Jungian Archetypes

According to Wikipedia (or shall I say, according to Carl Jung) archetypes are "innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic themes of human life emerge". I also found on the interweb that Jung found that his experiences had the tendency to form themselves into persons, such as the wise old man and his companion, a little girl. Over the course of a number of dreams, the wise old man evolved into a spiritual guru and the little girl became "anima", the feminine soul who served as his main form of communication with the deeper aspects of his unconscious.

"A leathery brown dwarf would show up guarding the entrance to the unconscious. He was "the shadow," a primitive companion for Jung's ego. Jung dreamt that he and the dwarf killed a beautiful blond youth, whom he called Siegfried. For Jung, this represented a warning about the dangers of the worship of glory and heroism which would soon cause so much sorrow all over Europe -- and a warning about the dangers of some of his own tendencies towards hero-worship, of Sigmund Freud!"

Jung dreamt of the dead quite a bit as well, and felt it was a way to represent the unconscious itself- not Freud's version of the unconscious, but a new collective unconscious of humanity that could contain all the dead and not just our personal ghosts.

Archetype

"An Archetype is a model of behaviour or pattern of energy that is easily recognisable and resonant to human beings. We can identify with and relate to archetypes as they are primary characters or personalities of the human condition.

Archetypes are everywhere. They are played out in fairy tales, movies, books, TV shows, in our families, our work environments and amongst our friends.

Snow white (Princess) is an archetype, Homer Simpson (Fool) is an archetype... so is Mother, Father, Son and Daughter. We instantly recognize what these roles are and how they are supposed to behave "

I found this article on Google about female archetype and whenever I think "archetype" regarding male and female, I instantly think of a man or woman maintaining his or her gender role. What is acceptable in society - the woman is nearly always the nurturing one, the mother, the emotional one, the weaker one, the temptress, etc. The man is supposed to represent strength, power, wealth, stability, the hero, etc.

One of my favorite archetypes is "the Mentor". I mean, doesn't it seem like Morgan Freeman is always the mentor or "life coach" in all of his movies? Like the wise older voice who is guiding along the young, and still reckless hero. Or perhaps the "wise old man" archetype - Galdalf, Dumbeldore, Merlin,.... Yoda?! Once I start to PAY ATTENTION I notice that there really isn't one piece of literature, film, television show, etc. where I haven't seen some sort of archetype. I think that's a good thing though - I like the feeling of being familiarized with at least one character before I know anything about him or her.

"The Lady with the Pet Dog" - Oates

I have to say, this has been the hardest story for me to read so far. It is a really disheartening thing to constantly have infidelity portrayed in movies, books, television, magazine articles, etc. Is marriage overrated? Is commitment overrated? One thing that bothered me about this version in particular was that Anna did not really consider the feelings of her significant other. She talked about how he was aging, and how he was getting heavier, but never touched on how her spouse would react if he were to find out she had been sleeping with another man. I don't think she cared about his feelings as much as she did about getting caught. I'm not saying I hated the story because I really am starting to enjoy the work of Joyce Carol Oates and her effortless way of describing human emotion, especially fear; I just did not care for Anna one bit. I did not sympathize with her at all. Period. I mean... I'm sure she would have been a good woman... if there was someone there to shoot her every minute of her life, maybe.

But I really don't have any time for self-pity. If you're unhappy, then change something. If you're unsatisfied with your husband, than leave. Obviously in our society that seems to be the answer to everything. If something goes wrong, then bail. She was drowning in her own misery and was just looking for someone to blame. I hate that. Maybe the problem isn't your husband, maybe the problem is you. If this woman were to leave her husband for the man she was having an affair with, then it would have started all over again with another man, in another hotel room, with the same sickening feeling in the car ride home all over again. Seeking self-fulfillment in other people is just going to make you feel emptier than before, and it's a real damn shame some people never realize this.

Araby

To anyone that says James Joyce's story Araby is pointless, I wholeheartedly disagree. Sometimes you don't always need shocking ending to get good literature. I know that in this story no one was shot, stoned to death, or taken away in a "golden chariot", but does that mean this story has less value than the previous stories we discussed in class? Of course not. For me, the best part of this story was the language. I had never read anything by James Joyce and I was enamored by his ability to so accurately describe the feelings of a school-age crush. I think one of the reasons Araby works so well is that it is being told from the perspective of, I would say, a 12 or 13 year old boy. Obviously these feelings are fairly new and when you fall for someone that age, you often fall pretty hard. To the point where this person is crossing your mind more than once during your everyday routine. Is it any wonder that Romeo and Juliet were young teenagers when they tombee amoureux (sorry, my French is horrible). One of my favorite lines from Araby is "But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires." Personally, the stories that stay with me the longest are the ones that eloquently describe these universal human emotions in a way that I never could. The context may be different, but the emotional experience is always the same.

Vonnegut on Lot's Wife

I never read the Bible growing up, never really went to church, and never went to any form of youth group. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but my parents aren't religious at all. So all of these biblical references are brand new to me. I read Slaughterhouse Five about a year ago and I didn't know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's wife. So after reading this story in class and finally made the connection to what Vonnegut's character, Billy, was talking about and what we learned about in class. Also, something else I picked up on.... The character Mr. Rosewater says that The Brothers Karamazov contains everything there is to know about life. I certainly hope Mr. Rosewater is correct because this book is definitely going to take me some time to get through.

