Religion and Dissociative Identity Disorder in Marlon James’s John Crow’s Devil

Abstract

Religion and faith guide and affect man’s behaviour and partly contribute to social conflicts because of their fear-based teachings and rigid dogma in post-colonial culture. This paper analyses Marlon James’s John Crow’s Devil to depict how religion influences physical and psychological dissociation of characters in the Jamaican society. To understand the mind frame of James’s characters, the paper asks four research questions; one, what is the cause of the religious conflict in the novel; two, how do James’s charlatan preachers use biblical verses and mystical forces to intimidate, manipulate and control the minds and actions of their followers; three, which psychoanalytical strategies can be used to analyse religious hypocrisy and establish that characters suffer from forms of “dissociation”; four, how can the novel serve as a satire on churches responsible for different psycho-social conflicts? Drawing on insights from Karl Gustav Jung’s Psychoanalysis, especially concepts like “Self” and “Dissociation”, I contend that religion in the novel contributes to Dissociative Identity Disorders (DID) like anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive behaviours in characters. Moreover, James’s central characters – Pastor Hector Bligh and Apostle Lucas York violate the right to religious freedom and misrepresent biblical scriptures to legitimise violence and torture on their enemies. My reading of James’s characters shows that they suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) as a sign of a cultural bias that misidentifies the individual Ego which make them travel to other locations and taking on new identities. The methodology for this paper is a critical textual analysis that offers nostalgic reflections on the idyllic image of James’s Jamaica before and after the religious encounters. My essay concludes that redemption and social justice are multifaceted epistemologies proposed by the author to overcome dissociative disorders and avoid severe pain in characters suffering from traumatic experiences.