by Brett “Brettcrumb” Koehn
Russian formalist and folklorist, Vladimir Propp, argued that all fairy tales exist as slight variations of a single tale. Silva explains Propp’s Dragon Slayer model for this universal tale, “he took note in his later magnum opus[1] of the connections between fighting a dragon and being swallowed by one; between being in the beast’s entrails and entering the realm of the dead; and between this transition—which he considers the wondertale’s axis and its central point—and metamorphosis” (84). The hero’s descent into the stomach of the dragon symbolizes a multi-faceted transformation essential to this tale-type model. The act reflects the fairy tale trend where children defeat monstrous foes, each with massive appetites, through figurative devourment. However, tales where they must escape the literal inner space of their antagonists as described by Propp appear much less common. Tracking the occurrence of heroes who emerge from stomachs across global folklore and modern storytelling, the belly of whale appears overwhelmingly often. The belly of the whale succeeds as a cross-cultural archetype of reflection and transformation to overcome humanity’s deepest anxieties, because of its trifold nature as divine enigma, womb asylum, and resurrective tomb.
All three of these elements stem from the biblical story of the prophet Jonah who transforms from a coward overwhelmed by the heavy weight of his responsibilities to a grateful philosopher searching for justice after he is swallowed by a fish. When God calls him to save Israel’s enemies in Nineveh, Jonah attempts to abandon his prophet vocation by fleeing in the opposite direction by boat so that God will have no choice but to destroy the unrepenting city (New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, Jon. 1:1-3). Instead of punishing Nineveh, God punishes Jonah, sending a storm after his ship (Jon. 1:4). The entire gentile crew repents, but Jonah, still refusing to follow God’s plan, asks the crew to throw him into the sea as a sacrifice so that God will no longer be angry with them (Jon. 1:11-16). After they do this, God saves Jonah from drowning by sending “a large fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (Jon. 1:17) where he eventually prays to God for forgiveness and is brought back to Nineveh to prophesize. Although he later expresses more dissatisfaction with God’s plan, his time inside the large fish, which encyclopedian John Wilson argued could only have been the mammalian sperm whale (Moe 9), restores his character from anxiety to passionate confrontation. The appearance of the fish acts as a peculiar deus ex machine thwarting Jonah’s suicide attempt in both punitive and salvatory ways, disarming him of all freedoms except prayer while also granting him mercy from the consequences of his choices.
This mysterious divine combination of punishment and mercy encapsulates the enticing enigmatic nature of the whale that functions to affirm the hero’s own humanity. It was not until 1984 that researchers took the first underwater film of sperm whales (Moe 2), meaning before then few people knew living whales beyond brief moments of partial visibility when they breach the surface. Whales then represent complete unknowns, not to mention the mostly unexplored ocean depths itself, whose reputation of size becomes exaggerated in people’s imagination. Their awe-inspiring size fits into the religious model, where humanity’s anxious need for domination gets humbly pacified by their stature, except for when pursued by the unchecked egos of whalers. This divine power might also act in separation from the human world, like angels justly ruling heavenly seas while humanity keeps its dominion over land. Psychoanalyst Bettelheim argues the importance of divinity in folklore and fairy tales, “Literary critics such as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis felt that fairy stories are ‘spiritual explorations’ and hence ‘the most life-like’ since they reveal ‘human life as seen, or felt, or divined from the inside’” (24). These critics clarify that experiencing a fairy tale requires an inherently spiritual turning inward that the divine symbol of the whale’s innards powerfully exhibits.
Their mysteriousness and unimaginable size relate these species to human knowledge and its limits, becoming a symbol of what humanity does not know in an anxious (swallowing) and protective (saving) way. Unaddressed in the old Jonah story, whales are also intelligent mammals which further emphasizes the puzzling bond between them and humans. Their mammalian nature becomes divine and comforting because of how it seemingly allows them to overcome sweeping natural rules. A person without hope that their efforts will make any difference may look to the whale for inspiration, because of how it overcomes its mammalian limits of breathing with lungs to traverse the sea. The fact that the whale does not digest Jonah at all in the story underscores these confounding symbolic elements of the whale image. The whale then does not serve as an organic antagonist but rather a divine miracle that complements human existence to remind Jonah of his own providential limits.
