This flux of anguish between light and dark: Trickster elements in Jim Carroll's 'The Basketball Diaries' and 'Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries

In this paper I examine Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries and Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries in the context of the Trickster figure as it is discussed by Paul Radin in The Trickster, and by C. G. Jung in his essay "On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure." Carroll's diaries portray him not only as a modern day Trickster, but they also illustrate that he is an ongoing cycle of evolution (and devolution) which is reflected in the Trickster cycle of tales.;I begin by introducing Carroll's influences and my approach to his diaries. In the successive chapters I examine Jim's psychological evolution as a Trickster figure. I then move on to a discussion of how Jim's prsonal evolution as a Trickster is reflected in the evolving confessional structure of the diaries.