A psychoanalytical interpretation of the characters in A.C. Jordan’s novel Ingqumbo yeminyanya

Psychoanalysis is a way of treating certain nervous disorders of the mind by examining all the ways that sufferers can be helped to remember their past life, dreams, et cetera. This is an effort to find hidden forgotten anxieties or desires influencing one’s behaviour without one’s knowledge thereof. The aim of this article is to make a detailed interpretation of the characters Zwelinzima and Thembeka/Nobantu in A.C. Jordan’s novel, “Ingqumbo yeminyanya”, so as “to uncover the hidden causes of the neurosis in order to relieve the character of his or her conflicts, thus dissolving the distressing symptoms” (Gräbe, 1986). This article will look at the behaviour of the different characters in Jordan’s novel. Psychoanalysis is rooted in the idea that humans have unconscious longings that must be analysed in order to understand behaviour. The accent of the article will fall on how psychoanalysis can help the reader, critic or analyst to penetrate the inner workings of the minds of the characters.


Introduction
Psychoanalysis was born in Vienna at the end of the 19th century and spread with the contribution of Freudian disciples and dissidents such as Carl Jung.Sigmund Freud was the first psychoanalyst and a true pioneer in the recognition of the importance of unconscious mental activity.In 1896, Freud coined the term psychoanalysis.He believed that psychoanalysis was the most effective method of obtaining knowledge of the mind.Psychoanalytic treatment seeks to show how unconscious factors affect behaviour patterns, relationships, and overall mental health.Treatment traces the unconscious factors to their origins.Psychoanalysis originates from the idea that humans have unconscious longings that must be analysed in order to understand behaviour.

Relationship between psychoanalysis and literature
Jefferson and Robey (1991) contend that the reason why it is appropriate for the psychoanalyst to speak about literature is that he has something to say about language.It is first and foremost a talking cure, for it is out of the dialogue between patient and analyst that therapy precedes, the diagnostic material being largely linguistic.Bal (1984:286) regards a specification model as very important, because it allows for the use of psychoanalytic concepts to enhance literary theory through hermeneutic specification.The purpose is to gain access to such literary characteristics as metaphor and character, hence to inform the concepts of literature without losing the literary object itself.

Sigmund Freud
Freud distinguished the conscious from the unconscious.The conscious mind is what you are aware of at any moment.This includes your present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, et cetera.Freud (1949:31-32) suggested that the conscious and the preconscious, which he sees as anything that can easily be made conscious, e.g. the memories you are not at that moment thinking about, but can readily bring to mind, are the smallest parts of the psyche.He maintains that the largest part of the psyche is unconscious.The unconscious includes everything that is not easily available to awareness, including many things that have their origins in the unconscious itself, such as our drives and instincts.Freud (1949:14) introduces a structural model of the different parts of the psyche.Firstly, there is the id, which he sees as the mental agency that contains everything inherited, especially the instincts.He sees the id as the innermost core of personality and links it to biological processes.The id works in keeping with the pleasure principle, which can be understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately.The second one is the ego, which relates the organism to reality by means of its consciousness.It is an outgrowth of the id and is indirectly in contact with the external world.Its function is ruled by the reality principle.The third one is the superego.Freud believes that it internalises the influences of the parents.It represents the morals and standards of society that have become part of the development of personality.Freud also introduces what is called the life and death instincts.Grinberg (1990:260) maintains that "… the death instinct represents a portion of a larger inherent instinctual principle, which has been programmed into the DNA of our chromosomes, both literally and figuratively".Freud states that since life has its problems everyone has an unconscious wish to die.Freud (quoted in Boeree, 1998:6) mentioned three kinds of anxiety: realistic anxiety, moral anxiety and neurotic anxiety.Realistic anxiety is called fear of something.Moral anxiety is what we feel when the threat comes not from the outer physical world, but from the social world of the superego.Jefferson and Robey (1991) state that moral anxiety arises when one feels conscience-stricken or guilty about unacceptable things that one feels one has done or even contemplated.Lastly, neurotic anxiety is the fear of being overwhelmed by impulses from the id.Freud also defines certain defence mechanisms, that is, those devices that a person uses to reduce anxiety.Freud (1949) developed a theory of different psychosexual stages.He distinguished the oral stage in which the focus of pleasure is the mouth, the anal stage, where the focus of pleasure is the anus, and the phallic stage, where the focus of pleasure is the genitalia.In the latent stage, between the anal and the phallic stage, Freud believes that the sexual impulse is suppressed in the service of learning.Freud described the genital stage as the stage that represents the resurgence of the sexdrive in adolescence.He also developed the idea of the Oedipus complex, which refers to the unconscious development of libidinal striving for sexual satisfaction with the parent of the opposite sex.Forrester (1991:110) contends that "The Oedipus complex represents the way in which infants become sexed … and become human."This is characterised by an attraction to the parent of the opposite sex.In the case of boys, this is disturbed by the boy's fear, experienced during the phallic stage, of his father cutting off his penis.Because of her sexual rivalry with the mother, penis envy is viewed by Freud as the child's envy of the male's possession of a penis.
Central to Freud's psychoanalytical technique are ways of uncovering repressed material through the talking cure and the interpretation of dreams.In dreams there is what is called a dream content which comprises images and ideas expressed in the dream.According to Chaplin (1985), these are held to be of two fundamental types.The manifest content of the dream represents a series of distortions by the dream work of the latent content, and the latter has to be interpreted by the techniques of dream interpretation.