In possibly the other most famous[2] belly of the whale story, Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, a mile-long Shark[3] suddenly appears and swallows the wooden puppet, providing the final challenge for him to start becoming a real human boy. Collodi references the divinity of the Shark by describing it as “Attila of fish and fisherfolk” (141) which the footnote clarifies means “Scourge of God” (192). Just as in Jonah’s tale, divine punishment takes on the form of a whale-like creature, but Collodi expands the significance of this idea, “When Pinocchio recovered his wits, he couldn’t even figure out what world he was in. All around him was darkness. Everywhere” (142). The darkness itself of the whale’s belly epitomizes mystery, strangeness, and the limits of human sense and perspective. The darkness may act as a complete extension of Pinocchio’s child-like naivete which constantly leads him into trouble throughout the story, but it also performs as the extinguishment of his stubbornness. With his lack of knowledge externalized to make up a whole setting with no apparent next destination, Pinocchio may no longer flee from immoral short-sighted scheme to short-sighted scheme, as he did with the Cat and Fox, Lampwick, and other tricksters. Pinocchio then notices a light in the darkness and the Tuna tells him, “’It must be some companion in misfortune who—like us—is waiting to be digested!’” to which he replies “‘I want to go see him. Maybe it’s some old fish who can teach me how to escape?’” (143). Previously overlooking the advice of the older Geppetto and Talking Cricket in favor of the words of tricksters, the whale develops for the first time an intuition in Pinocchio to trust older people. Pinocchio’s father and creator, in apparent religious allegory, created the light and the two reunite thereafter. Pinocchio proceeds to recap the plot of his entire story so far to Geppetto (146), self-actualizing by telling his fairy tale story. This process benefits him the courage to lead a plan of escape that Geppetto questions, “’Do you really think it’s possible that a puppet like you, barely a meter tall, could have enough strength to swim with me on his shoulders?’ ‘Just try it and you’ll see! In any case, if it’s written in the heavens above that we must die, at least we’ll have the immense consolation of dying in each other’s arms…. Follow me, and don’t be afraid’” (148). Pinocchio confronts the deep ego fear of death from within the dark whale chamber and nearly sacrifices himself to save another person (his father), in complete contrast to the id selfishness with which he answered past challenges on land. With his father on his shoulder, and the Tuna following his example, Pinocchio transforms from the child trickster to a paternal hero, and not much later receives his human form from the fairy. The divine enigmatic nature of the Shark exposes Pinocchio’s mortal anxieties such that he acknowledges his past experiences, incorporates the paternal into his identity, and proceeds with selflessness, ultimately transforming him with true humanity.
Similar to the externalization of Pinocchio’s childishness, the belly of the whale functioning as a womb renders Jonah into a practically pre-natal form that inspires faith in him by revealing God’s maternal nature. Jonah behaves like an impatient child at the start of the story, following the pleasure principal as Spearing explains, “Jonah is trying to run away from his superego’s (conscience’s) demand that he fight against the wickedness of the people of Nineveh” (4). He adheres to id fear and shallow superego cultural biases which transmutes him into a fetal form so he may mature into the reality principal of long-term deep ego ideals of his own God’s selfless love and forgiveness. Bettelheim explains the relevance of this transformation in fairy tales through the Grimms’ “Little Red Cap” where the titular characters emerges from the belly of a wolf, “Little Red Cap, when she fell in with the wolf’s seduction to act on the basis of the pleasure principle instead of the reality principle, implicitly returned to a more primitive, earlier form of existence. In typical fairy-story fashion, her return to a more primitive level of life is impressively exaggerated as going all the way to the prebirth existence in the womb, as the child thinks in extremes” (180). As a figurative child, he acts in oedipal conflict with the paternal figure of God, because he cannot differentiate the functions of God’s inconsistent forceful punishments. Only focused on the traditionally masculine act of physical force and destruction, Jonah must also observe the functions of God’s maternalistic side to understand God’s justice. Anxiously distraught at God’s paternalistic power such that Jonah invites the crew to kill him, Jonah receives maternal care in the womb-like asylum of the belly that restores his safety so that he may reflect on the deeper needs of his subconscious. When the whale regurgitates him, his consumed form is replaced with a wiser superego structure through rebirth.
