Psychoanalytic symbols used by Simon Navagathegama

Psychoanalytic symbols used by Simon Navagathegama

A gifted Sri Lankan novelist Simon Navagathegama presented a series of mystic symbols in his famous novel Dadayakarayage Kathawa or the Story of the Hunter which can be regarded as one of the best psychoanalytical novels of the contemporary era. Dadayakarayage Kathawa represents numerous psychoanalytic symbols which stem from the unconscious mind. It is a great recount of relations between social anthropology and psychology Simon Navagathegama used different metaphors to describe the cultural and social and anthropological icons. As the author illustrates the hunter is a person as well as a metaphor.

The hunter is not an alien but another member in a rural village. Even though the hunter lives among the people he is an outcast rejected by the society. The hunter kills animals and obviously he is branded as a sinner who breaks the first Buddhist precept. The villages are critical about his actions and they often judge him according to the traditional moral set of rules.

Why the hunter is being hated? Simon may have surmised our ancestral past. There is a human tendency to hate the shameful past. The truth is 20,000 years ago we all were hunters. There is a hunter in each one of us. Our collective unconscious carries some elements from our predatory days. These impulses are threatening and shameful. No wonder why the villagers have a repulsive attitude towards the hunter.

Simon used symbols in his novels hiding the conventional meanings. Deconstructive reading would reveal the actual meanings which he gives in his novels especially Dadayakarayage Kathawa. Simon gives broader interpretation of a carried meaning. According to the Psychoanalytic notion symbols are not the creations of mind, but rather are distinct capacities within the mind to hold a distinct piece of information. Simon’s novel is full of elements of unconscious and repressions that struggle in our minds beyond the cultural and religious barriers. Created by collective unconscious archetypes these symbols carry an important socio cultural meaning.

His symbols are from folklore, mythology and rituals and some have religious background. Dadayakaraya or the hunter is a realistic as well as a mystic character. Hunter is Simon’s utmost metaphor. The hunter is passionately attached to a deer which Simon calls Kathuri Muwa. He is eagerly seeking the deer in the jungle. Kathuri Muwa is a wider form of representation which refers to the father figure. Kathuri Muwa becomes hunter’s fantasy which is an imaginal representations of bodily instincts and urges. The hunter’s expedition in the jungle may be the best metaphor used to describe the journey through Sansara. Simon implies Kasthuri Muwa as the totem animal or the substitute father.

The hunter meets a goddess in the jungle and both enjoy sensual pleasure in which Simon talks about incest or a taboo relationship. In 1913 Freud wrote Totem and Taboo to make the resemblances between the mental lives of savages and neurotics.Freud discusses various ways in which the exogamy of the totem system prevents incest not only among the nuclear family, but among extended families as well. The hunter consciously knows that the physical relationship with the goddess was a taboo. Although he had repressed his incestuous wishes his basic instincts emerges like a volcano.

The villagers are cautious about the hunter’s actions. They call him a sinner though the villagers enjoy eating the meat brought by the hunter. On a significant religious day the villagers hear the gun shot sound and they criticize the hunter for committing sins on such a momentous day. But the true fact is that the hunter was compelled to kill the leopard which had killed two villages on the previous day and his only purpose was to protect the devotees from the beast.

Among the villages Podikandaya is a young man who hates his mother’s infidelities and father’s ineffectiveness to be the figure head of the family. When Podikandaya reveals that the hunter was having an affair with his wife Rankiri he becomes offended and go in search of the hunter to kill him. Simon presents the triangle story of Podikandaya, Rankiri and the hunter in a bizarre form. The village structural system is created to prevent incestuous sexual relations. The Monk is the spiritual leader who offers guidance to the villagers.

Eric Erikson once stated that an individual is pushed by his or her own biological urges and pulled by socio-cultural forces. Similarly the hunter’s actions are controlled for certain level by the moralistic village culture. Simon is critical about the dualistic nature of the village morality. He emphasizes the hypocrisy and double standards beneath the village culture. The narration of the hunter’s inner mind takes the reader in to a more spiritual world disregarding the hunter’s sinful acts.

When the hunter finds the elegant deer or the Kasthuri Muwa he sees the reality and the true nature of the craving. Now the hunter has no greed for Kasthuri Muwa. The hunter has become a super human uplifting his spirit much better than the fellow villagers. The hunter has seen the truth and liberated himself from craving.

-Dr Ruwan M Jayatunge