THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.1 Double, Double, Toil and Trouble The Avatar in Panamatwo seldom exist at once. 52 In another physical alteration, the double asnon-human self became a variation on the theme. The popularity of thisaspect of doubling was in part due to the nineteenth century credenceof the ‘beast in man’ concept which created characters such as CountDracula and the dual protagonist in the novella which exploits the themebest, Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Originating in the moralisticdualism in Christian theology, the class of divided self found in theearlier work usually represented the division between good and evilaccompanied by the assumption that the nefarious self was alwaysready to emerge given the right circumstances. The Edward Hyde ofStevenson’s tale and the elusive serial killer of the same era, Jack theRipper, are first-rate examples of this belief. The supposition of evillying in wait derived from the Gothic tradition in English literature whichwas the precursor to the doppelganger theme and lent itself to theoccult, horror, and the leitmotif of good versus evil. The moral divisionsand polarised dualities of fictional story-bound characters came torepresent their secret double lives in narrative. Naturally, theemployment of the device of the double was suited in particular to thegenre of fantasy literature which seemed to distort and exaggerate itscharacters, plots, and events. In the early twentieth century, indebted tothe influence of psychoanalysis and its accompanying theory, othermarks of general unconscious processes began to appear in themodern fiction of the fantastic. Techniques and features similar togeneral dream characteristics like timelessness, fragmentation, andcontradiction accorded the double a psychological rite of passage asopposed to the previous supernatural role.Contributing to how the modernists viewed Art was thepresumption that the author leads a double life through the creation ofart which reveals the author’s own alter-ego as one of his or hercharacters. Paradoxically, they were also thought to have either lostthemselves in their art by becoming totally immersed and introspectiveor at the other end of the spectrum they might have been absent fromtheir creations altogether. 53 Harry Tucker, Jr., in his introduction to thetranslation of Otto Rank’s The Double: A Psychoanalytic Study,observes that “the author’s desire for another existence” was one of thefunctions credited to the double by nineteenth century literary52 “Lycanthropy represents a condition rare today but common in the Middle Ages,when a person developed the delusion that he was a wolf. Transformation into otheranimals also figured in these delusions, but the wolf delusion was the most common.The psychotic individuals were greatly feared because of their tendencies to commitcriminal acts, and often were hunted down and killed. Many of these patients wereparanoid schizophrenics, although some showed the effect of mass hysteria.” Kaplan,Freedman, and Sadock 995.53Karl Miller, Doubles: Studies in Literary History (New York: Oxford UP, 1985) 22.29