John B. Flanagan connects these psychological relationships to the archetypal maternal image in his sculpture Jonah and the Whale: Rebirth Motif (fig. 1). By vertically orienting the sperm whale’s shape, his design signifies a female body with Jonah contained tightly in her womb. An etched line at the bottom of the sculpture connected to Jonah represents the whale’s mouth, the vaginal canal, and his umbilical cord. Jonah becomes dependent on the whale’s appetite and its maternal chamber. Flanagan’s demonstration of the whale’s union of animalistic stomach and maternal womb parallels the union of the whale’s masculine and feminine form. Moe defends the gendered image in the original story, “The sperm whale can be figured as masculine: his massive and phallic forehead, his creamy spermaceti, his very name, his aggression toward whaling ships. This hyper-masculine whale is now to become intensely feminine via its womb, a site of nurture, gestation, growth, offspring, and delivery” (10). In the sculpture, the sperm whale’s phallic head appears to collide with the wooden base of the statue yet also provides the support to uplift the rest of its form, fetal Jonah included. Similarly, God’s masculine destruction draws Jonah to his beliefs, but becomes only the foundation by which he may understand the graver importance of feminine selflessness after being selflessly birthed again himself. Flanagan shapes the whale’s tail as a breastplate, connecting the animal’s journey to Nineveh to the strength nurtured in breastfeeding. The rugged, otherwise undetailed form of the statue demonstrates the archetypal-ness of the whale image, such that even without a head or identity for the human mother, its being functions irreproachably as such.
Other belly of the beast stories embody this maternalistic image to reconcile toxic dominating desires with nurturing relief, drawing overwhelmed heroes into moments of inspiring safe simplicity. In Finding Nemo, Marlin and Dory are briefly trapped inside the mouth of a blue whale during their search for Nemo. The choice of a blue whale over a sperm whale reflects the geographical setting of the film, an enigmatic interest in the largest animal species alive, and the smallness of the fish characters who can fit through the whale’s baleen plates where Jonah could not. The latter point emphasizes that the smooth wide inner space of the whale’s mouth relative to Marlin embodies less of Flanagan’s cramped womb imagery. Nevertheless, the feminine connection between the whale and Dory, who summons it and speaks for it by translating Whale, and the more peaceful nature of blue whales compared to sperm whales (along with Marlin’s peaceful takeaway) indicate the maternal effects of the scene. Dory serves both as maternal proxy for the whale but also in Marlin’s parenting relationship of Nemo after the barracuda ate his partner, Coral. Inside the whale’s mouth, Dory relieves Marlin’s parenting anxiety by starting a conversation between them, “’There, there. It’s all right. It’ll be OK.’ ‘No, it won’t.’ ‘Sure it will, you’ll see.’ ‘No. I promised him I’d never let anything happen to him.’ ‘Huh. That’s a funny thing to promise.’ ‘What?’ ‘Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo’” (Finding Nemo 01:10:40). In typical fairy tale fashion, the story instructs parents to allow children to adventure despite its many dangers, because without them they will not grow. However, instead of expressing this through the story of a child protagonist, the unique setting of the grand maternal whale allows the film to directly comfort the adult characters and audience. The special hectic multi-layered symbolism of the whale extends Dory to proxy for Nemo as well when Marlin starts off, “’No more Whale! You can’t speak Whale!’ ‘Yes, I can!’ ‘No, you can’t! You think you could do these things but you can’t Nemo!’” (Finding Nemo 01:12:36). Dory’s consistent demonstration that she can in fact ‘speak Whale,’ whether it is intuitive or learned, contrasts with Martin’s blatant blindness to it and mistrust of her. Marlin asserts paternal control by imposing his own estimation of Nemo’s limits on him, but maternal Dory expands those limits against Marlin’s strict attachments that only stress him towards cruelty. Once Marlin follows Dory’s example in literal and figurative ‘letting go’ of these attachments, the whale ejects them at their desired destination, just like the whale in Jonah’s story. That Marlin and Dory find themselves inside several other male organisms throughout the film[4] (Dory even references Disney’s adaptation of Pinocchio before Marlin gets eaten by the anglerfish)[5] without discovering an inner lesson about themselves contends the significance of the maternal whale image in this scene.
