On The Literary Archetypes In H. Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl

Helen Oyeyemi(1984-)is a good representative of contemporary black female writers with British Nigerian identity.The themes of her works mainly focus on racial discrimination,cultural conflicts and identity reconstruction,which reveal the living conditions and spiritual traumas of colored immigrants in the Post-colonial time.Upon publication,her debut(The Icarus Girl,2005)attracts broad attention and receives Columbia University Award for Creative Writing.Among those related reviews,the studies from the perspective of Archetypal Criticism are still worthy of further efforts.This thesis uses the theory of Myth-Archetypal Criticism by Northrop Frye to analyze Oyeyemi's debut from three aspects: characters,images and narration.With the analysis and comparison between mythical archetypes and those three aspects in the novel,this thesis reveals the process of displacement,discusses the possible influence of Oyeyemi's cross-cultural background on her novel writing,and figures out how Oyeyemi expresses her themes through those displaced “modern” mythical archetypes.In terms of archetypal characters,by discussing the intertextuality and differences between the three generations in the novel and the three flyer archetypes in mythology,this thesis uncovers the change in ethnic thoughts of colored immigrants and their spiritual crisis under the impact of two cultures.Through the comparison of TillyTilly and Satan,the archetype of the Biblical rebel and tempter,this thesis attempts to reveal the black feminism of Oyeyemi.Finally,by comparing the twin relationship between Jessamy and TillyTilly with Abiku the Nigerian twin archetype,this thesis also reveals the attitude of colored immigrants towards multiple identities,which implies both yearning and fear.The combination of African and Western mythologies expresses the cross-cultural background of Oyeyemi.In terms of archetypal images,this thesis discusses four of them including fire,mirror,bush and illness.Through the comparison with mythical archetypes,this thesis displays not only the function of fire in the building of TillyTilly's quality of rebellion,the heroine's mental state with the hint of mirror images,the black feminism indicated by bush images,but also the semi-autobiography through illness images.In terms of archetypal generic plots,generic plot of romance reveals the transition of the heroine from innocence to experience;Generic plot of comedy implies how the heroine breaks the constraint of patriarchy seeking a “new world” with her hybrid identity;According to the Biblical U-shape narrative structure,the diagram in this thesis also expresses how Oyeyemi changes the original tragic myth of Icarus into a comedy through displacement;By generic plot of irony and satire,this novel further expresses Oyeyemi's dissatisfaction with those timeworn racial ideas and white people's prejudice against black people.