#shadow archetype

This one feels almost too on the nose, right? The Corinthian, with his penchant for murder and being the embodiment of humanity's darkness, is a classic Shadow archetype. In Jungian terms, the Shadow represents the unknown, repressed, or undesirable aspects of our personality. It's everything we don't want to admit about ourselves—our fears, base instincts, destructive urges, selfishness. More importantly: We often project it onto others (the Corinthian inspires people to be like him, after all).

But the Corinthian also represents something inherent to Morpheus: He is the darkness Dream tried to rigidly control (and perhaps deny). He's the failure of Morpheus' function—a nightmare only meant to reflect darkness in dreams, not being darkness in the waking world. His very existence outside the Dreaming during Dream's absence signifies Morpheus’ own darker potential and its consequences when left unchecked. The Corinthian is the embodiment of fear and predation that Dream intended to keep contained within nightmares.

Throughout the series, we see the Corinthian functioning as Morpheus' dark reflection, indulging in exactly the kind of unchecked power and cruelty that Dream tries to restrain in himself (not always successfully 😬). The Corinthian feeds on eyes (symbols of perception and understanding, “the mirror to the soul”), so I’m often wondering if this also suggests both the darkness Dream sees within himself and a distorted view of himself?

When Morpheus finally confronts, unmakes (and later on remakes—that’s the truly important part) the Corinthian, he's not merely capturing an escaped nightmare. In TKO, he is basically reintegrating his own Shadow, acknowledging these darker impulses as part of himself rather than an external threat: You only become whole by acknowledging your darkness, not by repressing it.

Fiddler's Green: The Animus & The Wise Old Man

Fiddler’s Green is not a nightmare, but a dream. Specifically a place, an idyllic location representing solace and belonging. His desire to experience life as a human (Gilbert) is contextually really important. While he isn’t a perfect fit for one single archetype, he touches on a few. He could represent aspects of the Self—wholeness and the regulating centre of the psyche (“the heart of the Dreaming”). A desire for integration and completeness, if you will.

Gilbert/Fiddler's Green also represents the Wise Old Man archetype, which often appears as a mentor or guide figure representing wisdom, insight, and moral qualities. In deeper Jungian theory, this archetype closely connects to the already mentioned Self—the archetype of wholeness. Gilbert’s yearning for knowledge, human experience and connection also taps into the higher aspects of the Animus, which are word and meaning (in the sense of seeking knowledge of and connection to the outer world/experience, though typically Animus is the male aspect in a female psyche), and I wrote about this before. And Fiddler's Green also embodies a deep, perhaps unacknowledged, yearning within Morpheus:

He represents the desire for peace, belonging, connection, and perhaps a simpler existence away from the lonely burden of being Dream of the Endless. Gilbert's warmth, loyalty, and appreciation for humanity stand in stark contrast to Dream's initial aloofness and rigid adherence to duty. Gilbert’s temporary escape into humanity mirrors a buried desire within Dream himself for something more or different than his function.

Gault: The Anima & The Mother

Gault, the shapeshifting nightmare who yearns to be a dream and to “inspire rather than frighten”, is a significant change from the comics (more on that later). The Anima is (in a male psyche, according to Jung) the inner feminine aspect, related to emotion, intuition, creativity, connection to the unconscious, and relationship. The Mother archetype, when developed positively, stands for benevolence, nurturing, caring. She protects and provides. But by wishing to be a dream with all of these qualities rather than a nightmare, she holds up a mirror to Morpheus: His own disconnect from his emotions and his mother wound—empathy, the desire to nurture creativity and hope (instead of just reflecting fear), adaptability (she's a shapeshifter!), and the willingness to challenge rigid rules for compassionate reasons. Her rebellion isn't just defiance; it's a plea for a different kind of D/dreaming. She challenges Morpheus' rigid definition of his own purpose and hence the purpose of his creations.

