What if I told you that Inception features clever recurring symbolism that perfectly explains the whole movie?
And that this symbolism has appeared repeatedly across thousands of years of human mythology, in stories like the Odyssey, representing similar ideas?
In this video, I’ll cite every example of this symbolism from Inception, explain what it means, and tie it to some of the most legendary stories humanity has ever told.
Let’s get started.
As I rewatched Inception recently, I was struck by this image of Cobb and Mal’s house that they constructed in limbo. It rises directly out of the water, giving it an odd, unnerving aura. I wrote this down in my notes and didn’t think much of it until I started pondering the design of the different levels Cobb and his team descend into during the Fischer job.
The first level takes place in a modern city setting in the middle of a torrential downpour. The second level takes place in a hotel with a storm raging outside. And the third level takes place at a snowy compound in the mountains. As I thought about it, I realized that all of these different levels incorporate water heavily in the design, whether it’s rain or snow.
As this idea of water being an important symbol in Inception got planted in the depths of my subconscious, I started seeing it everywhere.
The very first shot of Inception is of a wave crashing against the rocks for gosh sakes. Waking up in limbo, IE the deepest level of your subconscious is visualized by waking up on an ocean shore. Limbo itself, which is raw, infinite subconscious, features an unending ocean meeting an infinite beach.
Saito’s castle is positioned right on the beach itself, both in the beginning and ending of the film. And in one of the most visually stunning moments of the movie, Cobb gets dunked into a bathtub in slow motion to wake him up, which makes water crash into Saito’s castle. This isn’t the only time water is used to wake people up in the film. Remember, Yusuf drives the van holding Cobb and the team off a bridge and into the water to wake them up as well.
With this connection in mind, I researched whether water has historically had any connection to the subconscious in ancient mythology, or other popular stories. The answers I found blew me out of the water.
Carl Jung wrote things like, “Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious.” and “The sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives."
In Inception, characters have projections of their subconscious that walk around in the dream. At one point a projection of Cobb’s subconscious bumps Ariadne on the street, a fact she gets upset about. He then tells her, “It’s my subconscious, remember? I can’t control it.”
Cobb and his team, to pull off inception, must bury an idea deep into Fischer’s mind. He can’t consciously know they gave the idea to him. To do this correctly, they travel three dream levels deep. On the way, elements from Cobb’s subconscious continually get in the way of the job, like the train that cuts through level 1 of the dream, or Mal herself in level 3 of the dream.
Ariadne tells Cobb, “As we go deeper into Fischer, we’re also going deeper into you."
In Inception, journeying into the subconscious mind is continuously tied to downward direction. Whether it’s the old men in Mombasa who share dreams in the basement of this building, or Cobb’s elevator, which, the farther down it goes, holds more and more terrifying memories, or how Cobb and his team constantly talk about limbo, referring to it as a place “down there,” in the depths of their subconscious.
Linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson gave this a name—the conceptual metaphor theory. They wrote that most languages systematically map abstract states onto vertical space. The conscious is represented with upward motion, while the unconscious is represented by downward motion. Phrases like “He got up,” or “she woke up,” represent returning to consciousness, while phrases like “he sank into a coma,” or he “went under” with anesthesia represent a loss of consciousness. Lakoff and Johnson argue these aren’t arbitrary; they’re grounded in the body: humans and most mammals sleep lying down and stand up when they awaken, and drooping posture goes along with sadness, erect posture with a positive emotional state.
Carl Jung talked about how the sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious in mythology and folklore. There’s tons of examples of this. In a blog post on Feathers and Folktales, Diem Dangers writes, “In legends, myths and folktales throughout the world, the presence of the ocean as the background setting or obstacle to be overcome often comes with stories of transformation, of courage and bravery, as well as tragedy, as well as stories of wonder and bridging the unbridgeable, or finding something hidden in the depths.”
The Odyssey is actually one of the most potent ‘proofs’ of this sea-as-the-unconscious metaphor—especially Nolan’s adaption of it—which I’ll talk about later in the video. I just need to set the table more first. Bear with me.
A few years ago I was in a museum here in Mexico City, and came upon some paintings depicting the ocean as a mother, for instance. The museum label read that this artist was fascinated with depicting the ocean as a maternal figure since that’s where life on earth originally came from. I remember being fascinated by that and thinking it makes a ton of sense.
