but transformative.

Obvious Prophetic Imagery of Revelations

Before coming to a broader understanding of the nature of both the Judeo-Christian
104
understanding of the Hebrew Old Testament prophet and the New Testament Messiah, as well as
the hallmarks of the prophetic message and how it relates to the form of standup comedy, one
must understand the way in which Bill Hicks intentionally takes up the mantle of the prophetic.
Bill Hicks uses obvious biblical imagery designed to evoke a shared imagination in the audience
in the form of a series of images that revolve around the persona Hicks creates in signifying the
theological concepts. He crafts his own self-presentation, one that elevates the ideas he intends to
communicate and the shift toward transformation in the closing moments of the special.
The title of his work, Revelations, signifies the explicit relationship of the special to the
final book of the New Testament, the Revelation of John the Apostle, which is thought in
Christian theology to be a prophetic and apocalyptic vision of the end of the world. Hicks, in
taking Revelations as the title, directs the audience to his own version of the religious notions of
the end of the world and the vanquishing of evil, the main themes of the biblical text. Hicks also
manages to position himself as the prophet, the one who reveals, in the same way John the
Apostle positions himself in his own Revelation. This adoption of the collective consciousness of
prophetic vision serves to elevate Hicks in relation to his audience; while in some sense this
creates a power dynamic, it also creates a system of reciprocity in which the audience member is
involved in the moment of revelation. It should be noted that the biblical text refers to the
singular Revelation of John, denoting a situated moment of revealed truth, and a certain amount

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Hampton D. Harmon

of continuity in the larger textual process.5 Hicks, on the other hand, uses the title Revelations in
the plural, acknowledging his own disjointed style and varied subject matter to indicate the
nature of his message. His title indicates that in his prophetic apocalypse, many things are
revealed through communication of his worldview and experience.
In addition to the special’s title, the image of the opening scene consists exclusively of
the Judeo-Christian apocalyptic imagery. The opening image is that of a white horse galloping,
the whole image tinted red and accompanied by the sound of a lightning strike. The moon
appears also tinted red, and pans to include both the horse and its rider, Hicks himself, galloping
first through a wooded area followed by a city landscape. A flashing image of a monolith with a
red glow behind it and fire appears in the sequence, a replica of the monolith from 2001: A Space
Odyssey. Hicks dismounts his horse in a ruined and burning segment of the city, and walks to a
burn-proof barrel where he lights a fire as the camera pans away and fades into the lone image of
the moon. As the screen fades into the final image of the moon as a backdrop, another 2001
monolith appears, and Hicks comes into view, cloaked in black with a black hat to obscure his
face, first in the shadows and then emerging onto a stage to the cheering of the crowd.
In the biblical text of John’s revelation, many of the same images are repeated. The blood

105 moon is a prophesied sign of the end of the world in chapter six, accompanied by an earthquake,
as is the pale horse and its rider: “I looked, and before me was a pale horse! And its rider was
named Death and Hades followed close behind him.” The destruction of the city, and in
particular its burning, is the sole subject of chapter eighteen, referring to Babylon, often thought
to be symbolic of the wicked cities throughout the world. Various sections of the chapter offer
prophecies about the hypothetical Babylon, “The angel shouted with a powerful voice, ‘She is
destroyed! The great city of Babylon is destroyed! She has become a home for demons… She
will be destroyed by fire, because the Lord who judges her is powerful.” Chapter eight of John’s
vision produces familiarity again in the Hicks text, detailing an angel of God who fills a censer
with fire from the altar of God and throws it on the earth, leading to thunder and lightning and
trembling. While the exact meaning of the book of Revelation is debated even among Christian
theologians, the images do convey an apocalypse, and a vast landscape of destruction.6
A voice-over accompanies the special’s opening montage, the voice of Bill Hicks briefly
detailing, or announcing, his birth and the corruption of what he calls the American dream, a
familiar theme for the working class. The voiceover itself plays an important role in devloping a
collective consciousness and prophetic archetype. The first words Hicks speaks in the opening

5
Rowland, Christopher. “Revelation.” The Oxford handbook of the reception history of the Bible. 1993.
6
Collins, Adela Yarbro. “Reading the Book of Revelation in the twentieth century.” Interpretation 40.3 (1986): 229-
242.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Laughing Towards Bethlehem: A Critical Reading of Bill Hicks

montage and in the comedy special as a whole, is an announcement of his birth. He says, “On
December 16, 1961, the world turned upside down and inside out, and I was born screaming, in
America.”7 The announcement of the birth is an image in its own right, following the prophetic
tradition of the annunciation of the prophet. Samson, religious and military leader in Israel, is
announced at his birth by an angel. In Hebrew tradition, Isaac, the son of Abraham, is foretold as
the religious father of Israel after Abraham. In addition, Ishmael is announced to Hagar,
Abraham’s slave and concubine, as the father of a different people revered in both Christianity
and Islam. The New Testament prophet John the Baptist, was announced, as well as Jesus of
Nazareth, thought to be the Messiah. In announcing his own birth, Hicks engages in forming the
wholistic image of the prophetic and messianic figure in the collective consciousness, which is
marked by an announcement of the birth of the religious figure under special circumstances.
It is his stated desire, in particular, that strikes the note of the prophetic; “I always
wanted to be the cowboy hero. That lone voice in the wilderness fighting corruption and evil
wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. And I still track the remnants of
that dream, wherever I go, on my never-ending ride into the setting sun.” These images, again,
invoke a particular set of images in both the consciousness of popular culture and in the religious

