The Tower of the Elephant

[InzeladunMaster]

I decided to reread The Tower of the Elephant today. While I will not make an argument that the story is Howard's best (I flatly believe it is not his best; there are many of his stories I like much better), I was impressed with several elements in the story that correspond with Joseph Campbell's ideas.

According to Campbell, the hero should start out fairly innocent when something happens to open the hero's life into a world of unexpected power and danger. This happens when Conan, who is young, hears about the Elephant Tower and the riches within.

Then the hero will encounter threshold guardians, who try to keep the character from engaging in the adventure (like Uncle Owen in Star Wars). Conan encounters a Kothian who tries to talk him out of going on the adventure to loot Yara's tower.

Now on the journey, the hero must encounter obstacles. The tower itself is such an obstacle, and he must find a way in. Enter the helpful guide with the magical talisman. Taurus has a special rope and he guides Conan into the tower. No longer necessary to the story, he is promptly killed by the next guardian/obstacle. The story even introduces labyrinthine motifs, and a "dragon" (Yara).

In order to continue Conan's motivation a bit further, Howard introduces yet another helpful guide with a magical talisman: Yag-kosha and the Heart of the Elephant. Yag Kosha introduces Conan, and the reader, to some of Howard's Hyborian history, much as Ben Kenobi tells Luke of the clone wars and other historical events. In order to activate the talisman, Conan must kill the guide. In this he is uncertain. Campbell calls this the refusal of the call. An example of this from Star Wars is when Luke complains that he has to go home, has work to do, and can't get involved. Of course, Howard shortens the refusal to a mere hesitation, not wanting Conan to seem whiny. The slaying of Yag Kosha represents another threshold to be crossed by Conan before he can continue his journey. Conan uses the talisman to slay the evil force and escapes the exploding Death Star, er, Elephant Tower.

Conan has recieved a bit of mystical insight and wonders if it was all real. He made a transformation from thinking one way to thinking a bit differently, wondering about reality, something he probably never pondered before.

The ending is probably the weakest connection, but it amazed me how well the story fit into Campbell's theories of myth. The Frost Giant's Daughter follows many of the same patterns as well.

I am not really arguing anything, but am merely expressing amazement at how Joseph Campbell was able to categorize human myth-making so well.

 

[BobProbst]

I loved studying mythic interpretations of stories in college.

My one big complaint with Campbell is his reliance on Freud (at least in Hero). Later interviews I've seen with him don't involve the same psycho analytic babble you must wade through in some of his books.

Umberto Eco did a similar treatment with Casablanca

 

[Mark van Dyk]

Campbell and Freud

I always thought Campbell to be more Jungian. Certainly Jung was fascinated by myth much more than Freud. I enjoy these studies too. I always remember from grade school, the story of Moses. He went through the same sort of trial in many ways. He was relatively innocent at the start, complained, refused the call, then eventually came to his power... What I also find interesting is that these stories basically coincide with our own daily lives. They symbolize our own transformations from the child to the adult.

I loved studying mythic interpretations of stories in college.

My one big complaint with Campbell is his reliance on Freud (at least in Hero). Later interviews I've seen with him don't involve the same psycho analytic babble you must wade through in some of his books.

Umberto Eco did a similar treatment with Casablanca

 

[BobProbst]

It wasn't any mythic concepts that Campbell derived from Freud (as I perceive it) but his imposed validation of his myth theories through a freudian approach to dream interpretation. The entire first chapter of Hero goes on and on with the freudian jargon of the times attempting to establish his own premises by founding them on mythic quality of dream images.

OK . . . that does sound more Jungian -- but Jung got a lot of it from Freud.

Anyway, I think Campbell's work stands strongly on its own and is weakened by weaving it around the pop artifices of Freud and Jung. (Jung illuminates many important human traits but I believe he has his arguments and conclusions inverted)

 

[Mark van Dyk]

Jung

Jung diverged from Freud quite profoundly, actually, though his initial ideas came from Freud. I would be interested to hear why you think some of his conclusions and ideas were inverted, as I don't see that in much of what he writes...

 

[BobProbst]

Admittedly, I've read very little of Jung's complete works; Memories, Dreams, Reflections and a few essays and NO Freud. But have read several secondary sources and studied under several professors who were wrapped up in Jungian thought.

This guy pretty much lays into his ideas of Synchronicity: http://skepdic.com/jung.html

Here's a pretty thorough definition of Jung's Collective Unconscious:

Jung believed that there was a deeper and more significant layer of the unconscious, which he called the collective unconscious, with what he identified as archetypes, which he believed were innate, unconscious, and generally universal. Jung's collective unconscious has been described as a "storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from man's ancestral past, a past that includes not only the racial history of man as a separate species but his pre-human or animal ancestry as well." Therefore, Jung's theory incorporates Darwin's theory of evolution as well as ancient mythology. Jung taught that this collective unconscious is shared by all people and is therefore universal. However, since it is unconscious, not all people are able to tap into it. Jung saw the collective unconscious as the foundational structure of personality on which the personal unconscious and the ego are built. Because he believed that the foundations of personality are ancestral and universal, he studied religions, mythology, rituals, symbols, dreams and visions. He says:
All esoteric teachings seek to apprehend the unseen happenings in the psyche, and all claim supreme authority for themselves. What is true of primitive lore is true in even higher degree of the ruling world religions. They contain a revealed knowledge that was originally hidden, and they set forth the secrets of the soul in glorious images.

From this I'd argue that Jung assumes a pseudo spiritual world prior to the application of evidence instead of using evidence to prove Collective Unconscious. To Jung, and mimicked by Campbell, our attachment to myth is derived from some extraphysical source which is constantly bubbling up into our unconscious mind. Occam and his Razor would be sorely disappointed! I'd argue that what he percieves as CU is nothing more than the effects of culture and instinct on our developing minds. We share a common unconscious mind because we share a common history and culture NOT the other way around.

 

[Mark van Dyk]

my interpretation

My interpretation differs. I don't believe that Jung was saying something about extra-physical. I think he may have been implying the existence of what might better be called "genetic memory". These memories and ideas are so strong that they are passed on in a similar way as instinct.

My pet example is the symbol of the dragon. Where did this image come from? Most societies possessed the idea of dragons long before the calculated discovery and later displaying of dinosaur bones to the general public. Here we have a strong mythical image which seems to have no physical basis in reality or what is known. Where might the image have come from? Was the image passed down? I am not so certain that man just started telling stories of such beasts, across cultures, without having experienced something resembling these creatures far back in its ancestral shadows...