The Shadow and Unconsciousness in Humanity: Analyze the Image of Arsat in The Lagoon
from Jung’s Analytical Psychology
Abstract: The Lagoon is one of Joseph Conrad’s famous short stories, concerning postcolonialism, the symbolism of the description of the natural environment and the deep
exploration to humanism. The essay aims to analyze the subject of humanism by dissecting the
image of the leading role in The Lagoon—Arsat, in the method of Jung Carl Gustav’s celebrated
analytical psychology. The notion of “shadow” aroused by Jung are introduced in this essay to
explain the deep reflection in human fratricide, ambivalence and despair with the analysis of
the image of Arsat.
Key words: Joseph Conrad, Arsat, The lagoon, humanism, Jung, shadow, analytical
psychology.
The Lagoon is an impressive work of Joseph Conrad, an early modernist and one of the
greatest novelists to write in the English language, who always contains elements of realism in
his writing. Considered as an abbreviation of Conrad’s another masterpiece Heart of Darkness,
the story of the lagoon describes a Malayan, Arsat’s miserable experiences. Living with each
other in a changing world in post-colonialism, Arsat and his bother embraced immensely strong
kinship and friendship. The main line began with Arsat’s falling in love with a slave-girl with
a veiled face—Diamelen. Knowing his passionate love for the girl, Arsat’s brother encouraged
him to pursue his own love bravely, by saying: “You shall take her from their midst. We are two
who like one.” However, on the run with Diamelen, they were caught up on the beach of a little
bay. Before the point of outbreak, brother offered to fight alone with only a handful of powder
to give the lovers more time to run away and survive. Nevertheless, when Arsat with Diamelen
reached the appointed canoe, on account of Arsat’s instinctive desire for survival and love,
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Arsat ignored his brother’s shouting for help and paddled away. The lovers got their destination
at the cost of brother’s death. Their destination did not have “men’s anger and women’s spite”
as Arsat expected, but these were disease and mental torture. In no time, Diamelen ran a fever
badly and her life hanged by a thread. The whole story ended with the death of Diamelen and
the permanent regret, loneliness and darkness hanging in Arsat’s mind. The features embedded
in Arsat of humanism, realism, depravity and instinct selfishness has been argued widely. In
fact, this short realistic story actually reveals the more insidious universal humanity, which can
be a powerful reflection of the famous analytical psychology theory raised by Carl Jung, a Swiss
psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology.
The notion “shadow” comes from Jungian psychology. The shadow, which can be also
defined as id, shadow archetype or shadow aspect, is either an unconscious personality that the
conscious ego does not identify in itself, or the entirety of the unconscious. All in all, the
shadow is the unknown dark side of the personality. Being different from Freudian shadow, the
Jungian shadow can include almost everything outside the consciousness and can be positive
or negative. However, according to Jung, for that one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the
least desirable aspects of personality, the shadow is negative to a large extent. (Wikipedia,
shadow) Jung also stated that if the rejections of the shadow remain hidden, they will insulate
and harm one individual by acting as a constantly thickening veil of illusion between the ego
and the real world. (The Cambridge Companion to Jung, 319) It is obvious that Arsat in The
Lagoon does suffer from his negative shadow, especially after the decision of choosing lover
instead of brother.
There are prominent four stages in Jungian shadow concept—the appearance of shadow,
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the encountering of shadow, the merging with the shadow and the assimilation. In the following
description, these four stages will be explained and analyzed one by one according to Arsat’s
experiences.
“The shadow contains, besides the personal shadow, the shadow of society…fed by the
neglected and repressed collective values.” (Jungian Psychotherapy, 5) Under this circumstance,
shadow appears. The shadow in Arsat partly derived from the inherent values of fraternal love
and the collectivism values from his tribe. What’s more important, the love between Arsat and
his brother had transcended ordinary fraternal love owing to that they had together experienced
innumerous changes and troubles in turbulent times. Arsat said: “There’s no worse enemy and
no better friend than a brother, Tuan, for one brother knows another, and in perfect knowledge
is strength for good or for evil. I love my brother…we had no more friends in the country of
our birth.” The element of tribe also firmed their relationship. Apart from the fraternal love, the
other significant source of shadow was Arsat’s potential shifting of attention. From Jungian
theory, there were two layers constituting the shadow. The top one contained the manifestations
of direct personal experiences which were made unconsciously by such things as the change of
attention from one thing to another. For Arsat, it was he who changed the attention from the
loyalty to brother to the longing for love potentially, which lead the first emergence of shadow.
As for the deeper layer, which was described untouched and untouchable, it was not concluded
in Arsat’s main character. Or, probably it was concealed deeper in his heart.
"The more consciousness gains in clarity, the more monarchic becomes its content...the
king constantly needs the renewal that begins with a descent into his own darkness.”