The Dreaming as Dream's Psyche

So in short: The three major arcana don't exist in isolation. They function within the Dreaming, which can also be understood as the externalised landscape of Morpheus' psyche. Each represents aspects of Dream that he must reconcile and (re)integrate:

The Corinthian: Dream's capacity for cruelty and punishment

Fiddler's Green: Dream's wisdom and connection to humanity

Gault: Dream's potential for transformation and growth

What makes these characters particularly fascinating is that they aren't merely psychological projections. They have independent existence and agency. It’s somewhat mindbending to think that Dream must engage with parts of himself that have developed autonomy.

Okay, quick detour. In the original Sandman comics (The Doll's House arc), the rogue nightmares hiding out in Jed Walker's mind were Brute and Glob. They are crude, bullying types, lesser nightmares who essentially created a fantasy world inside Jed's head as their own little kingdom. They represented brute (ha!) force, manipulation, and a fairly simplistic form of rebellion against Dream's authority.

Replacing Brute and Glob with Gault is a huge thematic shift. Instead of two fairly thuggish, self-serving entities, the show gives us Gault: a character with complex motivations driven by a desire to be better. It forces Morpheus to confront not just rogue creations, but the nature of his own role. Gault challenges his rigidity and purpose. She introduces themes of change, empathy, and the potential for even nightmares to evolve, mirroring Morpheus' own needed evolution. Bringing her back from the darkness and her eventual transformation become a significant sign of his growth and changing perspective, something the defeat of Brute and Glob wouldn't have offered in the same way.

Back to all three: The Corinthian, Fiddler's Green, and Gault aren't just obstacles for Morpheus to overcome; they are external manifestations of internal conflicts and aspects of his own being. By confronting his Shadow (Corinthian), acknowledging his yearning for connection/peace (Fiddler's Green), and engaging with his transformative(!)/empathetic potential (Gault), Morpheus begins the long journey of reintegrating his fractured psyche, even if that has consequences we’d rather not think of 🥺 The change from Brute & Glob to Gault significantly deepens this psychological exploration in the Netflix adaptation.

In a Nutshell: This is a Journey of Individuation

Jung described the process of "individuation"—the integration of conscious and unconscious elements into a whole. Throughout The Sandman, we witness Dream's steps toward this psychological integration.

Okay, but how do I deal with this Shadow?

Once we bring light to the shadow, it becomes more conscious, and what used to come in unconscious and sometimes even irrational manifestations (like a defense mechanism when you were faced with a sensitive topic and you "didn't notice"), now comes as an opportunity for you to question why you act the way you do. Bringing light to the shadow emerges as a chance for us to be more aware of everything that affects us on unconscious levels.

The first thing that Jekyll tells us in his statement is that he’s really, really repressed:

Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. 

The Victorians were already repressed, but Jekyll is even more repressed. He feels deeply ashamed about these nameless “pleasures” (which, let’s be honest, is probably just being gay) and distances him from his conscious personality. He doesn’t want these secret parts of himself to influence his public reputation, or otherwise interfere with the image of himself that he presents to the world. So, he buries them deep down, hiding them not just from the world, but from himself. He already feels like he has a dual nature even before the mad science gets involved.

Jekyll’s intention with the mad science is essentially to give himself Dissociative Identity Disorder, I think. He wants to separate the “good” self from the “evil” self, and have them live independently from each other. Honestly, knowing what I know of DID, I fail to understand how that would be much better. I don’t think he ever really thought this through. But he finds that he cannot do this. He doesn’t end up with a purely good self and a purely evil self, he ends up with his normal self and a purely evil self. The purely evil self, Hyde, is literally just Jekyll with his inhibitions removed and his repressed aspects brought to the surface. Apart from that and his changed appearance, Jekyll isn’t any different. He initially acknowledges this, that Hyde is just himself but in Shadow form:

I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.