In the animated series, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Flapjack lives inside of the talking blue whale Bubbie who takes him wherever he desires and acts as his mother figure. In the episode, “Bubbie’s Tummy Ache,” Flapjacks adventures out of her mouth and deeper into her stomach. Far from the enigmatic darkness of other depictions, the show presents Bubbie’s insides in gross biological clarity, displaying her throat, vocal cords, and stomach with contracting flesh, gasses, and fluids. At each stage of Flapjack’s descent into Bubbie, a character flashbacks to a lost passion of their life. In the mouth, Bubbie tells Flapjack about her pie-eating competition days (Orman 00:53), from the throat, Captain K’nuckles tells Flapjack about his pocket-watch and previous protégé who he lost in a different whale’s throat (Orman 04:10), and in the stomach, trapped old Ruth reminisces about her many suitors she wanted to marry (Orman 07:03). The contemplative space of Bubbie’s physical form, which is entirely without perilous stakes during this episode, invites these characters to recollect important joys to them. As Flapjack ascends Bubbie, each of these passions return into their lives just as they were before. In this episode, Bubbie serves not only as a maternal shelter to protect innocent young Flapjack from physical dangers and the negative influences of K’nuckles, but also as a means of connecting the adult characters back to joys of their own youth through her maternal biological shelter.
Outside of the whale image, the maternal archetype appears in other belly of the beast stories but with more antagonistic attitudes. In Maori mythology, Hine-nui-te-po, the mother of all of humanity, becomes the goddess of death when she flees to the underworld after learning that her husband, the forest god Tane, is also her father. The arrogant male demigod Maui-tikitiki-a-taranga attempts to give humanity immortality by crawling through Hine-nui-te-po’s vagina and out of her mouth to reverse the cycle of life and overcome death. However, one of his tirairaka fantail friends accidentally foils his attempt by laughing and waking her up from sleep. She clenches her thighs which cuts off his head within her womb before he can enter farther, killing him. In this example, a whale does not consume and comfort a patriarchal hero in need with its maternal womb but rather the hero blames the maternal figure for its mortal anxiety and attempts to venture into that space on their own, leading to their punishing death.
Similarly, in Edmund McMillen’s indie roguelike The Binding of Isaac: Repentance, young boy Isaac, imagines killing his abusive mother (Mom) in fantasy play then crawls inside her to the Womb levels where he defeats Mom’s Heart. At this point, he unlocks the ability to use his experience defeating Mom’s Heart to become Eden and replay the game with any combination of stats and items. By expressing his desires to erase the current harmful presence in his life (Mom) and have instead a safe maternal presence in his life (the Womb with a pure Mom’s Heart), this setting empowers Isaac with confidence in his imagination and the possibilities of the future. However, as he repeats this fantasy more, he becomes guilty of his desires, opening Cathedral (heaven) or Sheol (hell) as the next levels in the game. In Cathedral, he optimistically aims to absolve himself through suicide, while in Sheol he attempts the same as self-punishment.[6] Eventually Isaac can confront his identity[7] and his constant fear of his mom,[8] to crawl inside a decayed version of her to face the monstrous corpse of Mother which represents a healthy yet fearsome externalization of Isaac’s trauma.[9] By defeating her, Isaac unlocks a route of the game where he does not have to enter his mother, but instead can actually ascend from the depths of the basement[10] to the reality of his home. By confronting the realities of death in the imagined corpse of his mother, Isaac lets go of imagining the satisfaction of his id anger and turns to resolving superego conflicts. In Home, he frees himself of guilt and fear respectively by defeating the true final bosses of the game, Dogma and The Beast. He then imagines himself ascending to heaven, a place he envisions as rewinding time to before he exists. Accepting the absence of maternal asylum in his life, which he previously artificially and violently created in play, the only relief that remains to the tragic figure is a pre-pre-natal non-existence. Nevertheless, the final cutscene reveals that Isaac has found shelter in his divorced father’s home, “Are you sure this is how you want this story to end Isaac? You’re the one writing it, it doesn’t have to end this way. Here, how about we tell it a different way. Maybe a happy ending?” By expressing his trauma, guilt, and fears through stories told bravely by his father, Isaac is able to overcome them. Bettelheim explains the importance of a parent vehicle of the fairy tale, “If we parents tell such fairy stories to our children, we can give them the most important reassurance of all: that we approve of their playing with the idea of getting the better of these giants” (28). The paternalistic narrator framework of the game establishes the limits of the maternal belly of the beast’s ability to provide certain heroes with sheltered self-actualizing transformation. However, with the parental reading of Isaac’s own creative work by the father, Isaac may come to terms with the maternal womb that enraptures him. After this cutscene, Isaac may play as the Tainted form of characters, each one overtly embodying elements of abuse so that Isaac may truly overcome them in a happy ending.