106 consciousness of his Western audience. The voice in the wilderness refers to prophet, John the
Baptist, whom the New Testament refers to as “the voice crying out in the wilderness,” while
references to the “cowboy hero,” “freedom, truth, and justice,” and a ride into the setting sun,
play on Americanized ideals on the Western hero who is an archetype of religious proportion as
well.8
Hicks embodies the prophetic, apocalyptic vision of the biblical text of the Revelation
with obvious intent, using direct images lifted from the text and titling his work after the
recording of the vision. This is not to say Hicks is making a statement from the ingroup of
religious adherents, but that he is intentionally playing a role that allows him to speak to concepts
that indicate a kind of higher knowledge. In order to communicate the prophetic word one must
resemble the archetypal prophet. Hicks plays into the archetype familiar to religious imagery, but
these are not the only images he makes obvious. The opening scenes also evoke familiar images
of the noble outlaw featured in Western novels and movies, in and of itself an extension of the
biblical pale horse and its rider. Embedded in Hicks’ own confessed desire to be a cowboy is his
intention to be the lone rider facing the horizon, riding away after the gunfight which is a kind of

7
Hicks, Bill. “Revelations.” 1994, London, England.
8
Fitch III, John. “Archetypes on screen: Odysseus, St. Paul, Christ and the American cinematic hero and anti-
hero.” Journal of Religion & Film 9.1 (2005): 1.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Hampton D. Harmon

apocalypse. This narrative vision often results in the destruction of the city as a means of justice. 9
In addition, his employ of the monoliths of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey point towards his
swath of comedic material to follow on aliens and other worlds, but also towards the larger
meaning of the stone projections in the film, namely the symbol of transcendent and foreign
knowledge and progress unable to be fully grasped by humanity.10

The Prophetic Role

It is not enough to say simply that Hicks embodies the archetypal prophet or messiah
through his intentional use of imagery. He embodies the biblical manifestations of the concepts
themselves beyond imageries. The prophet in the Old Testament is defined primarily by the
actions they perform. The Old Testament scholar David L. Peterson writes,
“An Israelite prophet did, among other things, communicate Yahweh’s words to
various segments of Israelite society. The prophet did this not because he has an inherent
personality predilection to speak Yahweh’s words but rather because he was doing what
prophets normally do. Were that person to cease functioning as a prophet, we would not
expect him to communicate Yahweh’s words.”11
An Old Testament prophet is definitionally a person who communicates a message that is
107
thought to be the truth of the Jewish God, Yahweh. Functionally, Yahweh can be conceived of as
the highest ideal or concept, and a transcendent morality in himself. This is evidenced by the
Hebrew tradition in biblical texts to write “YHWH,” the tetragrammaton, to refer to the Jewish
God. The Hebrew God was thought to be so holy or set apart that his name could not be printed
on paper by human hands. To write of a God that is transcendent is not to understand him, but to
communicate parts of the truth that could be found in him, both literally and figuratively. To
speak on his behalf is to reveal a higher truth to those who have not yet understood him, and a
prophet necessarily functions as a moral and social authority to those who hear his message, but
have not received it themselves. The authority of the prophet is not born from hierarchical power
structures per se, but exists only within the ability to perceive and understand the higher truths of
the transcendent world, the knowledge of Yahweh, the highest of thoughts.
Hicks, then, fulfills the function of a prophet not in the religious sense, but in a general
one based in culture. He seeks to communicate the higher truths to a people awaiting the
message. Hicks hints toward this purpose throughout the special, taking an adversarial view

9
Seesengood, Robert Paul. "11. Western Text(s): The Bible and the Movies of the Wild, Wild West". The Bible in
Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, edited by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, Berlin, Boston: De
Gruyter, 2016, pp. 193-208. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614513261-016
10
Hoch, David G. “Mythic Patterns in" 2001: A Space Odyssey”. Journal of Popular Culture 4.4 (1971): 961-965.
11
Petersen, D. L. (1981). The Roles of Israel’s Prophets. JSOT Press.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Laughing Towards Bethlehem: A Critical Reading of Bill Hicks

against the status quo. He rails against the first Bush regime, wars in the Middle East, and the
prevailing narratives about psychedelic drugs. Hicks spends a considerable amount of time and
material dissecting theories of the Kennedy assassination as both inadequate and in service of
power structures, He becomes a paragon of rebellion against prevailing ideas. This attitude
culminates in Hicks’ final verbal movement of the special, which begins with a statement of
purpose directly to the audience. He asks, “Is there a point to my act? I would say there is. I have
to. The world is like a ride in an amusement park…Some people have been on the ride for a long
time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have
remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘hey – don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever,
because, this is just a ride…’ And we kill those people.”12 Hicks positions himself theologically
as the one who knows the higher truth, or the illusory nature of existence. He is the one who
recognizes the concerted effort by those in power to keep people from finding a meaning that
transcends society as it has been constructed. He has “come back” to people through the form of
standup comedy in order to tell that truth, fulfilling the essential tenet of the prophetic archetype.
While this function is essential to prophethood, it does not encapsulate all that constitutes
prophethood. Scholars have identified several ways in which a prophet’s message is constituted

