A Jungian Analysis of How Like a God Essay -- How Like a God Essays

A Jungian Analysis of How Like a God Isaac Asimov was certainly correct when he stated that the writer of a story doesnt unavoidably k straight off everything ab knocked out(p) it. The author, Brenda W. Clough, claims non to have had an acquaintance with Carl Jungs work when piece How Like a God. However, the architecture of the book is strikingly Jungian. In the origin of the novel, the main character, cabbage has very little interest in his appearance. umpteen computer people are like that, and he has his devoted married woman Julianne to make all the sartorial decisions for him. He looks like a desk warrior, pale, uninteresting, and out of shape. He wears neutral colors, beige and br feature, to symbolize his undifferentiated state. In scrap part of the novel, down the stairs the intolerable agony of losing his family, Robs cold dark facial expression emerges and quickly takes over. The new regime is inaugurated by unnatural and life-denying behavior not eating, not dri nking, not sleeping, but sinking down into the dark on a park bench. Robs appearance alters as he takes to wearing rags and a dark blue toggle coat. He loses weight because he forgets to eat. as yet his sexuality is warped. When he faces up to whats going on he right away tries to change by getting a haircut. At the hairdresser he notices music for the maiden time in the book. He likewise notices hes blonder. He now has a light, and a dark, side. In part three of the novel, under Edwins beneficent influence, Rob cultivates his better inclinations and inadvertently worsens a one-sidedness. He forces the tramp, now stigmatized as a frightening monster, down into the sub-basement of himself -- the trap-door of which, however, has no lock. Edwin is the natural booster of Robs good, lighter side... ...the power warp him into not-self, of becoming Gilgamesh. He knows the face of his own evil now, and the knowledge is a responsibility. In this soup of symbols Edwin has two roles. He is of course a hermeneut, guiding Rob towards self-realization. But he is also Virgil, the icon of reason and light and learning to Robs Dante. (This is the reason why Rob is vaguely repelled by The Divine Comedy in the New York public Library. At that point hes in full avoidance mode, and even the first line of the poem cuts too close to home. Midway in our lifes tour I went astray from the straight road, and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. Ouch) Edwin can guide Rob forward to the final foeman with his dark side, but he cant battle the shadow himself. In point Edwin finds Robs unconscious realm intolerable, since reason has no place there.