The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker

The Temple in Emerald City & The Solitary Journey of the Tinman

The publication of The Temple of My Familiar in 1989 occurred shortly after Walker’s receipt of the Pulitzer Price for her novel The Color Purple. Walker felt the pressures of heightened expectations after the success of The Color Purple and the novel reveals her frame of mind: overambitious and, perhaps, a bit arrogant. The novel shows Walker’s construction of an overly complex metaphor and the subsequent forced nature of the plot into the metaphors rigid structure. The plot foreshadows the publication of a sequel, or sequels, and the irresolution of the characters’ spiritual journeys are also indicative of Walker’s plans for a great saga of epic spiritual proportions. Fancying herself the Wizard of the present literary cannon, she ventures into the left field of Oz and left the literary community scratching their heads, standing on the planes of Kansas. The poor narrative craft of the novel fails to match the achievement of the work’s metaphysical complexity. The adaption of Jungian psychology in the lives of characters conveys a level of superficiality in light of the lives of the protagonists, who are all rich, good looking and complaining about white collar problems. Rigid adherence to the metaphor requires constant allusions to the film and Jung philosophy, which sometimes manifest as contradictory forces. Walker’s metaphor appears erudite at first, but it is actually quite easy to grasp. Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar, contains an extended Wizard of Oz metaphor to describe Jungian spirituality in each the four main protagonists: Fanny, the Lion; Carlotta, the Scarecrow; Zede, as Dorothy and Suwelo – the only character to achieve Jungian individuation – as the scarecrow. The numbers of allusions within the text are so abundant that extended discussion of each individual occurrence would require a great deal more time and the death of more trees – thus, only the obvious will be discussed here.

The title of the novel The Temple of My Familiar, is the beginning of Walker’s mind games because it challenge the readers with the seemingly vague and obscure chapter that she uses to provide hints concerning the extended Jung/Oz metaphor. Walker uses the word “my familiar” to symbolize the Jungian Archetype called the animus or anima. The animus resembles the Freudian Id, a portion of the subconscious that is purposely repressed. Characterized by animalistic urges, sexual or primal instincts and unorthodox desires, Walker describes this archetype “I next imprisoned my beautiful little familiar under a metal wash tub, I paid little attention to the cold or the snow and did not even think how cruel and torturous for it this would be. Surely now it would not able to escape.” (117) Jung asserts that the human animus must be nurtured and cared for by the rational parts of the human conscious. He argues that prolonged repression of the animus can result in it manifesting into physical behaviors that appear menacing and pathological. He argues that individuals who undergo murderous fits of rage and afterwards cannot recall what they said or what they did have fallen victim to the wills of their animus.  Walker’s description of this metaphorical “animus,” the familiar, include physical features such as “fur,” the ability of it to “skitter” around, “mischevious” and small enough to be held within human hands. Such allusions invoke Toto, Dorothy’s dog, whose mischief causes Dorothy a lot of angst during the introductory scenes of the film. The familiars continuous ability to escape from under metal washtubs or glass bowls illustrates Jung’s theory of how an individual’s animus or anima continuously surfaces in frightening and uncharacteristic behaviors after long periods of repression. Each of the four main protagonists begin to learn to nurture their animus or animas as they undergo individuation.

The beginning of the novel conveys a sense of tension in each of the characters lives as they are on the brink of spiritual transformations that lead to them embarking on journeys of individuation. The darkening skies of Kansas in The Wizard of Oz that foreshadow the onset of a violent storm mirror the dismal emotional landscape within the protagonists as they each face individual mental crisis’s. Walker catalyzes this process through the character Arveyda, whose narrative function is to initiate the spiritual transformations in each character. Arveyda sweeps into the plot, like a hot wind, leaving destruction in his wake and changing the life of Zede – who is the metaphorical Dorothy –forever. Arveyda’s ability to create spiritual change is depicted as a Jungian Synergetic force. These forces, said to facilitate the individuation process, are defined by Jung as dreams, hypnotism or psychoanalysts. (Jung 223) Walker expands the Jungian definition by describing Arveyda’s mediums of synergy as processes, art and sex. Synergetic forces allow the manipulation of the human conscious and each character, then experiences an unrestricted view of their subconscious or dark self. The exploration of the dark self allows each character to experience a heightened spiritual awareness and embark on a journey towards Jungian Individuation. Undergoing Jungian synergetic forces does not result in a completion of individuation, it merely facilities the process. Similarly, Arveyda merely functions to heighten spiritual awareness, he cannot and does not, create completed individuation of any characters.

