Joseph Gergen Works

“Theo and Sprout” is a coming-of-age, gender bendy, magical realism story. The characters and plot pack a pretty good punch. The situations and struggles are relatable. These are good things. Readers like them. I like talking about the twists and turns.

But I seldom get to talk about some of the underlying themes I thought were so important in making the story just a little deeper. I think I spent almost as much time researching the underlying themes as I did the episodes. In fact researching the themes spawned some of the episodes. So I’m going to take a breath and talk about those themes now.

In the case of “Theo and Sprout” there are Jungian themes interwoven through the episodes. Though of course it starts with Sprout, who is essentially Theo’s Anima from Jung’s concept of the Anima and the Animus, where the Anima is the feminine side of male’s psyche and the Animus is the masculine side of the female’s psyche. Jung believed we should have relative balance between our masculine and feminine sides, which in the modern world is very much not the case for many people, but that’s a conversation for another day.

The Anima, or also often referred to as the Divine Feminine, has a set of qualities or attributes that are often suppressed. Attributes like Intuition, Heart-centered, Forgiving, Compassionate, Healing, Empathetic, Creative, Nature lover and others.

Theo has many of these attributes and is afraid to live them in a non-receptive world. That’s where Sprout comes in. Her job is to help Theo embody and express some of these attributes. She puts him in situations where they can work through the behaviors together. Sprout illustrates the behaviors and gives Theo courage to do so as well and to become comfortable with them.

Many of the chapters in “Theo and Sprout” have one of these attributes in mind, subtly delivering a lesson to not only Theo but to us. I tell people that Sprout is the guide I needed when I was young and sometimes still need today. I had one reader who said she had begun to ask herself at times, “What would Sprout do?”