Here, he’s talking about Hyde in the first person. He feels younger, more reckless, and more wicked, but he otherwise hasn’t changed. He’s still aware of and in control of his actions. Hyde, being a Shadow, is both everything Jekyll does not to be associated with and everything he secretly wants to be. So, he goes for it. He lets out all of his repressed crap, indulges in his “undignified” pleasures, and then returns to his conscience. Hyde is still Jekyll, but with a unique opportunity to resolve his midlife crisis and live it up with no consequences. 

A lot of adaptations portray Jekyll as an innocent victim of an evil alter rising up from within and taking over his body. I just watched Moon Knight, so I’ve been thinking about Dissociative Identity Disorder for these last few days. (If you haven’t seen it, Moon Knight is AFAIK one of the best portrayals of DID in media.) In Moon Knight, Marc and Steven are literally separate people that share the same body, to oversimplify a bit. Steven has no awareness of Marc at first, experiences amnesia and blackouts, and has no control over Marc’s actions at all. Despite how adaptations might make it look, Jekyll and Hyde emphatically do not work like that. Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. They don’t just share the same body, they are literally the exact same person. 

That means that there is no meaningful difference between Jekyll and Hyde. Everything Hyde indulges in is something that Jekyll already enjoys. Everything Hyde does is something Jekyll already wants to do. Everything Hyde is responsible for, Jekyll is equally responsible for, because they’re the same person. 

Jekyll never fully comes to terms with this, and that’s where he goes wrong. “It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired.” He never makes any real attempt to confront or deal with these dark desires of his, he just shoves them off into a secret double life. So, when the halves of his life start to overlap against his will, what does he do? He freaks out, and starts repressing Hyde again, even worse this time: “I led a life of such severity as I had never before attained to.” His answer is not to try to understand Hyde, take responsibility for his actions, or reconcile his shame. Instead, he locks his Shadow up again, with even tighter mental padlocks. But once the Shadow has been let out to play, it doesn’t go back in the dark easily. Jekyll “began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom.” Repressing Hyde has made him feel like he has an internal monster straining to break free and wreak havoc, instead of Hyde being a relatively superficial shift in appearance and mindset. 

One commonly accepted reading of this is as an addiction metaphor, especially because it’s followed up by a relapse in which Jekyll takes his drug again and commits an act of senseless violence. From a Jungian perspective, though, Hyde’s actions are worse when he finally breaks free because Jekyll’s repression of him had been so severe. Jekyll got scared and shoved down his Shadow, so when his Shadow bursts forth, all of the repressed desires and impulses that compose Hyde manifest themselves in the most horrifying way. The more Jekyll represses his darkness, the bigger it grows; the brighter the light, the darker the Shadow. It festers like a wound unattended. So, the pendulum swings all the way back in the other direction, and the violence feels good: “With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow...” 

It’s after the horror of having murdered someone that Jekyll starts intentionally dissociating himself from Hyde more and more. He speaks of Hyde in the third person, because he can’t bring himself to admit that Hyde’s actions are his own. He starts to speak of Hyde the way many adaptations portray him: as if he were an uncontrollable evil force, rising from within in an attempt to take over and destroy him. He even dehumanizes Hyde, describing him as a kind of beast: “He, I say—I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred.” Then he speaks of Hyde and Jekyll as if they’re different people entirely, with different motivations and desires. Then he speaks of Hyde as something “inorganic” -- not only inhuman, but unalive -- the “slime of the pit” and “amorphous dust.” He’s so desperate to disassociate himself from his Shadow that he insists his Shadow is inhuman dead matter.

Hyde is not actually becoming a separate being as the story goes along. Jekyll is slipping further and further into denial. As I said before, there’s no meaningful difference between Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll’s failure to realize this is his undoing. The more Jekyll denies that Hyde is himself, the more his Shadow manifests involuntarily. When he self-righteously pats himself on the back for the charity work that he did to assuage his own guilt, Hyde nearly takes over completely. 

