Archetypes And Projection: Psychoanalysis Of The Spiritual Isolation In Carson McCullers’s Fiction

Carson McCullers (1917-1967) is an attractive exotic flower blooming in the twentieth-century American literary garden. In her major works The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Ballad of Sad Cafe, The Member of the Wedding and Clock without Hands, McCullers shows readers various kinds of lonely grotesques in American south. None of those characters can escape the spiritual isolation. "Spiritual isolation" is the key theme of McCullers’s works.Centering on this theme, this thesis aims to analyze the archetypes and projection reflected in McCullers’s four major works mainly based on Jung’s psychoanalysis theories and McCullers’s projection conception together with her life experience and mental characteristics. This will help to explain the characters’ psychology and behaviors as well as the deep reasons resulting in the characters’ spiritual isolation. Thus, McCullers’source and conception of creation will be clear then. Through the projective relationship of McCullers and her characters and the projective relationship between characters, the author of this thesis finds out that McCullers shows people the lonely and depressed state of mind of those non-mainstream groups walking on the edge of the society. And the deep reason resulting in this spiritual isolation is the long-existing conflicts between the traditional mainstream society and the overt archetypal characteristics on her characters. Besides, the oppressed individual’s stubborn and unyielding resistance against the spiritual condition expresses McCullers’s strong desire to challenge the social bondages and pursue the recognition of self-identity.In this thesis, based on close reading, the author firstly uses Jung’s Archetype Theory to analyze the conspicuous archetypes on the main characters that are stressed by the writer’s artistic techniques like art exaggeration. Those archetypes include Shadow and Persona, God, Anima and Animus and the Self. Then, with the combination of the psychological projection theory and the writer’s projection conception and her life experiences, the author explores the archetypes and projective identification in McCullers’ fiction. Finally, the author presents different social bondages, such as gender bondage, love and marriage bondage and racial bondage, suffered by the marginal people in their process of pursuing self and releasing archetypes. This demonstrates that the writer presents her characters’ resistance against the spiritual isolation to express her deep hope to break the social bondages, resist the social bondages and search for self identity recognition. Although all the marginal people’s actions turn out to be failures, their brave resistance strongly shakes the social boundaries. Thus, McCullers achieves her writing purpose to enlighten people, to call on the dissolution of social boundaries and more social acceptance.