Carl Jung
In Jung we will focus on the version of his personality types.He distinguished two general attitudes, which perform certain psychological functions as sensation, feeling, intuition and thinking.These are introvert and extrovert.An introvert is someone who concerns himself with his own thoughts, acts, and personal life.He will not spend much time sharing activities with others.Chaplin (1985:40) states that "An introvert is one who tends to withdraw from social contacts and whose interests are directed inward to his own thoughts and experiences."An extrovert is a person who likes to spend time in activities with other people, rather than in attending to his own thoughts and feelings.Mischel (1981:47) describes an extrovert as someone who wishes to stress this by trying to lose himself among people and social activity.He is drawn to an occupation that allows him to deal directly with many people.Jung asserts that even though one of these is likely to predominate depending on the environment, a person is never entirely an extrovert or an introvert because both attitudes exist in an individual.Jung contends that we respond to art the way we do, because of the psychological effect of the reactivation of archetypes in us.The anima and animus are, inter alia, two examples of Jungian archetypes.These archetypes appear in dreams, fantasies, visions, creative thoughts and imaginations.Jung (1983:186) interpreted them as vague feelings and moods for personal love.He further states that in its individual manifestation the character of man's anima is, as a rule, shaped by his mother.Within the unconscious of women, there is an opposite or masculine psyche, the animus.For Jung, the animus is basically influenced by a woman's father.He also maintained that each one of us, to some degree, is both male and female, and has within us the personality of the opposite sex.Men are not all men; women are not all women.
Mollema (1992:31) says that Jung, like Freud, emphasised the conscious determinants of personality.However, he proposed that the unconscious consists of two layers.The first layer, called the personal unconscious, is essentially the same as Freud's version of the unconscious.

Lacan
According to Lacan (1977), an individual is not born human, but only becomes this way through incorporation into a social and cultural order.Human subjectivity in particular, comes into being through subjection to the symbolic order, the order of "otherness", in which we can distinguish ourselves from others and refer to ourselves as "I" (De Beer, 1987:12).Lacan (1977) believed that psychoanalytic perspectives in literary study should ultimately be derived from the conviction that the materials, on which they exercise their powers of analysis are in some sense, the same.Therefore the structure of literature is, in some sense, analogous to the structure of the mind.Lacan also declares that the unconscious is structured in the same way as language.In Lacan's view access to the symbolic order proceeds by way of the mirror stage, in which the child assumes itself to be the Other, whom it sees reflected, and models itself upon this misunderstood image.Lacan refers to this state as the Imaginary state.The child derives a sense of the self from persons other than itself; its ideal model at this stage is the mother.The child experiences the desire for the mother.

