Visible souls.... - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Aiwendil · 01-19-2005, 09:25 PM

I'm a little wary about entering into a discussion that has taken such a pronounced spiritual/religious turn. But Child's original question intrigues me. Do characters in a myth "wear their souls on the outside" as it were? That is, do they manifest outwardly what are ordinarily (in real life perhaps, or in more modern fiction) internal traits?

In a way, this seems like a candidate for a definition of the mythical - that is, a myth is a story that transfers internal phenomena into external phenomena. This is in line with the Jungian archetypes and Campbell's monomyth. So we might say, for example, that Shelob is an external manifestation of certain innate human fears.

The idea is attractive, but when one considers individual characters - Frodo, Gollum, Boromir, etc. - it starts to become unclear (to me, at least) how exactly they have their souls on the outside. To put it another way - given two characters, one with and one without this externalization of the psyche, how can we distinguish them? How would Frodo be different if he did not manifest his psyche outwardly?

I cannot think of a good answer to this. Yet I still find the idea intriguing. Can anyone present a satisfactory account of what in practice, in literary terms, it means for a character's sould to be visible?

01-19-2005, 09:25 PM	#24
Aiwendil Late Istar Join Date: Mar 2001 Posts: 2,224	I'm a little wary about entering into a discussion that has taken such a pronounced spiritual/religious turn. But Child's original question intrigues me. Do characters in a myth "wear their souls on the outside" as it were? That is, do they manifest outwardly what are ordinarily (in real life perhaps, or in more modern fiction) internal traits? In a way, this seems like a candidate for a definition of the mythical - that is, a myth is a story that transfers internal phenomena into external phenomena. This is in line with the Jungian archetypes and Campbell's monomyth. So we might say, for example, that Shelob is an external manifestation of certain innate human fears. The idea is attractive, but when one considers individual characters - Frodo, Gollum, Boromir, etc. - it starts to become unclear (to me, at least) how exactly they have their souls on the outside. To put it another way - given two characters, one with and one without this externalization of the psyche, how can we distinguish them? How would Frodo be different if he did not manifest his psyche outwardly? I cannot think of a good answer to this. Yet I still find the idea intriguing. Can anyone present a satisfactory account of what in practice, in literary terms, it means for a character's sould to be visible?