My Paper

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The Shadow Archetype

In class, we have discussed many different archetypes, but we have yet to talk about the most troubling and mysterious one of all: The Shadow. The Brothers Karamazov has a very model example of the shadow in Dmitri Karamazov. But what is it exactly that makes him a good representation of this archetype? This essay will hope to explain that, and prove that Mitya was placed into the book by Dostoyevsky not as an actual character to be critiqued and understood, but as a force of nature and human psyche that should be apparent in all of us, whether it is suppressed or accepted. I believe that Dostoyevsky wanted the reader to understand the other characters in the book (and also themselves) by first examining Dmitri, and the part of human character that he reveals as the archetype of the shadow.
First, though, one has to ask oneself what the shadow really is. Carl Gustav Jung was a 19th century Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist who developed many of the fundamental ideas upon which modern psychology is based. Among these was the definition of multiple archetypes - repeated characters either in the real world or literature. One can have multiple fractions of every archetype within them, or simply be an epitome of a single one. In any case, Jung found that the most common archetype, and one that is definitely in each of us, is the shadow. The shadow represents the darker side of oneself - “darker” being the avatar of the taboos and unacceptable behavior of the individual’s specific society. This means that the shadow differs from one individual to the next, and cannot take either corporeal or ethereal form, since it feeds off of the beholder’s societal and personal moral compass. Thus, the shadow has been described by C.G. Jung as a synonym for the subconscious, with one major difference. Whereas one’s subconscious can represent both good and evil characteristics, the shadow is the direct separation of the subconscious, and the emphasis on the darker half. The shadow also manifests itself as the wild, unbridled, and almost berserk part of our character. Only when all emotional barriers have been broken can this part of the shadow be seen. A good example of this is Enkidu in the Mesopotamian myth of Gilgamesh - where the demon-man Enkidu is the perverse reflection of the shadow, whose only aim is to destroy Gilgamesh. Nevertheless, Jung argues that all of us have a shadow within, and while most try to deny this important part of our psychological makeup and instead project it upon others, one cannot become ‘whole’ without reintroducing it into our lives and accepting ourselves for who we really are. However, as said before, most of us suppress the shadow, and it is thus the struggle between the shadow and the conscious is born. Nowhere else in literature can represent this struggle be seen in its pure, unfiltered form than in Dmitri in The Brothers Karamazov.
Dmitri is such a good personification of the shadow because he holds elements of other archetypical characters as well. Being in the military in 19th century Russia, he is seen as the hero, and has a seemingly good cause, but acts in such a way that, if you were to only look at a list of things he does, you would think that he was the devil (and all that). However, he is much too complicated of a character for this to be an adequate summary of his psyche.
Nearly every book that he is involved with, Dmitri has an innate struggle between his conscience and his inverse - that which can be called the shadow and its many forms within him. For instance, he “borrows” a large sum of rubles from Katerina, and while he has essentially stolen from her and left her for Grushenka, he feels as if he has wronged her and wishes throughout the book to pay her back, not only as a fulfillment of his debt, but also as an apology to a lost lover that his promise of marriage could not be made. However, we see in several parts in the novel that the shadow also takes a strong hold over him and directly controls his actions. An example of this can be seen when he searches for Grushenka and finds her in the Polish officer’s home. The scene ends with him locking the officer in another room and planning his marriage with Grushenka. No reasonable human being would commit such a crime to an officer of the law. In fact, the book that describes his crusade for love and justice can wholly be named after the shadow’s nearly demonic possession of this young man. Stripped of all the previously mentioned emotional barriers, Mitya does not care what happens to him, since he has already committed multiple crimes and stated that he will end his life if Grushenka is truly out of his reach. This is where the shadow took over him.
There is a good side to all of this, as it is because of his actions on that day that he realizes that living as he does is not the way that a respectable Russian citizen would carry out his life. Later, in prison, he decides to begin anew, now recognizing how erroneous he has been in his logos. Carl Gustav Jung would call Dmitri a complete and whole human being, because he has seen what he looks like in the shade of the subconscious and he has accepted his true self. Jung’s message to all of us would be to look into the shadow of the darkness, stare straight into its eye, and walk away accepting the horrible things you have seen. Whether we can do this or not is within ourselves.