The river of the unconscious

I’m still very interested in the theory that postmodernism could be another stage of modernism itself. I found this discussed last week in Jameson’s work, and also this week in David Harvey’s article: “Does postmodernism, for example, represent a radical break with modernism, or is it simply a revolt within modernism against a certain form of ‘high modernism’…” Michael Berube reinforces this in his article when he says that: “…every attempt to define postmodern fiction in stylistic terms…winds up being a definition of modernist fiction as well.”

If I move forward on this assumption, then I definitely see modernist roots (although the idea of roots is antithetical to postmodernism!) in The Lathe of Heaven. Specifically, I see this in using a river as a metaphor for the unconscious. “To cross a river, ford it, wade it, swim it, use boat, ferry, bridge, airplane, to go upriver, to go downriver in the ceaseless renewal and beginning of current: all that makes sense. But in going under a river, something is involved which is, in the central meaning of the word, perverse. There are roads in the mind and outside it the mere elaborateness of which shows plainly that, to have got into this, a wrong turning must have been taken way back” (40). Here, it is easy to see George’s fear of his own unconscious, and his sense of foreboding about his upcoming work with Dr. Haber.

When I read this passage, I was reminded strongly of a similar passage in The Love of the Last Tycoon, by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “On top of a huge head of the god Siva, two women were floating down the current of an impromtu river. The idol had come loose from a set of Burma and it meandered earnestly on its way, stopping sometimes to waddle and bump in the shallows with the other debris of the tide” (26). I read this book in a class I took last semester on realism. Our class discussion centered on how the head of the floating Siva was a symbol of the unconscious, and how the rise of the symbolic (obviously a modernist tenet) gave rise to the unconscious – the idea that there is something there that can’t be seen. Le Guin touches on the idea of absence as presence, in the last pages of the novel: “The presentiment which had seized Heather as she looked down from the jade sky was now a presence. It was there. It was an area, or perhaps a time-period, a sort of emptiness. It was the presence of absence: an unquantifiable entity without qualities, into which all things fell and from which nothing came forth” (165).

This idea makes my thinking turn to the subject that Ada discussed in her blog – the power of language in the novel. Here, absence as presence is important because often what is not said is as important as what is said. As there is a language barrier between the humans and the Aliens, humans are often left to decide for themselves what Alien language means. When George asks Dr. Haber if he knows the term “iahklu'”, Dr. Haber responds: “Heard it. It’s untranslatable. You’ve decided it means ‘dream’, eh?” (160). George has taken a guess on what the Alien word means. This leads me to believe that perhaps the Aliens are a symbol of the unconscious (although I am not sure if Le Guin intended this), as we are often left to guess the meaning of our own dreams (a product of our unconscious).