29. analysis of jung's archetypes for tourdion
The Hound of Hell as The Shadow Archetype
One of Jung’s most prominent archetypes is the Shadow, the thing that go bump in the dark, your worst fears relived and personified. the Shadow Archetype features prominently in Tourdion as a number of ways, but the most prevalent is the Hound of Hell that chases Gabriel and Felicity from their respective home and prison to Norway, and then to Hamlin where even then he is not free of them.
The Hound of Hell is more of a symbolic thing in mythology, representing Death and Decay, one of the messengers. In mythology the Hell Hound can be also referred to as the Grim, Cerberus that guilds the Underworld. In Tourdionverse the Hell Hound is a messenger and directly answers to Hel, the Goddess of Death.
The Hell Hound is also a metaphor for guilt, shame, regret in Felicity’s point of view. She chose a life of exile during the first rebellion (“I just wanted to live. I just wanted to live!” - chapter 32), unlike her fiancée who chose to die for what he believed in. Only after she comes to terms with the Hell Hound, even if it did drag her and Gabriel to Hell in the process, she loses the heavy shadows underneath her eyes that are prevalent throughout the novel.
Felicity as The Hero Archetype
Although the series focuses on Gabriel, this is dealing in Archetypes. Felicity is the girl who rushes into action, a lady of war who takes the brunt for the team during the airport scene and fights off the first monster that Gabriel meets - a (the)Hell Hound. She’s the Lancer, the one who’s lighting fast with her axe, the one that gets the epic entrance.
There are several things that make a character an Archetype hero. Although Felicity does not have an unusual circumstantial birth, she was exiled from the Piper’s World after the first rebellion of the Piper’s children, which also seeks to play into the traumatic event leading to Quest. Her special weapon is the axe of Peruns, a less potent version of Zeus’ thunderbolt which she handles with ease.
Gabriel would also work in this role, but this trope fits Felicity the most, because the very turning point in the Hero’s journey is the confrontation with past fears, fears that only come out in snippets until they become too big to hold, and then it depends on the choices the hero makes to define the hero as tragic or successful. At first it seems that Felicity leans towards the tragic end of the spectrum when she allows Gabriel to sacrifice himself for her, but she choose right by going to Hell to retrieve him back.
The Pied Piper as the Father Archetype
The Pied Piper, although not mentioned by name until the very end is the helping force throughout the novel. He was the God who sent Loki to keep an eye out on Gabriel. According to Jung, the Father Archetype is the one who gets everything he wants, and has a great deal of power behind the scenes. This exemplifies the Pied Piper perfectly, the man who ends up pulling strings, and Gabriel (with Felicity) from Hell.
During the end, the Hero or at least one of the main characters must ‘reconciliate’ with him, which leaves Gabriel out, since he has never met the Pied Piper before. Felicity on the other hand was sent into exile, after he saves her from execution and placed under house-sanctuary arrest. Although he is not a bad character, he is not a very good character either and explains that he made a mistake in trying to do what was right, but now will atone for his mistakes by playing the deux exa machine.
In the end everybody goes home happily because of him, just like the Father archetype of a mentor type of character, similar to the Wise Old Man archetype.
Alexander Opollyeon as The Trickster Archetype
First of all, one does not even know whether Alexander’s name is Alexander or not. It is strongly hinted through that Alexander is a pseudonym and that he knows much more about a looming crisis then he is letting on in the book. Alexander by his very nature is a con-man with kleptomaniac. He steals jewels, information and other random little tidbits. He is very secretive and while Gabriel and co cannot pinpoint his lies directly, Gabriel always has a sense of feeling that Alexander’s not the best person to trust. He has an affliction with spiders, a allusion to the Trickster, Anasi.
Alexander claimed to Gabriel that he was chained under the exact same spell as Felicity was, but we know that is a lie since he visited Gabriel’s mother seven years ago.
Alexander by his name means ‘savior of man’ but Opollyeon is the English variation of Abbadeon, which in Hebrew and Judio-Christian mythology means ‘hell’s angel’ or ‘destroyer of man’ the exact inverse of ‘Alexander’. The Trickster archetype is famous for inverting natural order, and another prime example is his choice of weapons. When other Piper’s Children uses archaic weaponry such as swords, spears, axes and bows, Alexander wields a state of the art Smith and Wesson gun that only differs from the mundane by the bullets he places inside, which is coated with water from the river Lethe.
Gabriel Fisher as The Child and the Self Archetype
The Child just wants acceptance is a universal theme in novels, and Gabriel is no different from others. He is young, rather naïve even though he is fifteen, and the youngest character in the Tourdion pantheon besides Felicity. Gabriel grew up with an uncaring family, and he is a perfectionist and acts slightly clingy to the other characters.
However besides the childish, slightly rash but always well meaning main character that he is, he also represents the Self as the Child in him seeks to find acceptance with Felicity, Alexander and the many other Gods. Gabriel is the first to see clearly through the veil that separates the mundane world from the mythological world, giving him very clear insight into himself. Another interesting point is that the Shadow and the Self are at two ends of the spectrum, and in the novel, before the twist ending, it is Gabriel who the audience believe in the monster is chasing, and the Hound is one of the pivotal points leading him forward. As Jung himself said ‘ one does not know whether it is the Self or the shadow that is behind the inner pressure’.
Gabriel as a main character is the one to go on a spiritual journey to self individualization, and while Felicity, Alexander, the Pied Piper and many other characters act as archetypes in his quest, he ultimately comes to grips with himself. The Self symbolizes rebirth, and in Tourdion, there is no metaphor for rebirth but rebirth itself. He comes to gripes with the Shadow, and he courageously takes the first step in overcoming it by feeding it a hot dog from the airport.
Even though that event lead to Hell, he was saved by Felicity and the Pied Piper and was rebirthed in the classical sense by a journey out of the Underworld and into the airport. This is the carthesis represented by the self. The novel ends with a choice of him either going back to the world of Tourdion, the dangerous world of mythology or staying behind, and like us, he chooses excitement over mundane.
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