The video game itself acts as a self-reflexive belly of the beast, with the player replaying the same levels to defeat Mom at least 202 times[11] before achieving the true happy ending of the game. Once the player enters into Isaac’s world they become trapped within the layers of his reality until they bring about his real absolution of trauma. However, video game addiction aside, they are only trapped in so far as they need the comforts and transformative guidance the game might provide. By entering into the belly of the beast with an identity other than themselves (Isaac), the player prepares themselves with the transformative guidance the shelter offers before it becomes immediately apparent in their own lives.[12]
In the film adaptation of Coraline, Coraline travels through a tunnel resembling a vaginal canal to the threatening maternal space of the Other World (Coraline 00:16:00). At first, her Other Mother, a physical clone of her biological mother except for buttons in place of her eyes, behaves as Coraline desires and provides her with anything she wants, satisfying Coraline’s childish id. However, Coraline discovers that her Other Mother is a witch who eats the flesh of children and traps their soul in a mirror. The Other World itself becomes a proxy for the stomach of the witch. After making this discovery, the tunnel between the two worlds becomes dead and rotting, Coraline’s perceived ideal maternal space compromised by the mirrored appetites of herself and the witch (Coraline 01:00:59).[13] Nonetheless, by observing the demise of this artificial maternal belly of the beast stand-in, Coraline becomes grateful for the parental support she already has[14] and confidently confronts the strict reality principle of her family’s parenting style.
Finally, the image of the belly of the whale in Jonah’s story also functions as an underworld to address mortal anxieties. Jonah prays from within the belly of the fish, “I called to the Lord out of my distress, / and he answered me; / out of the belly of Sheol I cried, / and you heard my voice. / You cast me into the deep, / into the heart of the seas, / and the flood surrounded me” (Jon. 2:2-3). Jonah compares the belly of the whale to the belly of the underworld Sheol, revealing that his prayer comes from his fear of death and current descent towards it. The prayer continues, “I went down to the land / whose bars closed upon me forever; / yet you brought up my life from the Pit, / O Lord my God. / As my life was ebbing away, / I remembered the Lord, / and my prayer came to you, / into your holy temple. / Those who worship vain idols / forsake their true loyalty / But I with the voice of thanksgiving / will sacrifice to you” (Jon. 2:6-9). Here Jonah narrates his loss of life and ascent from the underworld as a reborn figure. This passage also defines the only accurate prophecy Jonah conveys in his book as he predicts Jesus’s descent and rise from hell later in The Bible.[15] The belly of the whale then contains an important duality of life and death that presents the hero with an ultimatum of damnation or redemption.
Due to the divine and maternal connections to the creation of life, previous examples also include references to this symbol and its themes. For example, Maui adventures into the consumptive depths of the underworld in order to achieve his ultimate goal of adventuring into the depths of his mother so as to relieve his fears about death. Isaac descends and rises from literal Sheol, as well as the figurative cycle of his constant death and rebirth through the game’s replayability. In Pinocchio, Collodi connects the Shark to death by humorously emphasizing its sickly old age, “Now you must bear in mind that since the Shark was very old and suffered from asthma and heart palpitations, he was forced to sleep with his mouth open” (148). Furthermore, when human Pinocchio asks what happened to his old self, Geppetto reacts, “he motioned toward a large puppet that was propped up in a chair, his head turned to one side, his arms dangling and his legs crossed and bent at the knees. It seemed miraculous that he could stay upright” (159). Pinocchio’s new comforted self leaves behind a deceased prior form. Bettelheim explains these different selves in context of “Little Red Cap,” “The child also understands that Little Red Cap really ‘died’ as the girl who permitted herself to be tempted by the wolf; and that when the story says ‘the little girl sprang out’ of the wolf’s belly, she came to life a different person” (179). Each of the examples throughout this paper illustrate the death and rebirth of a character’s identity due to their descent and reemergence from the belly of the whale which incarnates the underworld.
