Wirt's Journey

The children's show Over the Garden Wall exemplifies both the Lacanian ideas of the unconscious and Le Guin’s ideas of the fairy tale. Wirt's journey through The Unknown represents a journey through his unconscious, adhering to both Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction and Terry Gamel’s Summary of Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” His journey is a fairy tale for the show's younger viewers. As Ursula K. Le Guin explores in The Child and the Shadow, we learn to see ourselves differently through the fairy tale as guided by our inner animal.

In Over the Garden Wall, The Unknown is a faithful representation of Lacan’s unconscious. For Lacan, the unconscious “exists
‘between’ us,” as a “tangled network which surrounds us”. In the same vein, Wirt does not know how he got to The Unknown, proving that it is “elusive.” In the Unknown, the trees are the souls of the lost children, which, like Lacan’s idea of the unconscious, is simultaneously “beyond us” and “the stuff of which we are made.” Wirt, in this moment, is a lost child, and it is uncertain if he’s going to become entrapped in his unconscious.
Wirt, however, wants to “get home,” and so return to the conscious world. This journey is symbolised by The Unknown existing in the season of autumn, the in-between of summer and winter. Wirt is in a stage of transition, existing in the unconscious which “exists ‘between’ us.” As he gets closer to his goal of returning to the conscious world, The Unknown transforms into winter, showing how Wirt must surmount what is the most desolate in order to return home. According to Eagleton’s Lacanian idea, the signifieds are “repressed” within the
unconscious. As Wirt is in his unconscious, The Unknown, Wirt can see his own signifieds for what they are, instead of only seeing “a sliding of the signified beneath the signifier.” This allows him to display his usually “repressed” signifieds, such as his heroism. He learns these qualities about himself through his interactions with the characters in The Unknown, who, being a part of The Unknown, are just aspects of Wirt’s unconscious. The characters within The Unknown, such as “the butcher, the baker, the midwife,” are identified by their role within the unconscious. They are what their names signify them to be; no more, no less. As such—having already been established in Wirt’s unconscious—they have constructed their own signifiers. This contrasts with the frog that Wirt brings from the conscious world into The Unknown, whose name keeps changing, thus showing the unconscious to be “a sliding of the signified beneath the signifier.” When Wirt completes his journey and returns home, to the conscious world, the frog is named after his rival, Funderburker. This shows how a part of Wirt’s unconscious expresses Wirt’s Other, as his rival is part of how others view Wirt. In this way, Wirt’s journey through the unconscious expresses his internal desire for home, which is born from the Other, as “our desire is in some way always received from the Other.”

Wirt discovers the differences between his Other, how others perceive him, and his other, how he sees himself, within The Unknown.
Up until this point, Wirt has only ever been exposed to and conscious of his other, which he constructed. And this other, adhering to Gamel’s Lacanian point, “will always remain a fantasy,” because he has “partially constructed it with a fantasy.” Wirt has brought his other into his unconscious with him through his Halloween costume. It is only with the contrast of Wirt’s other, the one he’s known for his whole life, and his Other, does Wirt truly understand the difference between the two. Before this understanding, he introduced himself as “just a guy, I guess… I don’t really like labels. I’m just sort of like myself, you know.” Wirt’s distinction between his other and Other inspires Wirt to truly construct his self identity, as “identities come about only as a result of difference.” Wirt begins to understand that “we are identified by others and not self,” and each episode is a testament to the lessons Wirt learns about self-discovery. As The Unknown’s settings change, Wirt changes with it. This is emphasised as each episode of Over the Garden Wall has a different time setting, from the Salem Witch trials to the end of the twentieth century. Thus, Wirt’s journey is not just through different locations in The Unknown, but also through time periods, representing his journey from his past to present, and also to his future. The characters in The
Unknown are not passive; indeed, they constantly challenge him, forcing Wirt to confront his unconscious and his self-constructed other. This is shown through Beatrice, who calls Wirt out for being “a pathetic pushover,” something that is part of Wirt’s Other but not his other. This makes Wirt reevaluate himself, for his very identity is being challenged. Eventually, by travelling through The Unknown, Wirt realises that his “self-knowledge” was “to some degree an illusion,” and it is through this realisation that he begins to reattain his consciousness.

Wirt’s journey back home to the world of consciousness is only possible because he is aided. Wirt’s journey is, essentially, a Le Guinean fairy tale, and with every Le Guinean fairy tale there comes an animal. Beatrice is Wirt’s “animal within us… the guide.” However, she does not lead so much as push; by constantly challenging Wirt’s perceptions of himself, she is able to push him to find his way back home. Although Beatrice “knows… the way home,” Beatrice does not act rightly, for adhering to Le Guin’s ideas of fairy tales, “there is no “right” and “wrong”. Beatrice only acts “appropriately.” In a fairy tale, evil is “inextricably involved with [good],” and this is prominently shown in Beatrice’s actions, for she takes Wirt to Adelaide because she wants to regain her human form, knowing full well that by doing so she condemns Wirt as a servant to Adelaide. But, adhering to Le Guin’s theory, when Wirt has followed Beatrice far enough she must be “sacrificed, so that the true self, the whole person, may step forth from the body of the animal, reborn.” This appropriate action leads to Beatrice regaining her human body, literally being reborn, but also leads to Wirt’s return to the conscious world. This further conveys how the human and animal are mutually inseparable, just like evil, which is “inextricably involved.” Furthermore, Beatrice’s own struggle between the dualities also show Wirt’s own struggle; between Other and other, the conscious world and the unconscious world, signified and signifier. And this opposition, to an extent, extends to the text itself, as Over the Garden Wall struggles between being a children’s show, and exemplifying sophisticated values. However, as Le Guin argues, it can do both, for “the way you can speak absolutely honestly and factually to a child about both good and evil is to talk about himself.” As such, Wirt’s tale speaks “from the unconscious to the unconscious, in the language of the unconscious.” For an audience that has scarcely meandered into the symbolic stage, this tale somewhat acts as a guide in how to traverse our unconscious; our own “helpful animal” guide, if you will. In this show, Wirt represents all of us; the young and the old, the uneducated and the academics. The Unknown represents all our unconscious; a “vast, tangled network which surrounds us and weaves itself through us.” Wirt’s journey represents all of ours, through understanding the difference between our other and Other, we can pass from the imaginary stage to the symbolic. And whether or not we realise it, we are all Wirt; lost, and trying to return home.

Wirt returns to the conscious world with a strong sense of self, which he has gained in his journey through The Unknown. Along the way, his very identity is brought into question, as Wirt struggles to understand and align his other and his Other. When faced with decision of leaving his unconscious or remaining within it, Wirt realises that he is “a pilgrim… the master of [his] own destiny, the hero of [his] own journey.” Armed with this realisation, Wirt is finally able to return home. And essentially, this is the message the show hopes to convey. Our world is vast, and although this means we may be lost, its vastness also opens up endless possibilities that we should treasure. For ultimately, the journey of discovering ourselves is just as important as the conclusion we arrive at. As the show itself puts it; “and so the story's complete, and everyone's satisfied with the ending, and so on and so forth. And yet, over the garden wall...”