108 in the Old Testament, provided that the prophet attached to the message fulfills his or her larger
functional purpose of communicating on Yahweh’s behalf. The prophet’s message is inherently
critical of social and political hierarchy. Corrine L. Patton, in her dissection of both the biblical
text and person of Ezekiel, defines the prophet as both an advocate of a new binary between the
elevated role of “priest” or “prophet” and that of the lower class. The prophet is raised from the
lower class as an opponent of corruption and cruelty of existing human power structures.13 Other
scholars have described the prophetic message in terms of “liberation” from the hierarchical
system of Israel, though the same scholars view the message as ineffective in establishing a new
system free from any power imbalance.14 This push against existing hierarchies and the creation
of new hierarchical systems produces another hallmark of the prophetic word.
The prophetic word is always resisted either by the prophet himself, as in the case of
Jonah and Moses, or by the people it is meant to help, as in the case of the Israelites in response
to the system of judicial authority, or by the authorities who may be deposed because of it, as in
the case of Herod in response to the messianic prophecies. Bill Hicks imitates the prophetic word
in his criticism of the prevailing hierarchies at play in America: the first Bush presidency, the

12
Hicks, Bill. “Revelations.” 1994, London, England.
13
Patton, Corrine L. “Priest, prophet, and exile: Ezekiel as a literary construct.” Ezekiel’s Hierarchical World:
Wrestling with a Tiered Reality (2000): 73-89.
14
Dempsey, Carol J. The prophets: A liberation-critical reading. Fortress Press, 2000.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Hampton D. Harmon

political landscape, war in the middle east, and even media and marketing. Hicks’ message is one
that rejects any hierarchy in favor of a restructuring that positions him as a new kind of leader
that liberates consumers of his comedy from an ideological prison. This emphasis on liberation
and rejection of traditional hierarchy is pursuant to the prophetic message.
Another wave of scholarship defines the prophetic word as inherently futuristic15 and
apocalyptic.16 In fact, two of the three words translated as “prophet” in the ancient Hebrew of the
Old Testament, ro’eh and hozeh, are derived from the root that means “to see.” From this version
of the word comes the signified concept of the English term, “seer.”17 A prophet’s message is
often one that denotes future and connotes the apocalyptic catastrophe. The prophetic word,
because it is futuristic and apocalyptic, is also directed toward action. The third and most
common Hebrew word for prophet is navi, which is used over 300 times in the Old Testament,
and comes from a root which means “to call out.” It has also been translated as “to call,” “to
proclaim,” or “to summon.” The use of this word indicates an action in the communicator who
does the “calling” pr “summoning,” and in those who receive the word who move to answer the
call or summons. One scholar interprets the biblical text of Micah in the framework of Greek
theater due to the action it implies in the particularities of Micah’s prophetic message; Micah
details the future actions of Yahweh in judgment and of the rebellious people who worship
109
idols.18 Not only does prophecy naturally include futuristic action as a predictive feature, but also
demands action from its subjects as a means of reformulating the predictive future. This has been
called conditional futurism by theologians, the conflict of predictive prophecy paired with the
actionable mandate for the people who receive the prophecy, which in turn could alter that
predicted future. As the communicator demands action from the people, the future becomes
dependent on the fulfillment of that mandate.19
In his work on linguistic and historical implications of the form of standup comedy,
Oliver Double defines the form as happening in the present-tense, not only in the performance
event but also in the larger comedic moment; the comedian makes observations and jokes about
things as the currently are.20 This is certainly true of Hicks. Most of his movements in
Revelations center around absurdities he perceives in the world, which lead him to the futuristic.

15
Maller, Allen S. “Prophecy and progress: Biblical prophets as futurists.” The Futurist 29.1 (1995): 39.
16
Hays, J. Daniel. The message of the Prophets: A survey of the prophetic and apocalyptic books of the Old Testa-
ment. Zondervan Academic, 2010.
17
Strong, James. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible: With Dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek Words
of the Original with References to the English Words. Christian Heritage Pub. Co., 1988.
18
Wood, Joyce Rilett. “Speech and action in Micah’s prophecy.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 62.4 (2000): 645-
662.
19
Goetz, James. Conditional Futurism: New Perspective of End-Time Prophecy. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2012.
20
Double, Oliver. Getting the joke: The inner workings of stand-up comedy. A&C Black, 2013.

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 Laughing Towards Bethlehem: A Critical Reading of Bill Hicks

