THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.2 Fantastic Psychoanalysis and the Doppelganger The Avatar in Panamadismissing the possibility of liberating the self within, ironically summonsthe double and almost immediately John is mistaken for Galliccounterpart, Jean.Albert Guerard declares, “[t]he experience of encountering adouble is indeed uncanny: a response not merely to strangeness but tofamiliarity. For the double had once been within ourselves”. 111 Indeed,the experience of being confronted by John’s own double provokes anatural fear, uncanniness, and a “desire to turn and run”:Someone jolted my elbow as I drank and said,‘Je vous demande pardon,’ and as I moved togive him space he turned and stared at me and Iat him, and I realised, with a strange sense ofshock and fear and nausea all combined, thathis face and voice were known to me too well. Iwas looking at myself. The resemblance mademe slightly sick, reminding me of momentswhen passing a shop window, I had suddenlyseen my own reflection, and the man in themirror had been a grotesque caricature of what,conceitedly, I had believed myself to be (12).His voice also seems identical: “even the intonation sounded, inmy ears, like my own” (13). 112 However, despite the uncanny likenessJohn does notice the difference between them, “it was his ease ofmanner that made contrast to my sober mood. He looked, and spoke,and smiled as I had never done” (15). His sober mood does not last:“The drinks I had swallowed at the station buffet were beginning to takeeffect. Nothing that was happening had reality”, and in his state ofblurred confusion, he foresees a threatening and a potentiallydangerous double who:was still a stranger, but who, because of achance resemblance, had taken charge of myevening, directing its course for good or ill. Iwondered whether I should slide into the carand drive away, and so be quit of the wholeencounter, which, fascinating at first, nowseemed menacing, even evil (19).Yet, however much John expects this menace, he states “Icouldn’t summon an excuse to be quit of him, and, despising my ownweakness, I followed him along the street like a shadow” (20). This111 Guerard 4.112 See reference to Alien Voices footnote 34, 152.66