THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.1 Double, Double, Toil and Trouble The Avatar in Panamasplitting of the self is felt. 37 The overt duplication of the individual isportrayed through a physical or characteristic similarity, by an exactreplica, or through an indescribable empathy with another character.This doppelganger is superficially an independent entity experienced bythe physical senses on all levels, yet it is actually dependent on theoriginal and is, in many cases, a mirror image. By contrast, the divisionof personality is represented through the appearance of contrasting orcomplementary characters who embody rather exaggerated aspects ofthe protagonist’s individuality. The covert double is depicted as anindependent character in the narrative sense yet it is extremely subtle,sometimes to the point of remaining completely unacknowledged byother characters or indeed the author. 38In his assessment of Hoffmann’s writing, Freud remarks on thesteady recurrence of situations, events, names, faces, traits, habits,symbols and images. This repetition of an event or incident in itself maynot induce an uncanny response in everyone but, given the presence ofa certain atmosphere, may evoke a powerlessness like thatexperienced in dreams and nightmares. Uncontrolled repetition, oftendeemed as uncanny, leads to the suspicion that something fateful,unavoidable or inescapable is at hand. Thus, Freud’s principle ofrepetition-compulsion is inherently uncanny inasmuch as that whichunconsciously calls to mind this compelling urge is construed asuncanny. In any other scenario these persistent similarities andrecurring elements which ultimately can be linked to childhoodmemories would have been attributed to coincidence and chance. 39Psychoanalytically, the death or Thanatos instinct is at the coreof this compulsion to repeat as it betrays an urge to revisit an earlierstate of things, to regress to the state from which life began. Essentially,it is equivalent to the death wish. Satisfaction and pleasure are gainedfrom perpetually re-experiencing that which is identical and, for thisreason, repeating what one considers stable and familiar maysuperficially appear to assure self-preservation when, in actual fact, itmanifests a will to die. Freud states the psychoanalyst’s aim is for the37 Crawley first made a distinction between the two categories of double: thosecreated through the process of duplication and those through division. Subjectsrelated to duplication include personal identity, originality and the copied, and those helinked to the idea of division include duality, substitution, representation andimpersonation. The two latter topics he allegorises in the profession of acting but thisapplies equally to writers. See “Doubles”, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics 853 -854.38Herdman 1-2, 14-15. Rogers also makes an important distinction between two typesof doubles; those which are manifest or explicit, like the mirror image or exactduplicate (the classic double), and those doubles which are latent or implicit. In thelatter case the understated doubling is felt to be emblematic of complementarity, or instark contrast to the central character. Rogers 4.39 Freud, “The Uncanny” 389–391.24