He does not discuss the absurdities of the world in a vacuum, but uses them in order to make a
final point about what the world could be if the people receiving the comedic and prophetic word
took the appropriate actions in understanding of the apocalyptic moment of the special. He is not
only entertaining his audience or eliciting laughter, but is calling the audience to action and
response by directing his ire and attention to the power structures at play in social narratives.
This is the essence of his discussion of the Kennedy assassination and psychedelic drug use, as
well as marketing and the consumerism of America.
Marianna Keisalo defines the standup comic as “both a sign and sign-maker.” She argues
that the comedian defines both the perspective and the context of their material, while also
functioning as a kind of material in their presented self. The audience must not only interpret the
words of the comic, but the comic himself as a contextual presentation.21 This essentially
describes the active ambition of the prophetic archetype. The prophecy calls for the action of the
people in the presence, but the prophecy itself predicts the apocalypse. Hicks spends the entirety
of his special detailing the evils of the world, which in turn highlights the coming apocalypse, a
crisis of meaning and originality.
He demands action from his adherents. While one of the hallmarks of the traditional
format of a standup comedy setlist is to end with the most effective or profound joke, one that
110
ties the material together, Hicks makes a different transition in his final moments. Hicks
abandons comedic intent wholesale, choosing instead to remind viewers again that, from his
perspective, life is only a ride that can be abandoned for the sake of social change. He chooses to
end Revelations with these lines:
Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all
that money that we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it
feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many
times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together,
both inner and outer, forever, in peace.22
Hicks makes himself an archetype of theological ideas. He has predicted the future throughout
his standup special, a psychological consequence within his viewers as a result of pointing out
the absurd in the current societal norms. He offers that same audience a way out of the future he
has predicted, or to use his own language, a way off the ride. This means the audience must first
realize the existence of power dynamics that create hierarchical systems in which the audience
participates. Then the audience must make the necessary changes to rectify these imbalances,

21
Keisalo, Marianna. “Perspectives of (and on) a Comedic Self: A Semiotics of Subjectivity in Stand-up Comedy.”
Social Analysis 62.1 (2018): 116-135.
22
Hicks, Bill. “Revelations.” 1994, London, England.

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies  December 2022  Volume II.II
 Hampton D. Harmon

which Hicks identifies as decisions regarding voting patterns and national expenditures, in order
to change the felt reality of society. This is the conditional futurism of religious prophecy at
work.

Masochism as an Undercurrent of Prophecy and Comedy

Perhaps the most important facet of the prophetic message is that it is inherently
masochistic. In a study on religious experience and masochism, Stuart L. Charme identifies six
categories that demonstrate masochistic tendencies: “1) a distortion of love, 2) a need for
punishment, 3) a payment for future rewards, 4) a strategy of the weak or powerless, 5) a flight
from selfhood, or 6) an effort to be an object for others. In each case, religious analogies can be
found exhibiting the same dynamics.”23 The prophetic experience fulfills these categories as the
personhood of the prophet and the message are entwined in the masochistic expression. This
form of masochism, however, is engaged in order to derive meaning rather than sexual or
psychological gratification. The prophet engages in the act which produces pain as a means of
obtaining the approval of God or the repentance and action of the people. This is the end result of
the masochistic endeavor of prophecy. One notable example from the biblical text is Ezekiel
eating food cooked on hot dung. In this episode, the prophet masochistically involves the self in
111
the prophetic word to signal the higher truth of Yahweh, resulting in spiritual gratification.
Ezekiel communicates that the people of Israel, if unrepentant, will eat their food in the same
way as a result of being conquered and enslaved by a stronger nation. Similarly, Hosea is told by
God to marry a prostitute, Gomer, thus delivering her from the necessities of her profession.
Hosea later finds that she has returned to the profession of prostitution. Yahweh tells Hosea
through a revelation of prophetic word to go back and find his wife in her prostitution, symbolic
of the continual rebellious relationship of Israel to God, who is aggrieved at his chosen people’s
adultery.
This idea of masochism is especially poignant in the concept of the “messiah” as
elaborated in the New Testament. Messiah is the Hebrew word for “anointed one” and is
translated to Christ in the Greek version of the New Testament. The messiah is anointed, chosen,
for several purposes, among them “to bring good news to the poor,” that is, to engage in the
prophetic word. But the messiah is also the primary New Testament vehicle for masochism. The
prophet Isaiah, himself this similar kind of “meaning-masochist,” writes that the Christ figure
“was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that
brought us peace was on him, by his wounds we are healed.” It is interesting that this passage
occurs in the past tense. The figure of the messiah undergoes immense pain for the apparent
23
Charme, Stuart L. “Religion and the theory of masochism.” Journal of religion and health 22.3 (1983): 221-233.

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 Laughing Towards Bethlehem: A Critical Reading of Bill Hicks

