A Prayer for Owen Meany Essay -- Literary Analysis, John Irving

A Prayer for Owen meany by John Irving d one a Jungian Archetypal LensCarl Jung was a Swiss psychologist and headhunter who developed many an(prenominal) theories concerning the unconscious mind. Jungs theories state that the unconscious sidetrack of a humans psyche has two different layers, the in the flesh(predicate) unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is unique to every singular however, the collective unconscious is inborn. (Carl Jung, Four Archetypes, 3) The collective unconscious is present in everyones psyche, and it contains patterns which are those psychic contents which have non to that degree been submitted to conscious elaboration (Jung, Archetypes, 5) they are templates of thought that have been inherited finished the collective unconscious. Jung has defined many different archetypes such as the archetype of the mother, the archetype of the hero, the archetype of the shadow, etc. These Jungian archetypes are often project by th e collective unconscious onto others. If the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is examined through a Jungian archetypal crystalline lens system it is possible to discern different archetypes projected by the protagonists unconscious self to illustrate the effects of the collective unconscious on character and plot analysis.Tabitha Wheelwright embodies the archetype of the mother. Which shows us how with reflection, John sees her with a divine quality he mythologizes her. Jungs theory states thatParents are advance(prenominal) major carriers of projection, and children unconsciously project omnipotence and omniscience onto them. These are what Jung called archetypal projections. The parents become gods, invested with powers that volume have attributed to the divine. Daddy can do anything Hes the str... ...f it is not accepted first. Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is one of the many novels that can be analysed through a Jungian archetypal lens to show how the un conscious projection of archetypal images affects how a person views others messs actions and their behaviours. In this novel the narrator John Wheelwright projects different archetypes onto different people dependant on their role in his life. This shows us how the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is not objective because as a indicateer, you see all events and characters though Johns eyes. Everything that you read is tainted by the archetypal images Johns unconscious self which are being projected onto different characters and situations. This leads the reader to the question of how does one know that the story of Owen Meany is true, and that all the characters are portrayed truthfully.