Summary of Ingqumbo yeminyanya
Ingqumbo yeminyanya deals with the beliefs and customs of the people who belong to the amaMpondomise clan.Zanemvula, the chief of the clan, asks his councillors to take his four-year old son, Zwelinzima, and hide him so that he wouldn't be affected by his brother Dingindawo's witchcraft.At the same time he is protecting him so that he can take over the throne when the time comes.Zanemvula leaves a dying wish that his son, Zwelinzima, should marry a Bhaca girl.Zwelinzima, when taken for a hiding, is put in the care of his uncle and aunt.His uncle, Gcinizibele, in his ignorance of the culture, takes him to school.Zwelinzima learns more about Western culture and he lives by it.At school he meets a girl, Thembeka, whom he decides to marry.While at school, he is told he is supposed to go back home to take over the throne.He is hesitant and afraid to do so because he knows that his uncle Dindindawo, who was a chief at that time, won't allow him to take over.Dingindawo finds out about Zwelinzima and his return to take over the throne.So he decides to plot with the hard-core traditionalists to kill Zwelinzima before he arrives to take over.Zwelinzima succeeds in arriving safely and takes over the throne.He finds it tough to deal with the traditionalists, because they are against the idea of him marrying the wife of his choice, instead of following his father's dying wish.Zwelinzima's wife, Thembeka, who becomes Nobantu after getting married, does not follow the customs of the Mpondomise.She kills a sacred snake of the Mpondomise despite being told to respect it if it should come to visit Zululiyazongoma (her and Zwelinzima's child).After she kills the snake there is anger among the Mpondomise and Nobantu is asked to go back to her place of birth for some time.After her return she shows signs of depression.She loses her mind and ends up killing the little child and committing suicide.Her suicide is believed to have been caused by the wrath of the ancestors because she killed the sacred snake of the Mpondomise.Zwelinzima is devastated by their death and ends up committing suicide as well.Before their deaths, Zwelinzima agrees to pay the lobola for a Bhaca girl because he can see that the traditionalists won't be satisfied until he brings a Bhaca girl home.

Literature review
Though Ingqumbo yeminyanya received some attention in the criticism, a psychoanalytic interpretation of the text has not been attempted before.Qangule (1974) studied the conflict and theme in the novel.Kwetana (1987) in his article, "A reconstruction of the plot structure of A.C.Jordan's Ingqumbo yeminyanya" payed attention to the folktale structure in the plot of the novel.Nyamende (1991), in an article entitled "Who really cares if the ancestors are angry?",examined the value of the ancestors to the Mpondomise people and how the dead can rule the lives of the living.Mtuze (quoted in Swanepoel & Ntuli, 1993:55-56) is using a feminist approach to the novel.