purpose of securing a spiritual or higher reality for the good of others. Isaiah use of the past tense
solidifies the actions of the Christ as singular and actualized. The messiah, then, can be thought
of as a prophet whose masochism transcends the symbolic. The messiah is himself the ultimate
meaning-masochist, one who suffers and dies in reality rather than the realm of the symbolic, for
the purpose of demonstrating a higher plane of truth in fulfillment of the hallmarks of
masochism in religious experience.
Standup comedy itself, can be accurately conceptualized as an exercise in masochism. In
work formulating the standup comedian as its own archetype, Rikki Tremblay employs common
stereotypes that contribute to the figure. The “comic” archetypally perceives themselves as
deeply flawed and incapable of normality, deals with negativity and depression, and has deep
trauma that leads to introversion and social anxiety. This kind of formation of archetype dictates
that the comedic moment, the actual performance, functions as one defined by masochism. If the
archetypal comic is defined by these characteristics, the performance becomes a display of those
characteristics for the pleasure of the audience and the comedian alike. The audience laughs and
roots itself in the persona of the comedian, participating in the moment through the hearing and
acceptance of the joke and the message within. The comic feels the pressure of “being funny”
and through the exposure of the “darkness” within himself or the heterodoxy of their message,
112
according to Tremblay’s formation, finds relief. In this way, the comic sees the performance as
“therapeutic” or “intimate.” Like the prophet, some sort of social or internal pleasure is derived
from the moment of revelation, which involves pain and the tragic figure of the comedic
archetype.24 Hicks. then, most accurately fits this archetype of the prophet, the messianic figure.
It should be noted that the form of standup comedy shares many traits of the form utilized in the
message of the archetypal prophet and messiah. Hicks takes this comparison a step further by
embodying both the standup comic and the religious imagery of the apocalyptic, blending the
prophetic and the messianic in the final movement of his special.
In the final visual sequence of the standup special, Hicks thanks his audience as is typical
of the comic performer. As he takes his final bow, an image of a pistol flashes on the screen and
three shots ring out. The viewer sees the comedian, clothed in black with his face obscured by the
western hat, falling to the ground as the screen fades out and the audience cheers. There are many
layers to this final shot sequence. Hicks, in archetypical messianic fashion, makes the ultimate
sacrifice. Among the central aspects of his final monologue is his acknowledgement of the
tendency of society to kill the bearers of those voices who tell the truth. He chooses to embody
that moment in order to fully embrace the prophetic role to its furthest extent, into the messianic.

24
Tremblay, Rikki. Just kidding: A phenomenological investigation of standup comedy and the standup comedian
from a communicative perspective. California State University, Fullerton, 2014.

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 Hampton D. Harmon

He does not simply note the symbolic in his standup material, but attempts to transcend the
symbolic by miming death on screen and involving the audience in the moment. By ingratiating
himself to the audience using religious imagery, and enlisting them in a larger culture war against
the power elites of the system Hicks find himself in opposition to, he takes their adulation of him
as a comic and transforms it into devotion to social cause. He indicts the audience in this final
sequence, making them complicit in his death. His warning, that society always kills the people
that tell them the truth, ultimately serves no purpose, as the audience cheers his death on without
mourning. The comedic moment serves as an entry into the celebration that occurs at Hicks’
collapse. What viewers are left with is an embodiment of the Messiah, a prophet who comes to
give good news, whose death is no longer preempted by discussion and humor in Hick’s closing
remarks, but is actually pantomimed on stage. This act by Hicks necessarily involves the very
people the prophetic word is meant to transform. It is as if Hicks desires the audience to be
transformed by the experience, especially in his final monologue and shot sequence, and yet he
acknowledges their limitations in seeing his comic routine as entirely performative. By acting out
the very thing he just told them society is prone to do, and then luring them into applause and
excitement over that very thing, he absolves and indicts them of their sin in the same moment.
This is the ultimate function of both the religious and “replacement Messiah,” the prophet and
113
comedian. By conscripting the audience in the revelry surrounding his death, making them
complicit, and then using the moment of death in the framework of sacrifice to lend weight to the
social cause, he upends the power hierarchy.

Standup Comedy as Transformation and the Falsifying of Prophets

An astute observer should ask, “is Hicks’ intentional presentation in the special as a
prophetic archetype a recognition of larger thematic movements in standup comedy as a whole,
or is his performance a singular feature in which he takes on the theological components to make
a point?” In other words, is he presenting himself as a prophet because he sees the nature of
standup comedy as prophetic, or does he embody the archetype to lend credence to his
worldview apart from his artistic endeavor?
The two are not mutually exclusive Hicks certainly demonstrates a purposeful
presentation of himself as a servant to a higher truth and evokes the religious apocalyptic
imagery culminating in his simulated death in order to produce a desired impact on the audience,
especially in the final movement of the piece. More importantly, it seems that Hicks’
presentation indicates a response in the observer that presents him as an exemplar of all standup
comedians. Hicks’ imagery and religious ideation works for the audience because it creates a
verisimilitude that is indicative of the art form. Returning to Brendon Burns’ original thoughts on

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 Laughing Towards Bethlehem: A Critical Reading of Bill Hicks

