Analyzing Sherzad Hassan’s The Yard and the Dogs of My Father Based on Archetypal and Psychoanalytic Theories

Literary works mirror a society’s social situation, habits, traditions, and customs. Analyzing and re-reading the literary works reveals considerable cultural, social, personal, and psychological aspects of the people of a society. In the meantime, archetypal images are man’s individual and collective unconscious heritage throughout history actualized in literature through artists’ creative and sensitive minds. Based on Jung’s theories, the present study intends to examine the novel, The Yard and the Dogs of My Father, one of Sherzad Hassan’s outstanding works. This study analyzes the story based on Freud, Lacan, and Campbell’s theories, emphasizing Jung’s archetypal theory. The qualitative content analysis is adopted to analyze the selected themes and sentences of the novel based on Jung’s archetypes. In this research, the archetypes of self, anima, and animus, mask, shadow, hero, father, myth, mother, moon, sun, castration, virginity are analyzed in the story, and it is indicated that the plot and the role of the characters can be examined based on Jung’s theory. The novel’s bold archetypes include death, shadow, myth, and hero. The role of “myth” and “mythical hero” is so ingrained in human belief from the past to the present that even after the protagonist’s death, we can see the function and effect of this archetype. Father’s shadow (the dictator) is observed in the lives of the people residing in the yard. They do not even believe his death and think he will return soon to retake his yard.