In the Urabon Sutra, one of the closest disciples of Buddha, Mokuren,[16] uses his psychic powers to observe his deceased mother, who he unexpectedly learns is trapped in the suffering Realm of Hungry Ghosts.[17] Although not overtly tied to an organic beast in this story, a maternal figure, an appetitive stomach, and mortality converge in a single image. After Mokuren offers many gifts to Buddhist monks, his mother ascends into a divine realm. By accessing the belly-like underworld through a vision, Mokuren understands and attempts to reciprocate his mother’s service to him so as to relief his generational guilt that he has not lived up to her sacrifices, and mortal legacy anxieties by setting the example for others to honor him after death.
As the vague nature of Urabon Sutra example indicates, true belly of the beast stories in East and South East Asian folklore are rare due to different longstanding cultural values regarding beasts. Buddhist cosmological expert Rawlinson describes folkloric water dragon creatures, “[naga] are represented as controlling water (or the waters), but not as mere water, but rather the essence of water: the sap in trees, the nectar of the gods, soma, the seed of living beings, milk, honey…. They are called water lizards; they are said to be water-dwellers and to play in water. More specifically, they live in the ocean, rivers and whirlpools; and they have power over rain” (7-8). Although naga possess the divine might of Jonah’s whale, their animistic nature as ‘the essence of water’ distances their symbolism from the anthropocentric comforts of the religious, gendered, appetitive, and mortal whale. Their naturalistic duality further bolsters this distance, “But the most important element in the naga make-up is fire. Nagas cause things to burn or actually burn themselves because they cannot control the element of fire” (Rawlinson 9). The aquatic enigma of the whale provides a simultaneously dangerous and comforting symbolic presence similar to the naga fiery chaos and aquatic order, yet the whale essentially differs in not having uncontrolled destruction as a key trait contradicting the whale’s controlled traits. The whale’s duplicity is grounded in the wholeness and stability of its physical traits, such that its male destructiveness may become the feminine support through a simple sculptural reorientation. To re-define the whale with the oppositional qualities of the naga would require altering its actual form, not just presentation. Rawlinson explains the symbolic significance of these naga traits.
“It is a misunderstanding of the magical worldview to object that nagas cannot be both ugly and beautiful; that they cannot be the embodiment of the water element and the fire element; or that they cannot simultaneously be snakes, people and devas. Magic embraces ambivalence and does not try to explain it away. Our argument has been that this ambivalence, combined with the notion of a hierarchy of levels of being or reality, is the essential feature of the magical cosmology that we find in the Buddhist texts.” (10)
The naga’s contradictory ambivalence serves to expand the levels of reality in stories rather than condense them as the whale’s converging natures do. This block quote also highlights that naga essentially differ from the beasts discussed so far because they have an explicit human nature to them as well. With their divine deva abilities, they may transform into humans and even reproduce with them, which while opening other possibilities, prevents them from functioning as a symbolic vehicle by which human anxieties are captured and overcome. Rawlinson cites traditional Buddhist stories involving Naga, such as one at the beginning of the Vinaya,[18] but the naga act as mindful, protective deities that pose expansive questions about reality rather than consume to provide challenging guidance as the entangled image of the whale often does.
Jonah’s story so effectively standardizes the belly of the beast image, not only due to these three key symbolic elements, but also because of its satirical pseudo-myth structure that empathetically addresses the anxieties of fairy tales while posturing as more important than that style of storytelling. Moe explains that cultural retelling of whale stories forms a clear genealogy leading back to Jonah, “As Jonah’s tale is retold, the story exhibits rhetorical velocity, a term which refers to the speed at which a text circulates as well as the ways in which that text is repurposed. The Jonah narrative circulates in multiple contexts, so much so that numerous writers can retell the same stories from different sources” (17). The story of Jonah’s contextual versatility likely stems from its comedic nature resulting from characters acting the opposite of how characters in those roles in other Biblical stories usually act. For example, Jonah does whatever he can to not prophesize as God commands and yet pagans, who typically rebuke Jewish prophets, end up accepting Jonah and God on the ship and in Nineveh. This satire veers the story’s style away from religious myth and closer towards a fairy tale. Bettelheim comprehensively defines myths.