Hicks, it must be noted that it is not Revelations that produces the religious language in his
admirer, but Bill Hicks as a larger cultural figure. Hicks was not a “replacement messiah”
because of that singular routine, but because he understood the power of standup comedy as an
art form, and utilized that power to produce a prophetic word.
The form of standup comedy inherently involves all of the traits of the prophet and
prophetic message: the service of higher truth and public communication, proclamation, of that
message. At the very least, the standup comedian is critical of hierarchies in general, though not
necessarily bound to the traditional idea of “punching up.” The history of standup comedy stands
in opposition to language purity laws as a place where hierarchy breaks down. Standup comedy
makes fun of social norms and accepted ideas from a place of humor, but also from a place of
frustration with the status quo and truth claims of the social structure. The standup comedian
moves an audience to laugh or groan or heckle based on the content of his message,
demonstrating the communicative imperative toward action; laughter becomes a ritual response
of a worshipful devotee. Finally, Standup comedy is a famously masochistic art form as a whole,
one in which its practitioners bear themselves to a room full of onlookers by sharing their
perspective and pain, as well as their self-image and self-ridicule.25 In short, the essential
formulation and function are nearly indistinguishable from the prophetic word.
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Hicks’ role in the social landscape creates reverence because of his fulfillment of the
comedic and prophetic archetypes, and this kind of reverence is not limited to him alone. Among
the most relevant evidence for standup comedy’s prophetic nature is the rise of a social system
that allows for standup comedians to become cultural icons. Joe Rogan is the most popular
interviewer of all time, based on studies from Edison Research, with a reach extending far
beyond comedy and into health policy, science, politics, criminal justice reform, and
entertainment at large.26 While Joe Rogan is certainly revered by some, he and his podcasts have
also been the subject of much disdain because of his political and cultural positions and those of
his guests. Joe Rogan’s standup comedy does not happen in a vacuum, but serves to drive people
to his podcast, where his message produces simultaneous revulsion and reverence. What began as
a standup comedy career grounded in the performative act became transformative for acolytes
and critics alike.
The same is true of both Dave Chapelle and Hannah Gadsby, both of whom received
praise and derision for their most recent televised specials. The derision adds a dimension to the
prophetic nature of the comic. Each comedic figure subject to the ridicule of some subset of the
25
Limon, John. Stand-up comedy in theory, or, abjection in America. Duke University Press, 2000.
26
Research, Edison. “The Top 30 U.S. Podcasts According to The Podcast Consumer Tracker - Edison Re-
search”. Edison Research, 2022, https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-top-30-u-s-podcasts-according-to-the-podcast-
consumer-tracker/.

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 Hampton D. Harmon

hypothetical audience is falsified as a prophet by that audience. It is not that Dave Chappelle
becomes irrelevant when certain factions consider his words out of bounds. Instead, it seems that
he has fulfilled the prophetic role in a different way. His message has been deemed to be untrue
and dangerous, worthy of resisting; he is declared by his critics to be a false prophet. This
archetypal framework gives room for falsification, or the rejection, of the archetypal figure. The
public discourse surrounding the comic’s performative material, and the extra-performative
words and actions of others like Louis C.K., Kevin Hart, and Cathy Griffin indicate to the astute
observer and scholar that there is more to the presentation of the comic than mere words or
performance. The prophet is not confined to his message, but to the larger archetypal components
of prophethood.
The fact that our social structures seem to hold and evaluate the standup comedian’s
words in public consciousness, even those intended and acknowledged as performative,
demonstrates the existence of a profound participatory experience for the audience, akin to a kind
of religious devotion. Using Bill Hicks’ standup special Revelations, we understand not only
Hicks’ assumption of the prophetic role, but also the underlying implications of standup comedy
as a whole. While there is a difference between Hicks’ intentional presentation and that which is
essential to the art form, the two are interconnected. Hicks is playing into the larger form, which
115
he acknowledges through his own characterization as essentially marking standup comedy in
general. A deeper and more accurate understanding of Hicks’ presentation of the self gives
insight into the larger cultural moment, and helps us formulate a framework for societal, even
individual, reaction to the standup comic as the prophet of the current cultural moment.

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 Laughing Towards Bethlehem: A Critical Reading of Bill Hicks

Works Cited
Burns, Brendon. (2014, February 19). Brendon Burns on Bill Hicks: ‘I felt like he was speaking
directly to me’. The Guardian. Retrieved November 9, 2021, from https://
www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/feb/19/brendon-burns-on-bill-hicks.
Charme, Stuart L. "Religion and the theory of masochism." Journal of religion and health 22.3
(1983): 221-233.
Collins, Adela Yarbro. "Reading the Book of Revelation in the twentieth century."
Interpretation 40.3 (1986): 229-242.
Dempsey, Carol J. The prophets: A liberation-critical reading. Fortress Press, 2000.
Dooley, Lucile. "The relation of humor to masochism." Psychoanalytic Review 28.1 (1941): 37-
46.
Double, Oliver. Getting the joke: The inner workings of stand-up comedy. A&C Black, 2013.
Emmet, Dorothy. "Prophets and their Societies." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 86.1 (1956): 13-23.
Fitch III, John. "Archetypes on screen: Odysseus, St. Paul, Christ and the American cinematic
hero and anti-hero." Journal of Religion & Film 9.1 (2005): 1.
116
Goetz, James. Conditional Futurism: New Perspective of End-Time Prophecy. Wipf and Stock
Publishers, 2012.
Hays, J. Daniel. The message of the Prophets: A survey of the prophetic and apocalyptic books
of the Old Testament. Zondervan Academic, 2010.
Hicks, Bill. “Revelations.” 1994, Lodon, England.
Hoch, David G. "Mythic Patterns in" 2001: A Space Odyssey"." Journal of Popular Culture 4.4
(1971): 961-965.
Keisalo, Marianna. "Perspectives of (and on) a Comedic Self: A Semiotics of Subjectivity in
Stand-up Comedy." Social Analysis 62.1 (2018): 116-135.
Kravchenko, Nataliia, and Valentyna Snitsar. "Cultural Archetypes in the Construction of
"Possible Worlds" of Modern African American Rap (Based on Kendrick Lamar’s
Texts)." Euromentor 10.4 (2019).
Limon, John. Stand-up comedy in theory, or, abjection in America. Duke University Press, 2000.
Maller, Allen S. "Prophecy and progress: Biblical prophets as futurists." The Futurist 29.1
(1995): 39.
Osborn, Adam Gardner. "Bill Hicks: a study in national character." (2002).
Patton, Corrine L. "Priest, prophet, and exile: Ezekiel as a literary construct." Ezekiel’s
Hierarchical World: Wrestling with a Tiered Reality (2000): 73-89.

