This paper examines the intersection of Jungian analytical psychology and postcolonial literature through a comparison between Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Though numerous Jungian literary analyses study individual psychological growth or the process of individuation, this analysis focuses on the collective shadow—a repository of suppressed cultural trauma, taboo, and violence evident in postcolonial psyches. Relying on Carl Jung’s model of the unconscious, especially the shadow archetype, the study evaluates how these novels portray the externalization and internalization of identity disintegration and cultural subjugation brought about by colonialism, patriarchy, and gender and caste segregation. The paper compares the two texts to expose how individuals like Okonkwo, Velutha, and Ammu are metaphors for repressed contents present inside their respective societies, which are either cast out or destroyed only to uphold their weak social structures. Achebe’s text indicates how patriarchal and colonial structures ruin original native identity. Likewise, Roy’s text showcases how distressing the wicked silencing of agency, dissent, and love created by the caste and gender biases can be. This paper addresses a substantial research gap and employs Jungian psychology to mirror sociocultural despotism in the two novels and highlights the adverse psychic impacts of empire. The analysis echoes the necessity of using psychological contexts to analyze postcolonial literary texts for a better comprehension of cultural and personal identities.
Khan et al. (Mon,) studied this question.