Davies' work reveals a progressive attempt to define human identity in the fullest possible sense. In the development of his work from Shakespeare's Boy Actors to World of Wonders, he can be seen to examine the possibilities of role-playing, the second self, the autonomous personality of the artist, the Jungian self, the romance hero, and the Magian soul, and to assess each as a possible mythologem of the completed human identity. His exploration of these possibilities is rooted in his deep and long-lasting affinity with Jung, and, for the most part, is carried out within a frame of reference firmly based on Jung's ideas. Nevertheless, Davies eventually moves beyond his affinity with Jung to a more impartial assessment of Jungianism as simply one way of looking at the universe, one myth among a number of others, and finally he is able to present the Jungian self as only one among several concepts of complete human identity.

Each step of his exploration of human identity involves incursions into what Jung calls 'the smaller infinity' …, for a definition of human identity can be formulated only in terms of the inner reality of human beings. It is this inner reality which Davies describes as the 'enchanted landscape.' His inner world is not, however, 'the cosy nursery retreat of Winnie-the-Pooh. It is a tough world, and it only seems irrational or unreal to those who have not grasped some hints of its remorseless, irreversible, and often cruel logic. It is a world in which God is not mocked, and in which a man reaps—only too obviously—what he has sown.' It is clear that his concept of the 'enchanted landscape' is broad enough to include not only Jungianism but also the romance myth of the hero and the concept of the Magian soul. It is also easy to see in it a specific analogue of Jung's view of the inner reality, the 'indefinitely large hinterland of unconscious psyche.'… Consequently, Jungianism provides an interpretative approach to his enchanted landscape and to Davies' experience of it.

What Jung says of those who undertake the long process of individuation by exploration of their inner landscapes may equally be applied to the writer in search of a myth: 'Nevertheless it may be that for sufficient reasons a man feels that he must set out on his own feet along the road to wider realms. It may be that in all the garbs, shapes, forms, modes, and manners of life offered to him he does not find what is peculiarly necessary for him.'… Clearly, what is 'peculiarly necessary' for a writer is the myth which produces the psychosymbolic structures of his or her work…. This is to be found in the wider realms of the inner reality, through personal experience of the unconscious within, and because every individual is unique that experience of the inner reality and the symbolic embodiment of it will also be unique. To remain unique, however, the self must emerge from one individual's experience only, uncontaminated by another's vision. Although Jung speaks of observing an 'untrodden, untreadable' region in many men of importance, both The Manticore and World of Wonders suggest that such a region exists in every human being. Consequently, with the exception of one particular group of people, experience of the inner reality is private to the individual and 'untreadable' ground to outsiders. The exception is, of course, the group of those we call artists, all of whom have in one way or another the particular gift of being able to share their experiences of the private inner reality with others through the medium of their art…. Davies as a writer is an individual who objectifies his own individual experience of the inner reality by relating it to general Jungian psychological theory. He can do this because, although each individual human being is unique, all human beings are members of the human race, and hence to a very large extent similar: their inner reality consequently will have common features. Any objectification of that inner reality by a writer in which the common features are described may, therefore, provide a map of the territory by which anyone who enters his or her own reality may roughly by guided.

It is this role of literary art as a map of inner reality, and the corresponding role of a writer as a map-maker, which prompt Davies, I believe, to describe himself as a moralist: 'I seem to have emerged as a moralist; my novels are a moralist's novels.' He seems to be using the term in a sense which includes, among other elements, a great deal of the Jungian psychological revision of good and evil: personal responsibility for the examination of human conduct (self-examination, it is implied, being the prerequisite for the examination of others), and a Jungian respect for the integrity of the self in others (demonstrated by the refusal to instruct or judge). Hence, the moralist is a map-maker…. His work, therefore, is not prescriptive but descriptive—just as a map is descriptive.

It is as a moralist, however, that Davies issues a warning about maps of the inner reality. The map, he insists, is not the territory: Davies' personal experience, however illuminating and significant for his readers in its form of 'a moralist's novels,' remains his personal experience. Just as, in World of Wonders, he refuses to substitute Jung's ideas for his own, his readers also must refuse to substitute Davies' experience of inner reality for their own. In moving beyond Jungianism so decisively in this novel, therefore, Davies unambiguously declares that it is the territory we must concern ourselves with, not the map.

The exploration of the 'smaller infinity' which Davies began in his earliest work has, by the end of the Deptford trilogy, reached maturity. It is not finished, and it cannot be finished, precisely because it is the exploration of infinity. Davies has not defined human identity because it is indefinable; he has divined it, because it is, in its true form, that which Jung calls the imago Dei, divine. (pp. 182-84)