ABSTRACT
In Mark Twain’s version of the Night Sea Journey, the Mississippi River is the collective unconscious and the heroic quest is the boy’s adventuring. Tom Sawyer, an orphan, is escaping his nagging aged aunt: his friend, Huck Finn, a street kid, is escaping his down-andout, violent, alcoholic father. Here, Tom is playing with the idea of suicide. We think like this when life suddenly loses meaning, when the universe no longer supports us, when our meaning structures are destroyed and there’s a threat to our very Self (Orbach, 1988:914, 204): through illness (Mary, Chapter 4), parental abuse and neglect (Mike, this chapter) or (as for my friend, Aman) by collective betrayal. Aged nine, Chinese troops ‘liberated’ Tibet and, billeted in his home in Lhasa, ate his favourite dog before his eyes: a truly frozen moment.