Similarly, on her blog, Diem Dangers writes about a love story from Vietnamese folklore about a crane and an ocean dragon who fall in love and birth 100 eggs that hatch into the Vietnamese people. The story represents the fusion of two different worlds—the sea and land—and how interesting “fruits” can come from unusual connections. I thought this story also reinforced the ocean as a maternal figure.
Remember what Carl Jung said? “The sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives.”
To drive the point home about the ocean being a symbol for the unconscious, let’s turn to some other stories.
The Inuit people have a tale about a woman named Sedna who is betrayed by her father and drowned in the ocean. Diem writes, “In the underwater world she transforms from victim to powerful agent, becoming the goddess of the underworld and the source from whom all humans must depend for their food.”
In this story, the sea functions as both the cause of Sedna’s death, and the source of her transformation. In the ocean, she undergoes a deep reckoning with the uncomfortable and painful truths of her past.
Diem continues, writing, “Up until then her father’s untrustworthiness, as well as her own power, was a shadow, hidden just below the surface of her own awareness. It is through living in that uncomfortable place, that she finds her power, her identity and her gift to others. I love how this suggests that what is hidden from us may be painful, and ugly, but also at the same time, may also be something that once realized, may help us reach our full potential.”
In Inception, Cobb’s guilt for Mal’s death prevents him from moving forward in his life. His projection of Mal, and guilt for what he did to her, constantly get in the way of the Fischer job.
As he goes deeper and deeper into himself, he finally reckons with Mal in limbo, and forgives himself for what happened. He’s able to achieve closure, and move forward.
It’s also what happens to Fischer, right? He confronts the painful memory of his father head-on, and emerges reborn, ready to become his own man.
It sounds a lot like how Sedna’s journey beneath the depths of the ocean—of her subconscious mind—is exactly what ends up setting her free and giving her her power.
Diem writes, “Just as the ocean teems with life both seen and unseen, our unconscious minds are filled with untapped potentials and hidden truths waiting to be explored.”
The thing is, what you find “down there” isn’t always going to be beautiful, or painless—in fact, it’ll be quite scary.
If the sea is a common symbol for the unconscious, it fits that the deeper you go into it, the darker, more terrifying it gets.
Fear of the ocean’s depths is actually one of humanity’s most popular phobias, which is called Thalassophobia. There’s actually a whole set of Thalassophobia videos on Youtube designed to invoke terror in audiences in case you’re brave, I mean curious.
Human beings have been fascinated by the idea of sea monsters for thousands of years. From Tiamat, the primordial goddess of the saltwater ocean from the Babylonian creation epic, to the Leviathan, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as a massive sea serpent, to Renaissance map makers drawing monsters on the unexplored parts of world maps. You also got the Kraken, and Moby Dick, and even Jaws.
Since similar myths showed up in cultures separated by oceans, with zero contact with each other, Carl Jung concluded that this must be something in the structure of the human mind itself that was generating the same patterns from scratch, everywhere—an idea he called the collective unconscious.
Jung interpreted the ocean’s recurrence in mythology, and the monsters in the deep, as a symbol for the unconscious, and the dangers within it.
Take flood myths, for example. The Biblical Noah’s Ark story, as well as the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh, both use total immersion in water as the mechanism for cleansing and renewal. This matches Jung’s ideas that descent into the unconscious—however dangerous—is often the necessary precursor to psychological renewal. This idea matches what the Inuit tale of Sedna espoused that we explored a few minutes ago.
As Carl Jung writes, “the descent into the depths always seems to precede the ascent.”
It’s here we arrive at the Odyssey, which Carl Jung pointed to as one of the strongest “proofs” of this ocean-as-unconscious thesis. It’s pure serendipity that the same guy that directed Inception also directed the Odyssey.
Jung points to the Greek Nekyia as an integral part of his analytical psychology, which shows up in the Odyssey. In ancient Greece, Nekyia was a "rite by which ghosts were called up and questioned about the future."
In Book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus is instructed to make a journey to the Halls of Hades, across the River of the Ocean, to speak with the dead. He converses with popular Greek figures such as Achilles in this chilling chapter from the book.