So what should Jekyll have done? This is where the Shadow concept doesn’t fully line up with Stevenson’s worldbuilding. Hyde is literally pure evil -- everyone can see it in his face. The Shadow is not actually evil, it’s just the parts of you that you refuse to acknowledge. This is usually because you personally believe them to be evil, or because your culture has taught you that they are evil, but that doesn’t mean they actually are. Jekyll’s premise was flawed from the beginning. It’s not possible to separate a human being into good and evil halves. This is because there isn’t really such thing as inherent “good” or “evil.” Who decides what’s “good” and what’s “evil”? Victorians? Humans are nuanced. All parts of oneself are there for a reason and have value, because they can be helpful or harmful in different situations. Jekyll should have taken responsibility for his actions as Hyde, but he also should have found healthy outlets for his darker desires instead of beating himself up over them. Maybe fantasize about killing someone you hate and then move on with your life, instead of snapping and actually doing it! Jekyll should have integrated the two halves of himself instead of doing everything in his power to separate them. 

Your Shadow is half of yourself, and if you repress it, then you lose all the potentially positive aspects of it. If you repress pride, you lose your self-confidence. If you believe that power and ambition are the root of all evil, you may lose your leadership skills or ability to be assertive. If you believe sexuality is evil... well, that’s kinda self-explanatory.  The answer here is, ultimately, self-love.  Your Shadow is you, and it still wants what’s best for you, it just has a very different idea of what that means. The least you can do is hear it out and give a hug, instead of locking it back in your subconscious dungeon. 

It’s extremely difficult to admit to and then to come to terms with your Shadow. It’s a dark night of the soul. It’s a long and laborious process, in which you’ll have to reassess your identity. There are other works of media that I think demonstrate how to do it healthily, like The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin (although, just watch, I can make any story about Shadow work). You’re not alone, you’re not evil or sick, and you’re not a hypocrite for having a Shadow. Most people have them, and making friends with your Shadow is a genuinely wonderful thing. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I can’t wait to analyze The Picture of Dorian Gray next!

I leave you with this masterpiece of an animatic, by S.K. Michels. Speaking from experience, this is how Shadow work sometimes feels. (Also, this artist’s portrayal of Jekyll/Hyde looks scarily like an OC I use to represent my own Shadow, so this video hits particularly hard for me). 

Rey has been a bit harder for me to nail down on what might happen for her in the next film, but after some digging and re-reading of some storytelling motifs I think I’ve got a clue on what to expect next.

So a storytelling trope that is very important in Star Wars is Facing and Integrating The Shadow or just the Shadow Archetype. It's the part of the personality that embodies everything a character doesn't like about themselves/fears about themselves. It is the things they, often subconsciously, deny about themselves and project onto others. The more the Shadow has been repressed, the more powerful it becomes. This comes from Carl Jung and his psychological theory, but we are going to use it for its story writing means. Guess who also used these theories? Joseph Campbell.

And George Lucas was heavily inspired by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero Journey. By looking into these we can see the framework of the Star Wars Saga.

Let’s take a look at past Shadow Archetypes in Star Wars. We’ll start with the OT. In this the Shadow has a personification in the form of Darth Vader. He is a powerful force user that, opposite of Luke, is angry, cold, and full of hatred. These are emotions and things that Luke tries to repress in himself because he fears them and can’t accept they are part of himself. In Empire Strikes Back, Luke has a vision in the Dark Side cave on Dagobah that spells this out and also is a bit of warning if he follows through in repressing/killing the Shadow.

The Vision has Luke facing off with Darth Vader and striking him down, only to reveal that under the mask is his own face. In Return of The Jedi, Luke is brought before the Emperor who tries to get  Luke to give into his Shadow Self and act out on those feelings, knowing that if he does kill his own father that he would fall to the Dark Side. It symbolizes that trying to kill your dark side will only make it grow larger and eventually eat you whole.