Dreaming & the Moral of the Story

I can never quite remember my dreams when I wake up in the morning, but a few nights ago I did have a pretty horrifying dream... or nightmare, I guess. In the dream, I was living in Bozeman, going to MSU and taking all the same classes. I knew all the same people, had all the same professors and all the same friends. But there was one minor detail. Everyone was a zombie. It was similar to the movie Zombieland only it was not humorous in the least. And I'm not sure why but Dwight from the Office was in my dream (as a zombie, of course) and there was not escaping the fleshing-eating monsters that were wreaking havoc on the Montana State University campus. I'm not sure why I had such a vivid dream on a Thursday night, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that I had spicy food right before bed (does that usually induce nightmares....?). One of the scarier moments from my dream is when my (zombie) roommate came home and threw my French Press against the wall, where is shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces... and I shed a single, solitary tear that glistened from my cheek.

Now onto the literature side of things...
I read A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings a couple weeks ago (just for kicks) and spent what seemed like forever trying to analyze and dissect what the story really "meant" with my boyfriend. And to be honest, I was a little stumped. I guess the supposed moral of the story I came up with is that this old man/angel represents earthly imperfections and how we tend to disbelieve anything that doesn't fit the description of how we had originally perceived it to be. I mean, think about what comes to mind when you think of the word "angel" or "angelic". I'm sure whatever comes into anyone's mind isn't an elderly, haggard man with large wings living in a chicken coop. But in reality, I think if an interviewer were to ask Gabriel Garcia Marquez what the moral of this story is, he would say something close to what Professor Sexson said in class: "The moral of the story is the story". If the reader picks out one lesson from the story and assumes that is why it was written, then the reader is almost insulting the author by oversimplifying the story. Just like how Arnold Friend doesn't fit one description. Oates' even said in an interview that Friend is an array of characters all wrapped into one... and how if you answer "Arnold Friend is the Devil" on a test, you know you're going to get it wrong.

Early Memories, Groundhog Day, & James Joyce

All of my earliest childhood memories are pretty silly. For example, one time when I was roughly 4 years old, I stuck a Polly Pocket swan up my nose (it was smaller than the size of your pinkie nail) and my parents nearly had a heart attach because it was so far up there it would be come out. I remember getting in big trouble for that little mistake. I also recall going to Toys 'R' Us with my father around the same age. We were walking up and down the aisles, looking at all the dolls and toys cars when I wandered off by myself. I came around the corner to type tap my dad on the back and when he turned around... I realized it was not my father. GASP! Horrified, my four-year-old self ran off crying to my actual dad who was only a few feet behind me. These memories aren't very interesting to most people, but they have definitely been burned into my brain.

On another note...

Here is my half-assed documentation of February 2nd, 2010:

6:00am: Alarm goes off. I don't have class 'til noon so I sleep another 4.5 hours.
10:00am: Roll out of bed. Shower, brush teeth, hair, make-up, etc. The usual.
11:15am: Eat a granola bar. Try not to fall back asleep. Check Facebook.
11:45am: Print worksheet and head to my first class -- and it's a two-hour lab. Hooray?
12:00-2:00pm: Anatomy & Physiology Lab. It was fairly dull. We set up a concentration lab using pieces of potato and sugar water (and calculated molarity).
2:00pm-2:45pm: Ate cereal (corn pops?) and finished Human Nutrition Quiz.
2:45-3:35pm: Walked to SUB, got a coffee, chit-chatted with my boyfriend, and walked to my last class of the day -- Human Nutrition.
3:35-4:45pm: Turned in quiz, discussed the next project with the professor, fairly briefly did a review of vitamins, etc.
4:45-6:30pm: This is when I started packing up all of the belongings in my room and moved them into another room across the hall with a new roommate. The process took my forever, and as I am typing these words, I still have more items to move.
6:30-7:00pm: Ate dinner.
7:00-8:00pm: American Idol was on. Normally, I don't watch this show, but there was a rumor that a guy I went to high school with was going to be on this episode (and he was! or at least he was on the commercial) so I decided to tune in.
8:00pm-10:00pm: Continued to move my stuff, did a bit of cleaning, exchanged keys, made my med, put clothes away, set up desk, etc.
10:00pm-1:00am: Finally started to settle down. I did some reading for Literature, finished my assignment for Organic Chemistry, and did a little bit more reading for Anatomy. Then went to bed and slept like a baby.

In the back of my mind, I was hoping today would be a wondrous, beautiful day which I would want to relive over and over and over. But in actuality, I knew it was just going to be another Tuesday. And if I knew I would have to relive this day for the rest of my life (or even thirty-days) it would be a huge disappointment and a waste of a perfectly good life. I did a little investigating and dug up some background information on Ulysses by James Joyce -- Apparently, the book is a stream of consciousness that takes the reader on a detailed journey into the lives of its characters. And isn't that what the class is essentially doing in our blogs this week? Documenting all the details of a seemingly boring day that resembles just any other Tuesday? Even though there may be many similarities in everyone's blogs, I think it's fascinating there are so many different human experiences and emotions crammed into one. For some of us, February 2nd, 2010 could have been a day of triumph and victory (getting an A+ on your most recent exam, finally asking out the cute guy or girl you've had your eye on), whereas for others it could have been a day of defeat (getting a flat tire on the way to class, etc.). The way Joyce eloquently describes the over-lapping of these everyday human experiences and emotions is one of the reasons (in my opinion) that it became a classic.