Jung used this concept of Nekyia, of traveling to the underworld to converse with ghosts and demons, in his analytical psychology, writing that Nekyia is "introversion of the conscious mind into the deeper layers of the unconscious psyche". For Jung, "the Nekyia is no aimless or destructive fall into the abyss, but a meaningful katabasis ... its object the restoration of the whole man."
Jung called the Nekyia a “night journey on the sea…” specifically.
In The Psychology Of Transference, Jung writes, “The night sea journey is a kind of descensus ad inferos--a descent into Hades and a journey to the land of ghosts somewhere beyond this world, beyond consciousness, hence an immersion in the unconscious.”
In Jung Lexicon, written by Daryl Sharp, he writes, “Mythologically, the night sea journey motif usually involves being swallowed by a dragon or sea monster. It is also represented by imprisonment or crucifixion, dismemberment or abduction, experiences traditionally weathered by sun-gods and heroes: Gilgamesh, Osiris, Christ, Dante, Odysseus, Aeneas. In the language of the mystics it is the dark night of the soul.”
This makes sense for Odysseus, since he was captured by Calpyso and imprisoned for seven years.
In a paper called “The Odyssey - a Jungian Perspective: Individuation and Meeting with the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious," they argue that entities like the cyclops and sirens represent Odysseus’ repressed traumas and primal instincts buried in his subconscious, and that defeating them requires him to confront and integrate these dark aspects of his psyche.
So it’s not just Book 11 of the Odyssey that reflects this descension into the subconscious, but the entire book! A book that largely takes place on a vast ocean filled with perils for Odysseus to confront.
There’s a moment in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film that proves this point perfectly. And real quick, there’s some spoilers here for Nolan’s film if you haven’t seen it yet.
In the film version of the Odyssey, Odysseus deals with significant trauma and guilt from the Trojan War. He blames himself for breaking the most sacred bond of man—by using a gift to deceive the Trojans and slaughter them in their own home. He believes that after breaking this foundational trust that makes civilization possible, that he won’t find a home to go back to.
Over and over again in the story, from the cyclops to Circe to the Laestrygonians, Odysseus finds evidence of creatures, and people, not showing his crew any hospitality—of that trust that makes civilization possible being broken.
So, as Odysseus has his “sea voyage” as Jung calls it, and metaphorically journeys into his subconscious, he encounters this buried fear, this trauma, everywhere he goes, in the form of the Cyclops killing his men instead of showing them hospitality, or of Circe turning his men into pigs, instead of welcoming them as guests.
There’s a moment in the film that catalyzes this idea perfectly. When Odysseus hears the siren song as he’s strapped to the mast, he tells Eurylochus this is what it sounded like:
“All the things you wanted to be and then all the things you wished you never wished for. It was a delicious itch you want to scratch but you find it under the skin and can't reach it. So the delicious itch becomes unbearable. It told you what you most want is what you most can't have and that the most you can't have is what you already had and lost. It was a song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don't really want to go home."
This is Odysseus expressing sadness about a world he doesn’t believe exists anymore, and the terror he feels for the part he played in it. This is the moment I feel he confronts this truth head on instead of running from it. Likening it to Inception, this is like the conversation Cobb has with Mal, where he finally confronts his guilt, and processes it by tackling it head on.
It’s impossible to know whether Christopher Nolan consciously incorporated water, and the ocean, in Inception to represent the unconscious. The fact is that it’s everywhere in the film, in some of it’s most iconic shots, events, and locations. It’s also fact that throughout human history, we’ve used the ocean, and submersion into it, to represent a journey into ourselves where we reckon with our demons, claim a power we didn’t know we had, and emerge reborn. Consciously or not, it seems humanity keeps coming back to this ocean motif to represent similar ideas time and time again—and that, to me, is arguably the most fascinating thing we’ve talked about in this video.
Sadly, that’s it for this video, but if you want bonus analysis on Inception including hidden symbolism I noticed that DIDN’T make it into this video, become a member of my Youtube channel. The link to join is in the description, and the bonus video is live right now in the ‘Members’ tab. I plan to release a bonus ‘Deleted Scenes’ clip in conjunction with each new video I make moving forward. Become a member today!
What did you think about Inception? Let me know in the comments down below! Thanks for watching! I’ll see you next time.