That is what happened to Anakin. In the PT era Anakin’s Shadow took in form of Darth Maul (Rage, Vengeance, and Wrath), Count Dooku (Arrogance and Self-Superiority), and General Grievous (Power-hungry and willingness to sacrifice one's own ‘humanity’ to gain power). They represented all the parts that Anakin tried to repress in himself. It's what the Jedi Order taught him to do and since these shadows were killed off instead of integrated, a larger Shadow emerged in the form of Darth Vader. What is interesting about the Prequels is the Shadow isn’t just Anakin’s, but the Jedi as a whole. This is the imbalance in the Force. The Jedi’s solution to the Sith and the Dark Side was to destroy it, not realizing that by trying to repress and erase they were just making it stronger. It is by Revenge of The Sith that all of these Shadows have been killed that the new one forms in Anakin as he is pushed to extreme decisions all cause no one wants to address the issues of detachment, obsessive love, anger, arrogance, fear, and the hunger for power. Thus a new monster is born. The Shadow will eat you if you do not accept it and properly manage it.

Now I’m going to spoil a movie here, so fair warning I’m going to talk about the movie The Babadook, a horror movie about a single mother and her child with behavioral issues. It’s more than that, but if you don’t want to be spoiled here’s your chance to skip over this part. I’m going to go over the story and how it all relates to dealing with the Shadow Self.

* * * * *

“There’s just NO WAY your OFF the HOOK

If you’re ALL GROWN UP

When you read this book.

And you snub your nose

With a civilized look…

You’ll appeal EVEN MORE

to the BIG BABADOOK.

And this is what he’ll say…

‘I’ll WAGER with YOU

I’LL MAKE you a BET

ThE MORE you DENY me

The STRONGER I GET.

You’ll then be my PUPPET, my plaything, my PET

I’ll MAKE you DO THINGS

You’ll be SURE to REGRET,”

-Limited Edition Mister Babadook pop-up book

Okay so in the Babadook the whole movie is about how this woman is not dealing with her Shadow Self and how it becomes almost a physical monster that terrorizes her and her son. Her husband was tragically killed in a car accident while driving her to the hospital while she was in labor. She does not celebrate her son’s birthday because it reminds her of her husband’s passing. She’s stuck in a job that she doesn’t want to do (she really wants to be a children’s book writer) and she has not be able to move on relationship wise. Her son and everything in her life has trapped her in this loop of the past in a way. When she reads a book called Mister Babadook, to her son before bed, everything in her life becomes worse and a monster seems to be stalking them. The book is scary and as it says in the book, “If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look. You can’t get rid of the Babadook.”

This book is an invitation and brings in the Babadook first by the paranoia of her son and then the mother starts seeing the Babadook. She keeps trying to repress her Shadow Self, which is the grief of losing her husband, the resentment she feels toward her own child, feeling trapped and angry over how her life is going. She keeps trying to deny and repress these feelings and thus trying to hid and get rid the Babadook. It gets so bad that the Babadook actually possesses her and she almost acts out the scenes in the book and nearly kills her own son. But his love for her is what finally snaps her out of it and she is able to control the Babadook. It’s never gone as the end of the movie shows. It now lives in their basement, but she addresses it and feeds it. And thus she can finally live a bit more peaceful and happier life.

“Whether adult or child, best give me a HOME.

Put the welcome mat out, with a room of my OWN.

And accept that I’m here and from YOU

I have grown

Keep me smaller in size,

I might leave you alone.”

-Limited Edition Mister Babadook pop-up book

* * * * *

You can’t kill the Shadow, but you can control and manage it. That is what integrating the Shadow means. It doesn’t mean giving into your impulses and bad feelings, but acknowledging them so you can control them. The Babadook is seriously a good movie, but it is terrifying. Psychological horror heavily relies on the darkness that resides in ourselves and what we try to deny feeling. These are some of my favorite kind of horror movies because they are the ones that last by lurking in your own psyche. Tragedies and Horror usually has the failing of integrating the Shadow thus the sad/terrifying conclusion. It’s scary even if the monster is defeated because we know that it could come back at any time.

