Part Two: Enantiodromia in Literature
and the Hero’s Journey
By Reg Harris
Our Shadow embodies the forces and impulses that we repress. It contains parts of ourselves that we disown, forces that push to be experienced. If we repress them, they gain more power. Eventually, to realize themselves, they will burst into our consciousness and create chaos until they can claim their rightful place in our lives.
The Enantiodromia in Literature
As I detailed in Part 1 of this article, enantiodromias occur when a psychological tendency grows to such an extreme that it dominates our conscious life. Because our psyche seeks equilibrium, a strong countertendency develops to compensate for the imbalance. When the dominant tendency reaches “superabundance,” the countertendency will break into consciousness, causing the dominant tendency to flow into its opposite.
Enantiodromias are frequently the origin of conflict in literature and film. In some stories, characters make dramatic shifts in their personalities, and the story ends happily. In other stories, characters fail to make the needed shift, and the chaos of the enantiodromia destroys them and sometimes even the people around them (e.g., Claudius in Hamlet or Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman). Not infrequently, we encounter heroes who fall victim to their shadow countertendency and become villains, or we see villains who, because of some revelation, suddenly become heroes.
Fiction mirrors life, so enantiodromias in literature develop in the same way they do in life. In a narrative context, the character experiences an extreme psychological imbalance between his or her conscious, expressed narrative and an unconscious, repressed alternative narrative. This imbalance creates unbearable tension, which must be relieved. In these kinds of stories, conflict centers on resolving the chaos created when this tension erupts into the character’s life.
The Journey toward Reconciling Poles
Because the Hero’s Journey describes a pattern that is common to virtually all experience, the enantiodromia is also a common motivating force in journey narratives. In a journey, literary or real, the struggle usually manifests itself in the hero’s life in one of two ways:
1. The Enantiodromia as the Call: The chaos caused by an enantiodromia calls us to our journey by awakening us to a contradiction or imbalance in our thinking. Our journey becomes a quest to restore balance and meaning.
2. The Enantiodromia(s) as the Journey: An enantiodromia (or a series of enantiodromias) can constitute the journey. In this case, we experience either a long, psychological breakdown or a series of breakdowns. Working through these breakdowns creates the structure of our quest.
Let’s take a closer look at these two scenarios with some examples from literature.
Enantiodromia Is the Call to the Hero’s Journey
Rejecting the Call (or any challenge) might eventually push us into an enantiodromia that awakens us to a contradiction or imbalance in our life. That revelation then leads us into a journey to re-establish equilibrium and meaning.
Literature and film are replete with stories in which enantiodromias compel characters into Hero’s Journeys. Often the journeys involve characters who find themselves in situations that force them to act counter to their values. The enantiodromia awakens them to that contradiction and allows the repressed value system to assume control.
A Minor Enantiodromia Leads to a Major Life Change
A famous example of this is Sammy in John Updike’s short story “The A&P” (1961). Sammy is a checkout clerk at an A&P supermarket. He seems prepared to spend years with the A&P, working his way up the ladder to manager. One day, two girls wearing bathing suits come into the store. The store is not near the beach, so the girls cause a disturbance.
Sammy’s boss, Mr. Lengel, chastises the girls and embarrasses them in front of the other customers. This upsets Sammy, who sees no need to humiliate the girls. He realizes suddenly that being part of a “system” (the A&P, in this case) would require him to do things that go against his values. Spontaneously, he rejects this narrative and quits his job. After a brief confrontation with Lengel, he turns in his apron and steps outside into the parking lot, where he realizes the implications of his decision.
Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he’d just had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.
That Sammy now sees the customers as “sheep” tells us how his perspective has changed. He has flipped from being a cog in the system to being a freethinker who will act based on his own values. While Sammy’s actions seem sudden, they likely have been brewing unconsciously for some time (the story only hints at this). The situation with the girls creates the break in his “A&P clerk” narrative. That break allows his alternative, independent narrative to express itself. For Sammy, this small enantiodromia has called him to a new journey in which he will likely face many challenges because he has chosen to act based on his personal values rather than yielding to a system’s values.
Fahrenheit 451: An Enantiodromia Begins Montag’s Journey
Science fiction gives us another example of an “enantiodromic flip”: Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451. In the world of Fahrenheit 451, the government keeps people happy, ignorant and docile. They do this by banning books because books stimulate thought and, thus, confusion and discontent. The book ban is enforced by government “firemen.” In Bradbury’s world, however, firemen don’t fight fires; they start them. When someone is caught hiding books, the firemen burn both the books and the home of the person hiding the books.
The main character in the novel, Guy Montag, is a fireman. He luxuriates in his job of burning books. He is cocky, arrogant and thoroughly immersed in himself. He even enjoys the smell of the kerosene that permeates his clothing. “Kerosene is nothing but perfume to me,” he says. However, we quickly discover that behind Montag’s fireman exterior, an alternative narrative is growing, a narrative that directly challenges his work and his world.
Montag has become curious about books. He wants to know what makes books so dangerous that he must burn them. He has begun taking books and hiding them in his home so that he can read them. As he does, he realizes that there are people behind the books and that those people might have something important to say. The growing tension between the two narratives—the conscious, austere fireman and the subconscious, humanitarian rebel—sets the ground for his impending enantiodromia.
One evening on the way home, Montag meets a young girl named Clarisse. Clarisse is the antithesis of a fireman. She is compassionate, probing and people-oriented. Her innocent questions trigger a break in Montag’s conscious defenses. She opens his mind to the alternative narrative that has been building in his unconscious. He begins to question not just his work, but the oppressive, inhumane society he defends, as well.