In myths, much more than in fairy stories, the culture hero is presented to the listener as a figure he ought to emulate in his own life, as far as possible (26). The dominant feeling a myth conveys is: this is absolutely unique; it could not have happened to any other person, or in any other setting; such events are grandiose, awe-inspiring, and could not possibly happen to an ordinary mortal like you or me (37). Not only do mythical characters have names, but we are also told the names of their parents, and of the other major figures in a myth (40). The real heroes of history, however, having been people like the rest of us, impress the child with his own insignificance when compared with them. Trying to be guided and inspired by an ideal that no human can fully reach is at least not defeating—but striving to duplicate the deeds of actual great persons seems hopeless to the child and creates feelings of inferiority: first, because one knows one cannot do so, and second, because one fears others might (41). Myths project an ideal personality acting on the basis of superego demands. (41)
Because Jonah continuously renounces God and suffers from the unhappy self-loathing that results, Jonah cannot function as mythic hero meant for the audience to emulate. Although the story has mythical oneness due to Jonah being a prophet and God sending the whale specifically for him, the many examples of Jonah retellings throughout this paper culturally defend that people believe in fear and fascination that a whale could swallow any person near the ocean. Jonah does have a mythical name and family heritage that makes him an unrelatable historical figure, but does not act on the basis of superego demands. Bettelheim then contrasts this definition with fairy tales.
Far from making demands, the fairy tale reassures, gives hope for the future, and holds out the promise of a happy ending (26). To decide whether a story is a fairy tale or something entirely different, one might ask whether it could rightly be called a love-gift to a child (27). Although the events which occur in fairy tales are often unusual and most improbable, they are always presented as ordinary, something that could happen to you (37). Whatever strange events the fairy-tale hero experiences, they do not make him superhuman (40). The fairy tale, by contrast, makes clear that it tells about everyman people very much like us (40). Fairy tales depict an ego integration which allows for appropriate satisfaction of id desires. (41)
At the end of Jonah’s story, God promises a happy ending to the world and Jonah prevails as the only Hebrew prophet to survive giving their prophecy. Jonah’s story does not work as a love gift to a child, but I argue below that it works as a love gift to an adult. Collodi, who notoriously hated children, must have appreciated this gift and then adapted the story into a fairy tale love gift for a child in the ever-popular Pinocchio. God sending the fish and the fish vomiting him out are presented in single lines without any descriptive language or reaction by other characters such that they come off as ordinary. Despite Jonah’s name and vocation, he behaves for most of the story like a common person, especially in avoidance of his vocation. The strange whale setting depicts an ego integration for the satisfaction of Jonah’s id desires and the destruction of his superego biases. Therefore, the motif of Jonah’s whale likely owes its stark success to the story’s style more closely resembling a fairy tale for adults than a condescending model myth.
Although the biblical image of Jonah’s whale prevails in modern culture as a fascinating expression of the belly of the beast[19], many traditional fairy tales and modern stories embody it in completely distant manners. In the Grimm Brothers’ “Little Red Cap” and “The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids,” their titular characters get carved out of a wolf’s stomach after being eaten, and they replace the wolf’s belly with stones. In the Japanese fairy tale “Issun-Boshi,” a one-inch tall prince cuts his way out of an ogre’s stomach with his sword causing him to get recognized as a hero and transform into a full sized person. In Maurice Sendak’s fairy tale, Pierre, a Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue, apathetic rebel Pierre lets himself get eaten by a lion, only to realize how much he cares about life when he almost dies, and a doctor surgically removes him from the lion. In The Empire Strikes Back, the crew of the Millenium Falcon hide their ship in an asteroid near Hoth, accidentally landing inside the mouth of a massive space slug[20] that sustains its own thin internal atmosphere and microbiome. In the Adventure Time episode, “Belly of the Beast,” Finn and Jake must negotiate a diplomatic compromise between a Giant and an ensemble of Party Bears living inside of it, causing a stomachache. In the video game Subnautica: Below Zero, the player may enter into the microbiome of the jellyfish-like leviathan species Ventgarden. Each of these stories contain their own dynamics based on the nature of the beast, but have in common the Propp essence of transformation. Bettelheim clarifies one last time, “[the child] cannot yet comprehend inner transformations. So among the great merits of fairy tales is that through hearing them, the child comes to believe that such transformations are possible” (179). Bettelheim overlooks that because adults have fully grown physically and in brain development, belly of the beast myths and fairy tales prove crucial to reminding them that they may continue to change for their better peace of mind.