The Tornado in the Wizard of Oz struck Kansas transplanting Dorothy into the alternate universe of oz. As Dorothy’s house spirals up into the eye of the storm, she sees terrifying apparitions of witches and other characters that exist in Kansas, as well as in Oz. Two universes collide when she steps into the world of Oz, astounded she sees the magical land, her eyes witnessing Technicolor for the first time. Walker opens the novel with Zede’s crisis and her subsequent travel to South America, a land Walker describes using words to invoke images of Oz. As Dorothy witnessed the terrifying images as she journeys to Oz, Zede’s journey requires her to remember her painful past, which contains violence, murders, rapes, prisons and heart break. Walker’s physical description of Zede occurs in the first few paragraphs of the novel and describes Zede’s “blue and white uniform, her two long braids warm against her back,” – clearly, an allusion to Dorothy’s costume in The Wizard of Oz. Zede’s departure from the literary foreground symbolizes Dorothy’s departure from Kansas; and as Dorothy’s journey through Oz remains incomplete until her return to Kansas, Zede’s journey will remain incomplete until she returns to San Fransico.

Walker uses Zede to symbolize the intuitive self type within the novel. Jung describes the intuitive self type as one with a “function represented in conciousness by an attitude of expectancy, by vision and penetration; but only from the subsequent result can it be established how much of what was seen was actually in the object and how much was read into it” (Jung 221) Zede gravitates towards possibilities or ideas, and her life lacks any connections physical reality. Perceptions of the present are distorted by the influences of her imagination and, consequently, Zede’s world is one of fantasy and also one devoid of any moral substance. The central logical fallacy within her weltenschung lies in her overly zealous preoccupation with the past, that is fueled by these “imaginings.”

Like Dorothy’s lamenting song, that describes a mythical and perfect world, “far far away,” Zede dreams of an alternative universe existing in her past and reigned upon by Jesus, her dead lover. By symbolically naming the character Jesus, Walker illuminates Zede’s deification of her love and describes this process as one characterized by increasingly apparent blurred boundaries between fantasy and reality. It is difficult to ascertain the actual qualities Jesus possessed during his life, as they exist in the shadows of contrived imaginative qualities Zede has assigned him as a result of her dominant intuive self. The relationship, which began while Jesus and Zede were imprisoned, appears to contain a great deal more sexual intimacy, than it does spiritual intimacy. The interconnectivity of their souls is a pure fabrication Zede uses to justify her obsession with the past; and Zede’s narrative must not be trusted. Zede relates a story that reveals Jesus’ unsettling aspects of Jesus, which betray his mental instability. Given the facts, without Zede’s over embellishments of this man’s character, he is clearly insane. Obsessed with arranging rocks, he exhibits psychotic behaviors and is willing to risk his personal safety to ensure the continuous arrangement of three rocks. Constantly, obsessively and neurotically, he continually returns “as a dog returns to where his bones are buried, Jesus returns to his stones.” (72)