A psychoanalytical interpretation of the characters 6.1 Zwelinzima
Zanemvula, Zwelinzima's father and his headmen, created a split between Zwelinzima and the amaMpondomise customs and traditions by taking him away from the Jola people to his uncle, Gcinizibele, for protection.This was done on the advice of a traditional healer, who believed Dingindawo was planning to kill him.Zanemvula's headmen pretended that the child (Zwelinzima) was taken to the sea to take in the sea breeze, because it is believed that fresh air from the sea can heal the sick.They returned home with the false news that the child had died on the way to the sea.
Apart from being separated from his customs, the child is also taken away from his parents.A child who experiences such a separation at an early age, feels rejected by the parents and still longs for their love and protection.Zwelinzima becomes independent of his parents and culture at an early age.He has no "biological" parents to lean on for help and advice.Thus, he embraces the Western culture and puts his customs behind him.Gcinizibele, his guardian, has little knowledge of the amaMpondomise culture, and he cannot advise Zwelinzima further.What Gcinizibele does, is to send Zwelinzima to school.Zwelinzima never had a chance to learn what his parents regard as valuable in their society.Due to the family feud, his parents never had a chance to raise him the traditional way, which is why he did not regard his parents as role models in his Western life.He decides to follow Western culture because he receives better guidance from school than from the amaMpondomise.At school there are monks and nuns who act as role models.Western cultural activities are being done before his eyes.In order for him to know more about the amaMpondomise, he has to collect books and read them.Western culture becomes more real to him than the traditional culture of his people.Scheub (quoted in Qangule, 1974) asserts that Zwelinzima and Thembeka have been out of their roots for a long time, and are more completely products of the new world than of the old.
Zwelinzima's separation from his people, the amaMpondomise, results in an inner conflict which develops to a change of personality.He loses his identity and drifts into a state of uncertainty.He becomes confused and questions his belonging: Ndandivumelani ukuya kule nto?Ndiya kubani?NgooDabula baphi bona aba bandiphuthumayo?Lona ingcwaba lakhe ndiyalazi?Ndiza kuthi khona xa ndibanga isihlalo ndandiphi le minyaka?Ukuba ndiye ndadedelwa kweso sihlalo ndiza kuqala ngelithini ukulawula?(Jordan, 1940:101.)Why did I ever consent to this thing?To whom am I going?Who are these Dabulas who are coming to fetch me?Do I know his grave?When I claim this chieftainship, how shall I explain my absence all these years?If I can be given the throne, where shall I begin when I take over the chieftainship?
The above quotation states that Zwelinzima views himself as someone who belongs to Western society.He is also confessing that he was never raised by his parents when he says: "Do I know his grave?"The fact that he does not know his father's grave proves that there is no connection between them.As the chief, he was supposed to be close to his father and amaMpondomise all the time, so that it could be easy for him to take over as chief when the time came.
Zwelinzima misses the stage which Lacan (1977) calls the imaginary phase.During this stage, for the first time, the child experiences itself as an ideal completeness and a disintegrated whole, a disintegration which becomes unified only in the mirror stage.The child derives itself from people other than itself; its ideal model at this stage is the mother.The child experiences the desire for the mother.Zwelinzima is separated from his mother at an early age.He experiences failures in his development.Pervin and John (2001:119) perceives such failures as fixation.They further state that if individuals receive little gratification during a stage of development, they are afraid to go to the next stage, or, if they receive so much gratification that there is no motivation to move on, fixation will occur.
If fixation occurs, the individual will try to obtain the same type of satisfaction that was appropriate for an earlier stage of development during later stages.Zwelinzima never had a chance to make his own decision to cut his ties with his mother.We also discovered that the harmony of childhood which he missed from his mother was trans-ferred to his wife, Nobantu (Thembeka's name that she was given after marrying Zwelinzima).When Zwelinzima experiences real love from Thembeka, he feels that he does not want to lose it.He becomes closer to her and they eventually get married.This is when it is realised that he regains his lost time of being closer to his mother.