Over the next few weeks, Montag experiences the classic progression of the enantiodromia. A series of events and encounters erode his dominant narrative. Montag’s curiosity and doubts leak into his relationships and his work. He becomes confused, impatient and aggressive. Eventually, his reckless behavior causes his wife and her friends to report him to the authorities for hiding books.
As punishment, Montag’s boss, Beatty, forces Montag to burn his own house. When Montag has finished the destruction, Beatty tells him that he is under arrest. However, Montag, stunned by the enantiodromia he is experiencing, doesn’t hear him:
…he was far away, he was running with his mind, he was gone, leaving this dead soot-covered body to sway in front of another raving fool (Bradbury, 2013, p. 112).
Montag’s enantiodromia—a flip from agent of the state to freethinking rebel—had been growing for some time, even before the novel itself begins. It’s emergence into consciousness triggers Montag’s journey. To repress his doubts, Montag immerses himself ever deeper into his fireman narrative. The tension between the two narratives intensifies to the point that, when Clarisse challenges his perspective, Montag’s defenses collapse. The rebel narrative emerges, thrusting Montag into a journey to give new meaning and purpose to his life.
Enantiodromias Lead to Siddhartha’s Enlightenment
The second way that enantiodromias influence the Hero’s Journey is that, rather than propel the hero into the journey, the enantiodromia (or enantiodromias) becomes the journey itself. In this scenario, the progression of the enantiodromia—awakening, resistance, intensification, breakdown and reversal—creates the stages of the journey. Each stage becomes a step toward synthesizing opposing tendencies into a larger, more inclusive understanding. Most of these journeys propel us through a series of enantiodromic experiences as we work through the predicament we’re facing.
Herman Hesse’s novel Siddhartha gives us an excellent example of enantiodromias repeating themselves until equilibrium is restored. Prince Siddhartha lives a life of luxury and pleasure in his father’s palace. He studies Hindu philosophy with his father and other wise men. However, he begins to question whether these teachers can answer all of his questions about life, suffering and the nature of being. Even his father, a wise and pure man, seems trapped in an unceasing, cyclic quest, forever seeking enlightenment and Atman, the true self, without finding it.
Did [his father] not, again and again, have to drink from holy sources, as a thirsty man, from the offerings, from the books, from the disputes of the Brahmans? Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day, strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day? Was not Atman in him, did not the pristine source spring from his heart? It had to be found, the pristine source in one’s own self, it had to be possessed! Everything else was searching, was a detour, was getting lost (Hesse, 1951, p. 7).
Siddhartha becomes more and more restless. Eventually, he and his friend Govinda leave the palace to become ascetics. This first enantiodromia leads him into a life the polar opposite of his opulent palace life: impoverishment, fasting, meditation and denial.
As an ascetic, Siddhartha pushes suffering to the extreme. However, despite his best efforts, asceticism fails to bring him the enlightenment he seeks. He becomes discouraged, which opens him to a second enantiodromia. This enantiodromia begins when he meets a courtesan and drifts into a life of lust and materialism. He becomes a merchant, but is never able to engage himself fully in business. Frustrated and feeling tension between the two sides of his nature, he becomes greedy and aggressive, and he falls into compulsive gambling.
Eventually, he pushes himself to another extreme and breaks down again, creating a third enantiodromia. As Hesse writes, “Then Siddhartha knew that the game was finished, that he could play it no longer. A shudder passed through his body; he felt as if something had died” (Hesse, 1951, p. 84). He leaves his opulent life a broken man. He goes to the river, where he contemplates suicide. However, rather than kill himself, he meditates on the voice of the river. As he listens, he has a revelation. His perspective expands dramatically, and he experiences a third enantiodromia. With this revelation, he realizes that,
everything together, all voices, all goals, all yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all of this together was the world…he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it as his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity (Hesse, 1951, pp. 135-136).
Faint from hunger, Siddhartha wanders up the river, where he encounters Vasudeva, the ferryman. Vasudeva feeds him and they talk. With the boatman’s mentoring, Siddhartha reflects on his experiences, consolidating and reconciling the conflicting forces in his life: opulence and asceticism, complexity and simplicity, grasping and denial. With their synthesis, he ends the cycles of enantiodromias and achieves the enlightenment he had been seeking.
Lessons for Our Own Journeys
Sammy, Montag and Siddhartha are just three examples of fictional enantiodromias. Literature and film are filled with them. Shakespeare, for example, gives us Macbeth and Othello, two military heroes whose shadows are evoked, releasing their darker natures.
In 20th century literature, we see Curley in Of Mice and Men, who inflates his macho narrative to the point that it destroys itself when Lennie shatters his hand. Lennie, himself, illustrates the tragedy of an “unresolved” enantiodromia. He repeatedly—and unwittingly—pushes his innocence and strength to their limits, each time creating the need for change. However, Lennie is incapable of change, and his enantiodromias finally end with his death.
In film, we see one the most famous enantiodromias of all: Jedi warrior and “chosen one” Anakin Skywalker transforming into Darth Vader in the Star Wars saga.
While these characters are fictional, their stories—and their enantiodromias—reflect our common human experience. If we comprehend the signs and dynamics of the enantiodromia, we can improve our understanding of the stories we read and the films we watch. More importantly, this understanding will strengthen our ability to recognize and navigate the enantiodromias in our own lives.
References
Bradbury, R. (1953, 2013). Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Hesse, Herman. (1951). Siddhartha. New York: Bantam Books.
