The Circus Animals' Desertion
An old man who has sought a theme for six weeks and not found one sits down to be satisfied with his heart, since his ladder is gone. He counts over the show creatures of his own past work — the sea-rider led by the nose through three enchanted islands, the countess who gave her soul away, the Fool and the Blind Man and Cuchulain fighting the ungovernable sea — and finds that none of them was ever about what he thought. Those masterful images grew in pure mind, he decides, and he must go back to where they began.
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Attributes
Genre
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
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