The hard-core traditionalists are against Zwelinzima marrying Thembeka, a woman whom he met at school.Zwelinzima's father had left a dying wish that his son, Zwelinzima, should marry a Bhaca girl from the Royal house.To show his love for Thembeka, he becomes protective towards her.Thembeka becomes the main object of his love.This can be interpreted as a fixation at the Oedipuscomplex stage.The stage during which Freud believes a male child becomes close to his mother.This closeness is disturbed because the child realises that the mother has no penis and thinks she has been castrated.Because of the fear of castration, the male child will turn to the father because he believes that they are the same.Forrester (1991:110) contends the following: The Oedipus complex represents the way in which infants become sexed (through their various responses to being deprived of the phallus) and become human (in escaping from the mother of the mirror stage, whose own incompleteness renders the child's sense of wanting insupportable, into the symbolic in which lack is symbolisable through the generation of desire).
Zwelinzima overcomes the Oedipus complex because of the fear of castration (fear of being rejected by the traditionalists of the hardcore) which eventually activates his identification with his father (traditionalists) so that he reconciles biological sexuality (attachment) with his social role.Zwelinzima eventually agrees to send lobola for a Bhaca girl.Freud (1965) believes that all changes, whether progressive or regressive, are caused by frustration or tension.In the novel we are introduced both to Zwelinzima's extrovert and to his introvert personality.At the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to Zwelinzima's extroversion.He is portrayed as someone who is active and well-liked by everyone because of his great interest in sport.
Wayethandwa ngumntu wonke eLovedale kuba wayengumntu okhululekileyo, waye elichule lemidlalo, ebalasele ngephini elihle kwiqakamba.Amakhwenkwana ayesel' ejinga onke ebhatyini yakhe, ebuza ukuba aza kuqeqeshwa ngubani na ngoku eLovedale.(Jordan, 1940:29.)He was a general favourite at Lovedale because he was free and easy to mix with everybody; he was a great sportsman, particularly noted for his brilliant batting in cricket.The little boys were hanging on his coat and wanted to know who was going to coach them in Lovedale now.
Towards the end of the novel, he changes from being an active person to a dull and isolated person because of the frustration he experiences as a chief, and because of the loss of the beloved ones, his wife, child and cousin.Freud (1949:18) assumes that people have a wish, usually, of course, unconscious, to die.This indicates that life can be a painful and exhausting process and that death promises release from this struggle.Zwelinzima desires peace, escape from stimulation.He cannot imagine any happiness without Thembeka next to him, because she is the one who actually helped him to overcome the feelings of childhood rejection and parental loss by being close to him all the time.He is overpowered by a realistic anxiety which is called fear.He has a fear of facing the world alone without his loved ones, especially his wife, whom he thinks he betrayed by allowing the hard-core amaMpondomise to pay lobola for a Bhaca girl to be his second wife.
Zwelinzima takes his life by drowning himself in the river.Qangule (1974:1) interprets the river as a symbol of purification, redemption, spiritual rebirth, hope, new life or regeneration.He further says if one drowns in the river: "It is as if the character desires a return to the womb, a relapse in a state of protective isolation and safety against all suffering." In his frustration of being alone, Zwelinzima decides to take his life to get rid of the isolation and suffering that he is going through.He desires a return to the womb where he can be protected and depends on his mother for satisfaction.On the other hand, he may be longing for ancestral protection.As a chief of the amaMpondomise, he is supposed to be buried in the river where the Majola Ancestry are said to inhabit the deep waters.Perhaps they were beckoning him and he heeded the call.Zwelinzima takes his life to the right place for his last place of rest.