Certainly, other elements of the belly of the beast image contribute as well to humanity’s longstanding fascination with these transformative stories, but in stories that focus on whales as the beast subject, male adult and child heroes alike discern powerful guidance due to its symbolic nature as divine enigma, maternal womb, and resurrective tomb.
Works Cited
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment : The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. Vintage Books ed, Vintage Books, 2010.
Collodi, Carlo, et al. The Adventures of Pinocchio : Story of a Puppet. Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021.
Craig, Robert D. Handbook of Polynesian Mythology. ABC-CLIO, 2004.
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[1] Propp, Vladimir. Istoricheskie Korni Volshebnoi Skazki. Азбука, 1983. I quote Da Silva about this text, because I could not find an English translation of this text available. Da Silva is referencing a French translation of the text.
[2] Many sources including Staniou’s “Pinocchio’s Road to Adulthood from Carlo Collodi to Christos Boulotis”
identify Pinocchio as in the top five mostly widely read, sold, and translated stories. The Bible always ranks above it
[3] Capitalized as such in the text. Also known as The Terrible Dogfish in Collodi’s text, or as Monstro in the Walt Disney adaptation.
[4] Incl. the barracuda, Bruce, the anglerfish, two pelicans
[5] Dory says, “’Are… are you my conscience?’” to which Marlin sarcastically replies, “’Yeah. I’m your conscience. We haven’t spoken for a while. How are you?’” (Finding Nemo 00:33:11) in reference to Jiminy Cricket (adapted from Collodi’s Talking Cricket) who proudly refers to himself as Pinocchio’s conscience throughout the film.
[6] He fantasizes suicide in both by locking himself inside of his play-chest where he suffocates. Obsessed with this image, his post-humous corpse, skeleton, and soul even become part of his fantasy play.
[7] Through the mirror segment in Downpour II. Isaac leaves his body, becoming only a soul, going into a mirror to an alternate world and then finds Knife Piece I.
[8] Mom’s Shadow in Mines II chase sequence without any items gained during the run, grants Knife Piece II. The completed Knife is used to open a fleshy door in Mausoleum II that leads to only a harder version of Mom’s Heart that after being defeated makes the entire floor decayed.
[9] As opposed to the previous final boss in the game’s development, Delirium, representing the conclusion of his unhealthy internalization.
[10] The setting of the pre-Mom levels.
[11] The mathematical minimum number of rounds played to earn the Dead God final achievement.
[12] By extension all stories consume us to provide a shelter for transformation like the belly of the beast, but I had a whole argument about why this videogame is a superseding exception but then I realized those qualities are found in all other forms of story too and I’m just trying to finish this paper. Bruh : (.
[13] Parallel to “Hansel & Gretel”
[14] Not just her parents, but also Mr. Bobinski as the complement to her father’s personality, and Miss Forcible and Miss Spink as the complements to her mother’s personality.
[15] Jesus references Jonah, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth'” (Matt. 12.39-40). See also Matthew 161-4 and Luke 11:29-3.
[16] He is called Mokuren for short. His official name is Maha Maudgalyayana.
[17] This story led to the celebration of Obon Matsuri in Japan and ties into the Ghost Festival where people honor the spirits of the dead and make offerings to uplift their post-humous residence.
[18] “The Buddha, having just become fully enlightened, sits at the foot of the tree of enlightenment and comprehends the law of conditioned coproduction. He then sits successively beneath a number of different trees, including one called the Mucalinda. There is a storm for seven days and Mucalinda, the naga king, having emerged from his realm, encircles the Lord’s body seven times with his coils and spreads his great hood over the Lord’s head to protect him from cold, heat, flies, mosquitoes, wind, torment, and creeping things. Then Mucalinda, at the end of the seven days, knowing that the sky deva is without a cloud, unwinds his coils from the Lord’s body and, having given up his own form and magically created the form of a young man, stands in front of the Buddha, honoring him with joined palms” (Rawlinson 1).
[19] Cut from the divine enigma section of the paper due to time was a quick analysis of the God Humphrey in the game Omori, and the whale sent by God in the film Mind Game.
[20] Exogorth