Now to the ST era and what to expect of Rey and dealing with her Shadow. Well what is her shadow? Personified it’s obviously Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren is rage, the feeling of abandonment, self loathing, and feeling like you are the Monster.

These are things Rey fears about herself and has denied herself feeling so far. She was abandoned by her parents, but she lives in denial, hoping they will return for her one day. It’s why she keeps the hairstyle she’s had since she was little, in hopes they would recognize her. Why in The Force Awakens she keeps wanting to go back to Jakku and wait for them. If she was to move on then that would mean she would have to finally accept the truth. That she was sold off and left in indentured servitude to Unkar Plutt.

Now we have seen hints of Rage and maybe even the scary thought of a Monster in her. In The Force Awakens we see this darker side as she fought with Kylo Ren in the snow forest. She got the upper hand and had even knocked him to the ground. While on the ground she approached and seemed ready to strike at him after she already disarmed him, but the earth opened up separating them by a rift.

Wait a minute...this gif is right before the ground breaks apart preventing her from completing that swing.

ooooooohhhhh... *wink wink* Rey’s dark side showing just like Luke’s was.

In The Last Jedi, Rey seeks training from Luke. As she says “Something inside me has always been there...but now it's awake, and I'm afraid. I don't know what it is, or what to do with it, but I need help.” She’s afraid of this power. Why? She also seems to be drawn to the dark side and even spooks Luke because of her power and her willingness to explore the dark side sea cave.

This makes me speculate there is more to Rey’s past and we are going to find it out in Ep IX. And I don’t mean that her parents were anyone we actually know. I think a lot of audience aren’t getting that point. The point is they weren’t special people and they were in fact awful. Sold her off for drinking money and then left...But apparently they are dead in the Jakku desert... Which is strange cause that contradicts the vision Rey had in TFA where we see her as a child screaming  “Come Back!” to a ship that is taking off. How can both be true? Well I don’t think Kylo Ren is lying. The thing about the Shadow is that it tells the protagonist what they deny and don’t WANT to be true, but is the truth nonetheless. Remember Vader telling Luke he was his father. There were several audience members after ESB that thought Vader had to be lying because that seemed too awful for Luke. Same for Rey. It’s the Truth she has to hear but does not want to accept.

But the vision? How can both be true? Well I think we’ll find out that Rey as a child may have accidentally killed her own parents. As she said she’s had this inside her that’s always been there but only recently is now awake. What if it woke up before during a time of duress and in an attempt to bring her parents back, accidentally blowing up their ship as it was leaving.

That would both explain the Vision and what Kylo told her. It would explain why she’s afraid of this power she has and why she’s drawn to the Dark Side. The final truth she has to accept about herself and what she will have to face in the next film. This might be what brings her to that Dark Side’s edge and she’ll have to decide if she gives into it or learns to integrate with with Shadow. And remember the lesson in Star Wars, killing the Shadow only means that it will come back in either yourself or someone in your group. So if Rey actually kills Kylo Ren in Episode 9 then she may fall to the Dark side or cause a greater Shadow to emerge.

But I am 99.9% sure they are not going to have a tragedy or a horror movie for the ending of the freakin’ Skywalker Saga. Heck the fact that Vader dies in ROTJ could be the reason another Shadow emerges for the Sequel Trilogy and the purpose of this trilogy is to finally have a true integration of the the Shadow. There has to be a proper integration that gets expanded for the whole story’s universe. Balancing the Force.

So yeah I could go further into other Archetypes and who they are in the ST which would be fascinating, but this is already very long so with that it will have to be another time.

And remember…

“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look. You can’t get rid of the Babadook.”