THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS AND ETHICAL CHOICE IN NGUYỄN BÌNH PHƯƠNG’S NGỒI

Abstract

This study employs a dual-theoretical framework combining Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious and ethical literary criticism (Nie Zhenzhao, Brody & Clark) to examine Nguyễn Bình Phương’s novel Ngồi as an anthropological discourse on human existence amid moral and spiritual disintegration. The analysis reveals that symbols such as “mask,” “sitting,” “darkness,” and “the displaced soldier” operate as archetypes reflecting the fragmentation of collective consciousness in post-war Vietnamese society. Under the influence of the collective unconscious, moral choice becomes an introspective process—humans can no longer attain redemption through action but only through awareness of their own failure. The article argues that Ngồi expands the moral aesthetics of contemporary Vietnamese fiction by shifting from didactic ethics to reflective human inquiry, thereby opening an interdisciplinary dialogue between psychoanalysis and moral philosophy in post-Renovation Vietnamese literary studies.