(Mysterium Coniunctionis) At the point Arsat made his decision to give up his brother, his
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consciousness was totally clarified and called up the encountering of shadow. Actually, before
the decisive point, Arsat had already manifested his own tendency. For instance, on their run
on the sea at night, out of a kind of ethnic pride and sense of self-esteem, Arsat’s brother
intended to “shout the cry for challenge”. However, thinking of the safety of Diamelen and the
hard-won happiness, Arsat begged his brother in the name of their love to be silence. It could
be easily seen that his attention had changed at this moment. Just as his brother said: “There is
half a man in you now—the other half is in that woman.” The shift had emerged, meanwhile
Arsat encountered with shadow with the following sentences— “I can wait. When you are a
whole man again, you will come back with me here to shout defiance. We are sons of the same
brother.” To response his brother’s words, Arsat remained silent. In his silence, the unconscious
aspect that had been veiled in his mind appeared, however, although he became aware of the
unconsciousness, he refused to acknowledge about himself. From the fact that Arsat said no
words instead of expressing his own ideas to his brother, it was probable that he still couldn’t
totally receive his own shifting and tried to find a middle point. Nevertheless, it was clearly
shown that he failed in the following story.
In von Franz and Marie-Louise’s theory, “(If and when) an individual makes an attempt
to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he
denies in himself but can plainly see in others—such things as egotism, mental laziness, and
sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice…” (The Process
of Individuation) In Arsat’s example, it was when Dlamelen was dying that he saw his shadow
totally and became ashamed of it. Admittedly, he recognized shadow much earlier than this
point, but he had his lover who could comfort him and share his pain at that time. Now when
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his lover would also leave him behind, Arsat began contemplate and collapsed.
"A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling
into his own traps...living below his own level." Jung described the merging with the shadow
as this. According to Jung, the shadow will overwhelm actions sometimes. For instance, when
the mind is shocked and confused by indecision. The impressive decision to abandon brother
made by Arsat we mentioned above is one typical reflection of the proposition that the shadow
overwhelms actions. When the unconsciousness (shadow) merged in an individual action, some
seemingly unordinary actions happened. When Arsat retold the story to the white man under
the big pressure of losing both of his brother and lover, there were several actions carring such
unordinary features. Firstly, Arsat kept strengthening “I loved my brother” and “my brother
loved me” to show his endocentric self-accusation and struggle. What’s more, he also
emphasized “my name” and even “my own name” when talking about the situation when his
brother was crying for help. These repeated words symbolized Arsat’s unstable emotions. Until
this time, Arsat was such badly tortured by his own shadow that he became a little brittle brown
leaf at the mercy of the wind—emotions. Jung mentioned that the impact of such confrontation
might make nigredo, tenebrositas, chaos and melancholia. Think broadly about the future of
Arsat. He had refused the white man’s invention to change his life, saying: “I shall not eat or
sleep in this house… Now I can see nothing—see nothing! There is no light and no peace in
the world; but there is death –death for many. We are sons of the same mother—and I left him
in the midst of enemies; but I am going back now.” his words showed a sense of extreme
pessimism, loss of hope and hovering self-accusation, which were the omen of potential
melancholia.
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However, it was impossible to totally affirm Arsat’s final fate. Because it could not confirm
that how he would handle in the last stage—assimilation. The concept of enantiodromia raised
in last process shows a completely different perspective. “Sometimes it is the dark and
blasphemous thoughts that launch careers of passionate inquiry.” (Psychology’s Magician, 98)
From another perspective, shadow can also be beneficial. Nevertheless, the final state is not so
easy to achieve. Jungians warn that “acknowledgement of the shadow must be a continuous
process throughout one's life.” (The classical Jungian school, 92) In that case, expectations
could still be placed on Arsat. Maybe he could also enjoy his own process of “washing one’s
dirty linen in private” of accepting his shadow. But at least in the several pages of Conrad’s
story, Arsat did fail to achieve it, which introduced the readers to a deeper contemplation about
one of the major subjects— the loneliness of modern people and the inherent dark side in
humanism.
Joseph Conrad used his wonderful writing to vividly demonstrate such a typical
character—brave, passionate, lonely, full of human inherent flaws and ambivalence by
narrating a tale of ups and downs. Through his sophisticated words and phrases, readers could
understand, even touch and feel such shadow embedded in the subject of humanism. However,
it should be noticed that the four stages of shadow should never be distinguished clearly and
distinctively in each course. Instead, they intertwine with each other in different courses. Arsat
can not totally comply with the theories, and nobody could act in realistic life totally comply
with any theories. But with the help of theories, it can be more intelligible for us to understand
the impressive image of Arsat and the connotative meaning of subject.
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Wikipedia, shadow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)#cite_note-3
7
Young-Eisendrath, P. and T. Dawson. The Cambridge Companion to Jung.
1997. Cambridge University Press. p. 319.
Fordham, Michael. Jungian Psychotherapy.
1978. Avon. p. 5.
C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis.
London 1963.
Von Franz, Marie-Louise. The Process of Individuation.
(1964) 1978, in Man and his Symbols, edited by C. G. Jung. London: Picador. ISBN 0330-25321-2.
Algis Valiunas, Psychology’s Magician.
2011, in The new Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society. ISSN: 1543-1215. p. 98.
Hart, David L. The classical Jungian school.
1977. in The Cambridge Companion to Jung, edited by P. Young-Eisendrath and T.
Dawson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 92.
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