Ruskin and the Archetypes

South-West Wind, therefore, as a character not only gives Ruskin a vehicle by which he is able to move the plot forward, but also, by acting as a catalyst, helps to create the climax of the plot by giving them tasks to fulfil as well as by creating dramatic tension between the brothers. His presence within the story is highly indicative of change, and he does indeed becomes the catalyst for both Gluck and the neighbouring valley, which is in dire need of help. Ruskin, through the inclusion of such a character in the work, is again suggesting that the environment in which we live is fickle and potentially destructive, and like the valley and the mountain, the wind is a force which surmounts man's potential.

In his lecture 'The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales', Jung asserts that the 'wise old man' symbolises the 'spiritual factor' in literature and would often take the form of a 'grotesque gnome-like creature.' Jung cites an Estonian fairy tale, 'How an Orphan Boy Unexpectedly Found his Luck' in order to establish, and illustrate, the importance of the archetypal old man figure:

[This tale] tells how an ill-treated orphan boy who had let a cow escape was afraid to return home again for fear of more punishment. So he ran away, chancing to luck. He naturally got himself into a hopeless situation, with no visible way out...he fell into a deep sleep... and when he awoke...he saw a little old man with a long grey beard standing before him...the old man asked the boy who he was and where he wanted to go...[the old man said] ' you are no better and no worse off than many others whose dear protectors and comforters rest in their coffins under the earth.

Jung believed that such an archetype functions purely as an extension of the person to whom the old man appears, and rarely offers what the person could not conclude themselves; the old man is nothing more than the expression of the moral and, sometimes physical, factors that occur in the 'psychic space' around the individual. In such a context, South-West Wind, esq. becomes the natural extension of Gluck, and to a degree, of all of us; Ruskin, through such a character, reminds us of our own free will

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