Jung’s argument that the intuitive self misperceives reality is centralized around the idea that individuals possessing this self type engage in a destructive cyclical pattern, “In a very short time every existing situation becomes a prison for the intuitive, a chain that has to be broken.” (222) Zede’s imaginings are thus, a means for her to escape her present reality. She disregards the emotional well being of her daughter and sleeps with Arveyda, committing an unthinkable act of betrayal. Zede believes she sees a spiritual resemblance of Arveyda to her dead lover Jesus and this is the basis for her perfidious, and seemingly impulsive, decision to sleep with Arveyda. Jung offers an alternative explanation for this act by arguing “Nascent possibilities are compelling motives from which intuition cannot escape and to which all else must be sacrificed.” (Jung 222) Dorothy begins to miss Kansas and her return to Kansas signifies the resolution to the central conflict of the film. Likewise, Zede’s temporary escape to South America, “a far far away land,” will provide only temporary fulfillment and she too will soon realize, “there is no place like home.” Zede’s individuation will occur the moment she crosses the Golden Gate Bridge, reentering the city of San Francisco and reconnecting with the present world by freeing her repressed dark self.

Carlotta’s sensing self is one that Jung describes as “preeminently conditioned by the object” and “only concretes, sensuously perceived objects or processes that excite sensations” are of interest. Walker’s descriptions of Carlotta’s indulgent diet illustrate a central quality common to sensing self types, whose love of material eliminates their ability to reason about the long term health effects of poor nutrition. The connection to the physical reality results in Sensing Selves being largely ignorant to the metaphysical, spiritual or emotional realms. Thus, when presented with such manifestations of these realms in her own life, Carlotta is unfamiliar and she reacts with fear. Individuation will require her to overcome such fears and embrace the intuitive aspects of her conscience that she instinctively avoids. In a dream, Carlotta undergoes the Jungian forces of synergy and momentarily experiences the loss fear:

“Only now they stood in the light, Carlotta saw that if they were in a cave, it was not a natural ones; the sides of the entrance where her fingers rested, were as smooth as glass,looking up, she saw that the cave was indeed a door, and that the lintel was made of smooth stone into which a strange beast with the head of a very ugly big nosed and long lipped person was magnificently and scarily carved. But Carlotta felt no fear.” (201)

The lion in The Wizard of Oz faces his fear before a glowing apparition of the Wizard and discovers he has courage. Likewise, Carlotta’s exploration of her dark self under the influence of synergetic forces, allows her discover that she – like the lion – also has courage inside of her. The “smooth as glass” resembles the physical appearance of the Emerald Castle in The Wizard of Oz and descriptions of the “strange beast” could also be applied to the apparition of the Wizard in the closing scenes of the film. The spiritual journey that Carlotta embarks upon will lesson “negative, infantile, archaic” and impulsive connections to the physical realm. These “infantile” attachments must be shed for her individuation to be complete. Problems from them manifest through Arveyda’s treatment of her as a daughter, rather than a wife. The frequent perception of dominant sensing self types as innocent subsequently compels others to also believe that they are gullible fools; thus, Carlotta is betrayed: Arveyda merely confirms his role as a father figure by sleeping with her mother.

Fanny’s dominant feeling self exhibits the Jungian characteristic of “objects being indispensible determinants [to the] quality of feeling.” Rooms and physical places appear either beautiful or ugly to Fanny based on how she feels at the moment. The overbearing nature of her preoccupation with her emotions causes Fanny to be incapable of making decisions. Like the scarecrow pinned to the stake in the middle of the field of corn, Fanny is rendered immobile when trapped in a painful marriage to Suwelo. The first image Walker provides of Fanny comes in a recollection by Suwelo, “She was in the back, in the garden among the roses. It was a warm April evening, bright and clear as day and there was nothing really in the garden to see.” (136) The peaceful nature of the scene is superficial, because during the first few seconds that Suwelo observes Fanny and she disrupts it suddenly, startling him – as the scarecrow startles Dorothy with his ability to speak. Suwelo recalls her “trying to wrap part of a climbing rose cane back on its trellis,” symbolizing Fanny’s fear of change and need of assistance to remove herself from her state of spiritual confinement. Like Dorothy freeing the scarecrow, Fanny’s Aunts cut the emotional bonds and compel her to pursue a divorce; and, like the scarecrows wish for a brain after freedom, Fanny wishes to attain the ability of logical thought.

