Eclipsed

  Today was a very momentous and rare opportunity for many in Canada to see the eclipse of the sun by the moon--at least from the standpoint of protective glasses. I personally didn't want to take the risk (glasses or no glasses) and opted to stay indoors throughout the event. However, the event itself has lead me to reflect on the literary meanings behind the eclipse.
   One that comes immediately to mind is King Lear, a play which compares Edward's overthrow of Edgar to the strange eclipse of moon and son. Edward is the enfant terrible of the play who manages to manipulate pretty much everyone into doing treacherous acts for personal gain, and he is also considered a kind of bastard son, who was sadly not fated to have any social power unless by trickery of nature.  Son and 'sun' is a double pun, and the eclipse is one of many omens which suggest that deviance from nature represents an illegitimate takeover of power.
   Of course, modern psychologists might just say that Edward represents the shadow side of things, but just what does that mean? The double irony of the eclipse metaphor is that, in fact, sun is blocked by the moon, yet the moon is also revealed by the sun. It's only through the luminous rays of knowledge (awareness) that darkness can be integrated. It might seem terrible to see the eclipse, but in fact awareness is what allows the darkness to be known and worked with, rather than suppressed or denied.
   The other meaning is that, in essence, moon represents everything that is denied by sun. "Normal" society operates by means of suppression which allows for a smooth and coherent running of power or a hierarchy, but this tends to mean that things which don't follow that norm end up being labelled as deviant or unnatural. But is this really so? I sometimes wonder if perhaps Edward's lament is not in fact the cruelty of a society that tries to determine legitimacy by birthright, rather than through individual merit or efforts. For Edward to 'move up' in the world, he literally needs to trick others and trip them up, and this becomes a game to him. But it's hard to say if the deviance comes from a sadistic nature or a subtle unfairness in the way society in Shakespeare's time was operating.
   Is the 'shadow' after all only just a reflection of a social malaise--a tendency to pigeon hole people as good and bad, and then to set the 'good' against the 'bad'? Or is the shadow a real force of nature that is in all of us?