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 Hampton D. Harmon

BIO
Hampton D. Harmon is a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Denver,
currently completing an M.A. in English Studies focused on literature. His previous
coursework at the undergraduate and graduate level have been in Religious Studies and
Theology, and he is currently interested in the theological frameworks that bolster the
value of literary and popular culture artefacts. This paper is an attempt to capture the
intersection of those scholarly interests and to make meaning of a current cultural
phenomenon.

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 ESSENCE & CRITIQUE: JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND DRAMA STUDIES
E-ISSN: 2791-6553  VOLUME 11.11  DECEMBER 2022

Ahalya
by Koral Dasgupta, Pan Macmillan, 2020, 204 pages

Stella Chitralekha Biswas*

Book Review
“Go woman, find your world yourself. The joy
you seek deserves to be discovered.” (Dasgupta loc. 37)

Ahalya, the first book of the Sati-series by Koral Dasgupta, claims

*Ph. D., to be a re-telling of the well-known mythological account of a

Faculty, Department of hapless woman and her plight under the brunt of a patriarchal
English, social order. Instead of reiterating the familiar tale of Ahalya’s
Sarojini Naidu College for seduction and her consequent cursed fate, the writer chooses to
Women, Kolkata
focus on the standpoint of the woman who relates the story of her
[email protected]
own journey towards self-discovery. Elements of memory, history,
myth and bildungsroman intersect to create an intricately detailed
narrative that ruptures the demureness and over-emphasis on
docile chastity associated with the traditional image of the Hindu
woman. In her attempt to prioritize the voice of the woman,
CITATION Dasgupta almost re-interprets the popular notions of virginity and
Biswas, Stella Chitralekha.
virtue accorded to the five women or panchkanyas of Hindu
Review of Ahalya by Koral
Dasgupta. Essence & Critique: mythology‒Ahalya, Draupadi, Kunti, Tara and Mandodari. It is
Journal of Literature and Drama believed that Ahalya, the most beautiful creation of Brahma, was
Studies, vol. II, no. II, 2022, pp. punished for no fault of her own, with no scope given to her to
118–122, journalofcritique.com.
assert any degree of agency. In Dasgupta’s narrative, however, she
tries to unravel such a monolithic reading of Ahalya’s story,
delving into the inner recesses of her mind and making her
responsible for taking certain conscious decisions which steer the
 Stella Chitralekha Biswas

course of her life. It is important to note that Dasgupta interferes minimum with the main plot,
instead devoting greater attention towards upholding the first-person narratorial voice of her
heroine.
Ahalya is constructed as a highly conscious being who revels in her own existence as well
as her sensual perceptions of the world and its wonders since her creation by Brahma. Even when
she is initially described as a formless entity, floating about the clouds with her mother, the Mist,
her consciousness is quite active. Her precocity towards knowing more about “the ever
insatiable” (Dasgupta loc. 17) Indra during her conversations with the Mist makes it evident that
she is unabashed about her own sexual passions, so much so that she fantasizes about a personal
encounter with the mighty god. She even goes on to wonder if she would be able to “pose before
him the most impossible challenge of the cosmos. Would the lustful King of Devas, desirous of
and desired by the universe, like to explore the faceless? Can he touch in the absence of skin?
Can he pleasure the one without a body? Would the greatest lover known for his rugged energies
make love with this soul?” (loc. 17). Interestingly enough, this heightened consciousness plays a
crucial role inher maturation as she reaches adolescence and a greater sexual awakening in her
bodily form. She is ecstatic on becoming a human, celebrating her physical charms while
wondering “if it were made to spark a revolution!” (loc. 17). It is this revolutionary quest towards
119 self-actualization that is narrated by Dasgupta in highly poetic and lucid language, evocative
imagery and meaningful symbolism, all the while making certain that the focus remains on
Ahalya’s thoughts and emotions. Ahalya goes on to develop a natural attraction for her sage-
husband, Gautam despite having been given away in marriage to him at a tender age by Brahma.
The initial lack of agency in expressing consent gradually mutates into a strong sexual passion
for her very able-bodied partner whom she decides to seduce. Seduction and sexuality are thus
not associated with any kind of negative connotation in the narrative (for instance, social taboos),
but rather perceived as the cement of a legitimate marital relationship. Ahalya’s passion
humanizes Gautam and helps him evolve “from a hermit to a husband” (Roy n.p.) just as she
herself appears to blend the notions of idealized femininity and lived womanhood in the course
of her diverse experiences, both physical and psychological.
While this man and wife relationship forms the bulk of the narrative, but there are several
other relationships that Ahalya has to negotiate and that significantly inform her journey towards
self-actualization. Her relationships with her father and creator, Brahma, her mother, the Mist
and her sister/confidante, the river Mandakini sustain her throughout. In particular, the bond she
shares with her mother is given a greater complexity‒ the Mist plays a crucial role in mentoring
her, “guiding, persuading, and warning Ahalya, by turns” (Roy n.p.) as she embarks upon the
pursuit of selfhood. The mother, not a conventional figure of authority, is recast here as the prime

