AustLit

This article looks at three early novels by Garth Nix, The Ragwitch (1990), Sabriel (1995), Shade's Children (1997) through the context of Freud's 'uncanny' and Carl Jung's work on rebirth and individuation. Tracing the theme of premature burial through the texts, Mills draws together the pessimistic Freudian view of the 'uncanny' and the more positive and heroic path of individuation which Jung put forward, to demonstrate how Nix incoporates these two different understandings of the human psyche into his narratives and manages to attain a level of balance between them both. In terms of premature burial, both Freud and Jung 'agree that the tomb is symbolically the domain of the monstrous mother' and the site where monstrous rebirths occur as well as a site of repression. Mills argues that Nix's novels succeed in blending together two world views and create a truly successful hero, capable of entering the underworld (tomb) and at the same time escaping the paralysis and distintergation of identity that premature burial engenders. (pp.56-57).