Thembeka/Nobantu
We are not surprised at Thembeka's behaviour at a later stage of her life and her ignorance of the customs at the Mpondomise home-stead.Khalipha, Thembeka's father, confirms that his daughter has been ignorant long before.
Wayoyika le nto (utata kaThembeka) kuba wayengakholwa ukuba uThembeka uya kukwazi ukwendela koMkhulu, kuba wayengazange ayinanze kwakudala into yokunonophela ubucukubhede bamasiko.(Jordan, 1940:140.)Thembeka's father became afraid of this because he was not certain of the fact that Thembeka could be a wife of the royal family, because she was ignorant of the traditional customs long before.
Thembeka's ignorance of important customs was revealed before she got married to Zwelinzima.Her strange reaction to and disrespect of the ancestors of the family does not surprise the reader because she is also a member of the Western world just like Zwelinzima.Nobantu experiences conflict when it comes to obeying and accepting the customs of the amaMpondomise.She acts aggressively against the traditionalists and the Mpondomise ancestors, but, at the same time, she fears that the traditionalists and the ancestral spirits may retaliate with force and destroy her.
Thembeka displays male qualities in action and in thought, one can refer to the way she kills the snake.She displays anger and hatred towards it.Furthermore, we can look at her contribution to Zwelinzima's decision to return to his fatherland.The amaMpondomise make use of Thembeka's contribution unconsciously, because they think that those are Mphuthumi's views.… Wala uThembeka, wathi into eya kumenza angakhanyeli nto uZwelinzima kukuba yena Mphuthumi angabi sabuza nto kuye, asuke nje athi mbo ezinyanini, ambonise uZwelinzima ukuba akukho kuba safihla.(Jordan, 1940:31.)… Thembeka refused, and she said, the thing that would make Zwelinzima not to deny was that Mphuthumi should not ask anything from him.He must just go straight to the truth, and show Zwelinzima that there is no way that he can deny.
Jordan also has this to say to emphasise Thembeka's male attributes: uMphuthumi ke wayengazange ayeke ukuthabatha amacebo kaThembeka kuba wayemqonde kwaseLovedale ukuba 'unobuchopho bendoda'.Noko ke wayengatsho phaya kwamanye amadoda ezimbizweni ukuba kukho umntu onalo nofifi lwale nto.(Jordan, 1940:61.)Mphuthumi never stopped taking advices from Thembeka because he had realised from Lovedale that she had the 'brains of a man'.Although he was not telling other men at the Imbizo gatherings that there was someone who had an idea of this.
Thembeka also shows loss of contact with reality.This is indicated by the conversation between the women of the Royal House of Jola.
Nithi kodwa uphilile?Ngathi akazazi nokuba uphina.Ngathi akazazi nokuba useseMjika, nokuba ubuyele eNtshiqo na.'Yinene leyo'.Qonda kwangale nto yokuba angazidubi nokuziduba ngale nto yokungabonani kwakhe nendoda yakhe … uzihlalele nje.Inkosikazi yayibaxakile abantu kuba okoko yafika yayihambahamba ngokomntu osephupheni apha phakathi komzi.(Jordan, 1940:26.)Do you think she is well?It seems as if she doesn't even know where she is, whether she's at Mjika or back at Ntshiqo.'That's very true.' Look at the fact that she does not even bother herself with the idea of not meeting her husband … she just stayed.The wife baffled everyone because, since her return, she was moving around the homestead as a person who was in a dream.
Nobantu's loss of touch with reality can be interpreted as being a punishment from the ancestors of the amaMpondomise, as she never respected them after marrying Zwelinzima.In Nobantu's development there is an association between wishes and fears.After getting involved with Zwelinzima, she had a wish of getting married to him, but this wish was destroyed when she heard the news that Zwelinzima was a chief.Her fear was that she was a daughter of a commoner.She was not from the royal family, so her wish might prove futile because of her lover's status.These wishes and fears that are part of a specific time period in the person's life development are carried over into the next stage, adulthood.Nobantu's wishes and fears drove her to behave strangely in the Mpondomise homestead.She did not want to lose Zwelinzima by sharing him with another wife, a Bhaca girl.At the same time she could see that the traditionalist would never be happy until a Bhaca girl was brought into the home.The conflict between Zwelinzima and the amaMpondomise and between the amaMpondomise and Nobantu intensified after she killed the snake.This leads to Nobantu's neurotic symptoms and psychotic withdrawal from reality.The above-mentioned symptoms express Nobantu's unconscious internal conflict between self-assertion and conformation.Jung (1983) puts forward a concept that he calls synchronicity.This term means a "meaningful coincidence" of outer and inner events that are not themselves casually connected.The killing of the snake "inkwakhwa", a brown cobra, by Nobantu contains a meaningful coincidence.The Mpondomise people believed that if someone killed a snake deliberately, especially if she was supposed to show respect to it, calamity would befall her.We learn that Thembeka eventually goes mad and her madness drives her to commit suicide and kill her innocent child as well.The killing of the snake "inkwakhwa" and the madness are not casually related, but they are connected by the symbolic meaning that the Jola clan gives to the killing of their ancestor, "inkwakhwa".
Nobantu chooses the waters of the Bedlana River to take her life.The Jola Kings are believed to be buried in the river.Her drowning thus shows that the ancestors of the amaMpondomise caused her death.She also desires to return to the womb in order to get safety and protection, and get away from the sufferings that she had in life.When she destroys herself, she is not in a healthy state of mind.It is the unconscious that drives Nobantu to kill herself.Besides the punishment from the ancestors, it is the repressed feelings that Zwelinzima betrayed her by agreeing to marry a second wife.
Thembeka's and Vukuzumbethe's (Zwelinzima's cousin who drowned whilst trying to save Thembeka and the child) corpses are taken to the hut.The hut is seen as a symbol of the womb.This shows that in death they are taken back into their mother's wombs for further protection.Nobantu's (Thembeka) unconscious wish to go back to the womb is intensified by taking her corpse from the river, which is also the symbol of the womb, into the hut.

Conclusion
A psychoanalytic reading of Jordan's novel, Ingqumbo yeminyanya, reveals the destructive power of the unconscious mind of some of his characters.Many authors of African literary texts, including Jordan, employ psychic forces in their novels and in their character portrayal unconsciously.It is the task of the reader/critic to unravel these unconscious forces in the personalities that the author has created.This article portrayed psychoanalysis as an important and illuminating approach to African literary texts.