Fanny’s repressed thinking dark self does not allow her to equate her feelings actions and does not allow her to alleviate her emotions by using actions to prevent these feelings from occurring or lessening their power over her by expressing them. Thus, Fanny’s sexual awakening occurs in conjunction with her spiritual awakening and provides a new means for which to displace some of her emotions. For Fanny, sex became an action that allowed her to manipulate the type, frequency and intensity of her new found sense of anger. As her understanding of this cause and effect relationship evolves, Fanny is faced of new feelings of outrage as she discovers that she cannot use her actions to change all of the negative feelings within herself or that she witnesses within others. The anger eats away at her, burning her as the witch burned the scarecrow. Fanny’s self exploration is a process that becomes stunted by the presence of this anger and Arveyda’s synergetic sex only provide her with a temporary vision of how her thinking self can provide peace, as well as pain.

The Jungian Thinking Self is a type of man who “elevates objective reality.” By assessing the reality that exists around him, Suwelo observes fact and constructs a “formula of good and evil.” (199) The thinking self then uses this formula to place judgment on himself and on those around him and “because the formula seems to embody the universal meaning of life, it is made into a universal law which must be put into effect everywhere all the time, both individually and collectively.” (198) This formula, which measures “good and evil” and “ugly and beauty” is one that Suwelo objectively contrived through the application of the American Dream and all of it’s standards. Suwelo is a man who operates formulaically, without emotion and in dogged pursuit of these standards of the American Dream. The repression of his Jungian Feeling self eliminates any ability him to experience his emotions. He determines what he wants using the formulaic standards that the American Dream; because without the formula and the ability to feel he would not know what he wanted. The American Dream promotes a picket fence, marriage and a good job; thus, Suwelo marries Fanny. The American Dream looks unkindly on the poor and the underprivileged; thus, Suwelo hates Fanny’s use of the shopping cart along the highway because it contradicts the formula and it “reminds me of little old ladies with funny colored hair, net scarves and dowager’s humps.” (173) Fanny’s feelings escape Suwelo because he is inable to comprehend emotions. Thus, her reluctance to marry him and the pleasure she feels while pushing the shopping cart contains an emotional context that he is unable to perceive. When the Tinman pounds his chest a loud, metallic hollow echo reveals the absence of a heart and symbolically, Fanny hears this resounding emptiness – a quiet metallic pounding slowly eroding their relationship:

“He would be there cooking, with jazz on the radio and a glass of wine for her. She’d come in, sight, kick off her shoes, drift about the kitchen. Pick up the wine, accpt his kiss. There was the murdered thing between them though. The more he tried to revive it the deader it got.” (165)

Fanny begins to notice that Suwelo is not an active participant in the relationship. He brings her wine because his formula deems it romantic, not feels romantic when he does it. He listens to jazz without enjoying it, because the American Dream tells him to listen to jazz. Pornography, an addiction described by Fanny, provides a means for him to apply American standards of sexuality to his own sex life. Unable to feel passion, he needed an outside source to dictate and define how to act out this passion that he could not feel. Jung asserts “The closer that the thinking self comes to the centre of power to which the formula operates the more life withers away from everything that does not conform to it’s dictates.” Suwelo cuts away whatever is incongruent to his formula, most significantly his parents.

Walker introduces Suwelo and immediately, the shift to an omnipotent narrative voice becomes strikingly apparent. Suwelo is emotionally distant towards the audience, as well as the other characters. His individuation occurs through conversation. Speaking to Hal and Lissie over dinners, he slowly begins to feel increasing amounts of emotion. Ultimately, this ability to feel for the first time, culminates in him facing the most painful experience he has ever faced: the death of his parents. Astonished he asks “how had he repressed so much terror? Suwelo wonders about this as he relives it,” as he recalls the tragic car wreck that lead to the death of both of his parents. Without the presence of a synergetic force, Suwelo is able to feel:

“His father is standing at the door. He is not old and drunk, but young and handsome. He has two arms. ‘My name was once Suwelo, too,’ he says gravely, holding them out. Suwelo is suddenly too tired to keep watch over the doors of his heart. It swings open on its own, and this father, whom Suwelo has never seen and whom he realizes he resembles very much, walks in.” (404)

Walker focuses the final chapter of the novel exclusively on Suwelo. This myopic narration depicts Suwelo receiving a painting from Hal, an invent that metaphorically represents Suwelo’s completion of the individuation process. Suwelo chooses a painting of Lissie noticing, “For on Lissie’s left back paw, nearly obscured by her tawny luxuriant tail, is a very gay, elegant and shiny red high heeled slipper.” (416) Jungian philosophy theorizes the appearance of a “Wise Old Mother” as a vision in the conscious of males that occurs to signify the male has completed individuation. (Jung 466) Lissie, metaphorically, represents this Jungian image, and Walker intentionally ends the book with this sentence to emphasize that Suwelo has become spiritually whole. None of the other characters receive such an image and none of the other characters are even mentioned in the final chapter.

The painting of Lissie that Suwelo receives reveals the purpose behind Walker’s creation of the characters Lissie and Hal. Symbolizing the ultimate wisdom, they are the Jungian archetypes of the “Wise old Man” and the “Wise old Mother.” As the wizard shows Dorothy and her friends at the conclusion of The Wizard of Oz that everything these travelers ever needed to succeed was all ready in them and he could not bestow courage, a heart, a brain or a home; Lissie and Hal are present throughout the text and certainly accessible to the characters. Walker includes a chapter where Lissie experiences an animal like dream that invokes some Wizard of Oz imagery that infers she is the wicked witch of the west. The dream describes “black hairy” cousins and Walker makes distant allusions to the flying monkeys the witch uses to carry out evil in Oz. Of course the dream really focuses on Walker’s beliefs on human evolution, but adding even more Oz allusions to this confusing sequence must have been to much for her to resist. The forced nature of this example in particular reveals the annoying nature of the intellectual mind games Walker uses. These mind games truly came at a sacrifice to the quality of her work. As Rushdie and Nabokov played these games with their literary critics, Walker follows in their footsteps and plays hers. The problem with Walker, however, is that she steps out of her genre to do it. She changes her voice to mimic post modern authors, rather than employing the tactics and using her own voice. Adam Sol argues that this demonstrates a loss of authorial control, but it’s quite the opposite. The novel is possessed by this metaphor, contrived on this metaphor and never evolves into a literary work of any interest because it is driven by this metaphor. Walker has complete authorial control and it sucks the creative life right out of the work.

The predominant criticism encountered researching Walker’s novel can be summed up by Lauret’s interpretation that the novel “ends in universal bliss and history” and “entails a vision of personal and communal wholeness.” (Lauret 130) Even though Lauret notes the “increasing influence of Jungian Philosophy” within the novel, she fails to draw the correlation between Suwelo’s receipt of the painting at the end of the book and Walker’s metaphorical use of Jungian philosophy in this painting that represents Suwelo’s completion of the journey. Lauret admits that Suwelo plays a more prominent role than some of the other protagonists in the novel, but she rationalizes his prominent role by refocusing her argument on Lissie. Believing Lissie is the driving force of the novel and symbolizes “the voice of Jung,” Lauret argues that the focus on Suwelo functions to enhance Lissie’s professions of Jungian philosophy because Suwelo is the character who contradicts the philosophy the most. She does not mention the concluding sentence, ignoring the fact that Walker always places defining allusions to the meaning of her work within the introductory and concluding sentences or illustrating her inherent confusion interpretating the symbolism of the text. If Lissie is the red herring for Lauret’s confusion, her argument that Walker describing Suwelo’s entanglement to the supposed “Jungian voice” of Lissie still contains some level of fallacy. If Walker’s purpose is to illustrate the profound nature of the application of Jungian principle’s into life, why are all four character’s privy to this dialogue? Lauret argues that Walker is emphasizing Jung through the contradictory nature between Suwelo and Jungian principles: “The fact that Suwelo in this story is a white man is significant because at that point in the framing narrative of the novel he is likewise still a ‘white man’ by education and inclination.” (122) However, the spiritual disassociation described in all three other protagonists during the conclusion of the novel contraditcts the unifying Jungian philosophy and Lauret’s discussion of Suwelo does little to lessen the discrepancy.