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 Book Review: Ahalya

source of strength and knowledge. In fact, Brahma himself acknowledges:

“A mother is another name for unyielding, aggressive power. She is the embodiment of
indulgence and restraint. She is the keeper, the protector. She restricts to keep all harm
away. She beholds the baby with her softness, yet forms a tough cast around it to keep
intruders at bay. She is the first teacher starting the learning process in confinement, by
sharing the system of body and life even before the baby is born. She is the form of
knowledge that results from reflex.” (Dasgupta loc. 5)
This reframing of traditional feminine roles celebrates the agency of women despite having been
subject to various restrictions imposed upon them by societal expectations. That deeper attention
is called to such alternative perceptions of womanhood underlines the revisionist historiographic
approach consciously adopted by the writer. It is also interesting to note the lavish descriptions of
nature incorporated within the narrative that are perhaps intimately connected with the
celebration of unrestrained femininity. Nature is traditionally ascribed to the idea of woman and
through the intricate, elaborate passages devoted towards detailing the landscape, the writer
reminds the readers of an ancient, moral connection shared between humanity and Nature. This
idea of the ‘sacred feminine’ however is not to reinstate certain gendered roles of women in
society but rather to evoke a sense of solidarity amidst the oppression meted out by a gender-
120
disparate societal set-up.
In an interview, Dasgupta explains her understanding of the term sati as it applied to
women like Ahalya in the mythological texts: “Today in our feminist debate we’re talking about
fertility of the mind over virginity of the body. It’s about your consent. So, the same thing was
being said in this ancient text…That’s the reason they’re called virgins. Because their mind is
pure, they had reasons for the decisions they took, and they win against their society” (Agrawal
n.p.). In her re-telling, Ahalya is not a defeated woman at the mercy of patriarchy, but an
agentive being with higher sentience who is answerable only to her own self for her actions. In
Dasgupta’s imagination, the concepts of the panch-kanya and panch-sati, albeit belonging to
different traditions of thought in Indian mythology, merge together to represent an alternative
model of womanhood. Ahalya herself proclaims: “Sanctity, I learnt from the Mist later, is a
metaphysical way of remaining pure, godly. Pure at heart, pure in means and ends, pure by body,
pure by faith. She called it ‘Sati’” (Dasgupta loc. 20). In a society trying to curb her flowering
sexuality and youthful passions, she takes it upon herself to explore her own curious desires, all
the while keeping a firm hold on her own mind rather than faltering under the pressure to remain
‘chaste’. When Brahma send her to earth, asking her to “explore [her]self…. Find that
magnificence within the mundane … [and discover the] science of life” (loc. 21), she exactly
does so without any inhibition. Her initial feel of desperation and defeat at being unable to

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 Stella Chitralekha Biswas

comprehend the reason behind the strange manner of her creation gradually transforms into a
spirit of initiative in order to let her “virtues be explored, [her] beauty appreciated, [her]
seduction gratified” (loc. 7). Even when she is cursed, it does not deter her from desiring to
experience life to the fullest, but instead encourages her to display small but significant acts of
resistance towards the onslaught of patriarchal tyranny. It is undoubtable that Ahalya bears
significant affinity with the expanding line of postfeminist thought. By emphasizing upon the
heroine’s sexuality and questioning existing notions of femininity, it complicates the way we
understand gender differences and relations. Borrowing upon Ann Brooks’ theory of
postfeminism (1997), Ahalya can also be read as celebrating what it is to be a ‘woman’ rather
than emphatically laying claims on the erasure of gender differences. Dasgupta tactfully draws
upon a wealth of diverse experiences that would perhaps be relatable to a larger group of women,
thereby subtly politicizing and provoking a host of collective responses towards injustices
inflictedupon womankind.

121

Works Cited
Agrawal, Aarushi. “With Ahalya, Koral Dasgupta’s Tnterpretation of Hindu Philosophy Points to
Undaunted Women, Sacred Relation with Nature”. Firstpost, 20 Oct. 2020, https://
www.firstpost.com/art-and-culture/with-ahalya-koral-dasguptas-interpretation-of-hindu-
philosophy-points-to-undaunted-women-sacred-relation-with-nature-8912651.html.
Dasgupta, Koral. Ahalya, Kindle ed., Pan Macmillan India, 2020.
Roy, Rituparna. “Book Review: This Novel about the Myth of Ahalya Turns the Traditional
Seduction Narrative on its Head”. Scroll.in, 2 Jan. 2021, https://scroll.in/article/982895/this
-novel-about-the-myth-of-ahalya-turns-the-traditional-seduction-narrative-on-its-head.

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 Book Review: Ahalya

BIO
Dr. Stella Chitralekha Biswas completed her PhD in April, 2022 from the Centre for
Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, Central University of Gujarat,
Gandhinagar, India. Her research interests include juvenile literature, pedagogy,
speculative fiction, postcolonial studies, sexuality and gender studies, etc. She has
published papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Bookbird, Indialogs, postScriptum,
Middle Flight, Lapis Lazuli, Café Dissensus and has also contributed chapters to a
number of edited volumes by national and international publishers of repute. She has a
few forthcoming publications by the Edinburgh University Press, Bloomsbury Press,
Routledge and the Nordic Journal of Childlit Aesthetics.

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