THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.2 Fantastic Psychoanalysis and the Doppelganger The Avatar in Panamaamoral underground old town. 41 London, on the contrary, representedthe division within man’s fundamental unity, which is the very meaningof Jekyll and Hyde. 42Stevenson’s split Victorian society lends credence to the claimthat an individual, whether author or literary character, who exists in anenvironment that is constituted by opposing or contradictory valuesystems, will become internally divided unless external contradictionsare evident. 43 Often, this disparity is more clearly recognised when anindividual is displaced from his or her own culture and language, theybecome exiled in effect. The divided society allegorised by Stevenson inJekyll and Hyde may draw a parallel with border writing and the biculturalexperience: border writers and their characters often write fromdual perspectives, or act out two moral codes simultaneously. Literarycharacters may spend an extended period in a foreign environmentreplete with challenging value systems and unfamiliar languages. 44Stevenson’s story consists of a factual chronological narrativeand a confession, “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case”. 45 Multipleviewpoints and narrative voices, which mean several simultaneousinterpretations, are used. The novelty of the parable was the characters’physical transformation which reinforced the notion that drink and drugshad the power to bring men’s bestiality to the forefront. 46 Indeed, aswickedness was almost synonymous with ugliness, emphasis was laidon the physical aspects of the personality change which seeminglycontradict the common perception of the double as a mirror image.Hyde is the evil incarnate, a complementary double. Jekyll is acomposite character whose alter-ego’s physical attributes differ greatlyfrom his own unlike the mirror image model of the double, or identical41 The city of Edinburgh had a split personality of its own: when its New Town wasopened in 1822, it reaffirmed the dividing line between the rich and the poor. RaymondT. McNally and Radu R. Florescu, In Search of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Los Angeles:Renaissance Books, 2000) 69.42 Malcolm Bradbury, ed. The Altas of Literature (London: De Agostini, 1996) 140-143.43 Hawthorn 135. Indeed this is the case in celebrated multiple personality sufferers,Sybil Dorset and Eve White. See 1.2 "Fantastic Psychoanalysis and the EuropeanDoppelganger" footnote 8, page 6.44 One of Jaramillo Levi’s autobiographical and enduring characters, the collegeprofessor has more often than not spent a protracted time abroad, and on his returnhe feels himself psychically ostracised. Characterisation in Enrique Jaramillo Levi’sfiction is detailed in 3.2 Haven’t we met? Reappearing Characters, 186.45 This is similar in structure to the 1824 novel The Private Memoirs and Confessionsof a Justified Sinner by James Hogg, a compatriot of Stevenson’s. The three sectionsare “The Editor’s Narrative” and “Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Sinner,Written by Himself” which also includes “[The Editor’s Narrative Concluded]”.46 Although the abuse of opiates, laudanum, and opium for mood swings and literarystimulation was not unfamiliar, the great Victorian fear of the time was of those peopleor creatures who were “not themselves” because of vice, drugs or alcohol.48