There is no shortage of outlandish criticism on the novel and all of the criticism is characterized by a lack of insight and failure to correctly apply Jungian theology to the text. Perhaps critics who focus on Alice Walker are unaccustomed to the Post Modern text; perhaps the unpopularity of the book prevented any extended examination of its themes; perhaps Jungian theory overshadowed the text itself: it is clear however, that everyone has falsely come to believe that the novel all of the characters reaching spiritual wholeness. Another critic, Adam Sol, writes “The Temple of My Familiar generally focuses on the development of the four characters Arveyda, Carlotta, Suwelo and Fanny. These individuals are spiritually fragmented at the beginning of the novel; but by shedding the destructives aspects of the lives,” Bates concludes that they achieve “balance and peach by the novel’s end.” Arguing Fanny and Suwelo are the novel’s “prodigies,” Sol believes that these characters reach a higher level of spiritual peace, than the rest of the characters. Sol manages to connect the spiritual development of Fanny and Suwelo, but he fails to figure out what it means. Gerri Bates spends more time focusing on Carl Gustav Jung, but ineffectively applies Jung to explain Walker’s focus on elements of history, rather than applying Jung theology to the characters themselves. She references the “psychic dust” manifesting in the characters mind and Walker using this phenomena to rewrite history. She does not address the idea that Lissie seems to be the only major character concerned with rewriting history or that Suwelo is the focus of Walker’s Jungian spirituality.

Many of these same critics reference the theme of the southern motif Walker employs in the text. Using characters from other novels and focusing the novel on many interrelated characters is illustrative of elements that generally construct a southern saga. Many argue that the use of the motif evidence Walker’s intentions of creating a sequel. This assumption is likely correct, because Walker likely intended to describe the individuation of the other three characters. Leaving these other characters without spiritual wholeness is incongruent with the cyclical and symbiotic nature of Jungian philosophy. Since this philosophy is the driving force behind the text, it seems illogical to argue Walker intended to leave the other three characters in spiritual purgatories indefinately. Additionally, the allusion to the red shoes in the final sentence of the book, are Walker’s way of foreshadowing the metaphorical return of Dorothy or Zede. Walker probably planned to stage this return in the fourth and final novel after the other characters completed their spiritual journey because Dorothy functions as the main and most significant protagonist in the Wizard of Oz, a film that concludes upon Dorothy’s return to Kansas.

The novel was ultimately deemed a failure by the literary academia community and there was not a great deal of research available for study of the text. Lauret argues that Walker adapted Jungian philosophy as a driving force in her own spirituality after a sense of disappointment over the abrupt end of the civil rights movement. Walker’s involvement within the Jung community includes speeches conventions for Jungian psychology and a recent appearance at the Rhimer Gallery’s Jung exhibit in Harlem. The latter event occurred this fall and received almost no press. A Vanity Fair article covered Gloria Vanderbilts vapid Jungian psychoanalysis and only mentioned the appearance of Alice Walker at the event. This inattention to Walker attests to the failure of the work to impact the intellectual community with the adaption of Jungian principles into her work. The topic of Walkers speech at the 2003 Jungian convention of psychology, surrounded Walker’s activism against genital mutilation in Africa, but appeared to lack the focus on Jungian spirituality that the attendees at the convention traveled from across the globe to hear. Thus, while the application of Jungian philosophies may have impacted Walker’s personal life in a deeply meaningful way, she should reconsider applying it to anymore of her novels.