The Traits That Define
In the novels The Odyssey by Homer and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, there are characters that can be defined by their traits as certain archetypes. All novels and films contain archetypes that allow their audience to understand and relate more to the character's personality and journey. Telemachus, Poseidon, and Penelope are characters from The Odyssey that can be classified as fitting into the Bildungsroman, vengeance villain, and matron archetypes. Santiago and Melchizedek are characters from The Alchemist that can be identified as a flawed hero/seeker and a sage archetype.
There are numerous archetype possibilities for characters to have, and throughout character’s journey, those possibilities are slowly eliminated.
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Santiago is a young boy who fits into the flawed hero archetype. His story tells of his journey to find his Personal Legend and the many new people and experiences he encounters. Santiago is flawed in the way that he does not have enough confidence in himself to complete the task set out in front of him. He is constantly putting himself off track and avoiding what he has to do. In the beginning of his journey, he faces a setback and his money gets stolen. While finding a solution and a job, he gets distracted loses sight of his dreams. A couple months into the job, he thinks, “...Egypt was now just as distant a dream as was Mecca for the merchant…” (Coelho 58) and he glorifies his new plan to “disembark at Tarifa as a winner” (Coelho 58) with his improved flock of sheep. However, he continues his journey two years later, despite his break in confidence. When Santiago reaches the Oasis during his journey across the desert, he gets sidetracked once more by a woman. This woman’s name is Fatima. The second time they meet Santiago speaks without thinking and says, “‘I came to tell you just one thing...I want you to be my wife. I love you.’” (Coelho 98). This alone demonstrates his rash actions of an inexperienced hero who causes his dreams to be postponed. However, Santiago is also a successful hero despite his flaws. He still continues his journey, no matter what, and eventually reaches his goal. Even through …show more content…
Without archetypes, characters would be harder for the audience to relate to and understand. They help people from all over the world comprehend foreign characters. Through The Odyssey and The Alchemist, the audience is exposed to a diverse group of characters with a variety of traits that contribute to their personalities and the way they are perceived. The Bildungsroman, vengeful villain, damsel in distress, sage, and flawed hero then become recognizable in other pieces of literature and in films. Therefore expanding the audience’s experiences and ability to understand diverse compositions and apply what they know to real life
Archetypes refer to the persistently recurring symbols or motifs in literature. The term itself has its origins in ancient Greek and continues to play a prominent role in analyzing literature. Archetypal images and story patterns encourage readers to participate ritualistically in basic beliefs, fears, and anxieties of their age. These archetypal features not only constitute the eloquence of the text but also tap into a level of desires and concerns of civilization. The Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney, integrates many of the common archetypes that still exist today. The outcast archetype is one that particularly expressed the desires, anxieties and values of the people who lived during the Beowulf era. Grendel, a character of monstrous appearance and hazily human emotion, is portrayed as the principal outsider in Beowulf. The incorporation of a banished character against his fellow society effectively expressed the anxiety and fears that the Anglo-Saxon culture felt towards seclusion and abnormality, caused by a societal absorption in family lineage and traditionalism.
The different archetypes are the shadow, the mandala, the great mother, the transformation, the hero, the spiritual father, and the trickster. All archetypes were drawn from a part of what makes us human and hidden in our subconscious. Many of the characters in the film often play more than one character. An example of this would be Ben Kenobi seems to play the archetype of Luke’s father, then he also plays the archetype as an old, wise man.
Le Morte d’Arthur and many other stories have many wonderful archetypes in them. The definition of an archetype is a typical character action or situation that seems to represent universal patterns of human nature. This means that things represent things that naturally happen and will still happen. Archetypes play into Le Morte d'Arthur by showing how the character act and react with other characters and objects. In Thomas Malory´s Le Morte d´Arthur he illustrates the three types of archetypes they include character, situational, and symbolic.
An archetype is an image, ideal or pattern that is considered to be a universal symbol. They are found in literature, art and mythology and usually hold philosophical meanings. The archetype that will be discussed is this paragraph is the garden archetype, easily the most identifiable archetype. The garden is characterized as a place of solitude where peace and harmony coincide. In essence, it is paradise, a place where people long to go but are forbidden. The four common characteristics of the garden archetype is the garden is a perfect world, that there is temptation and the short term and long term consequences that will be inflicted on future generations.
One of the most prominent character archetypes in literature is that of the tragic hero. This trope has appeared in many literary works, especially plays. Many of the greatest plays with this archetype were written by William Shakespeare, an English playwright who profoundly shaped this trope. The best example of his work with a tragic hero archetype is his play Macbeth. The archetype Macbeth perfectly depicts the character arc of a tragic hero in literature and teaches that excessive ambition and pride bring ultimate ruin.
... typical archetype. These characters are obviously supposed to mirror the archetypes that are common in fairy tales, but their flaws are contradictions to the archetypes that they are supposed to represent; through this Goldman mocks typical and standard fairy tales.
“You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his personal legend.” (Coelho, 124) This is a turning point in the story because Santiago is willing to give up everything he has worked for in order to stay with Fatima. The Alchemist explains that love comes with pursuing personal legends and it won’t stand in the way. Next, Santiago must face the fear of failure. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” (Coelho, 141). There may be tough times and tests along the way but he must remain focused on his dream. Finally, the last obstacle Santiago goes through is the guilt of success. Once Santiago arrives at the pyramids and begins to dig for his treasure, two men approached him and beat him up. Once they were finished, one of the men told him that he shouldn’t believe in dreams. “You'll learn that a man shouldn't be so stupid. Two years ago, right here on this spot, I had a recurrent dream, too. I dreamed that I should travel the fields of Spain and look for a ruined church where shepherds and their sheep slept. In my dream, there was a sycamore growing out of the ruins
The use of stereotypical characters by the author allows the reader to make predictions about possible outcomes, be surprised, and be confronted with mystery and suspense. If each character were exactly the same, there would be very little conflict, action, or any form of surprise and mystery as the reader would already know what the character is likely to do. With stereotypical characters the readers can understand and possibly relate with the characters in one way or another. Often readers will form attachments to certain characters over others, taking sides with some, feeling empathy for those who have been wronged, and so on. All of this will make us more attached to the characters, deepening the reader’s involvement and creating a better story. If the characters were too unique, they may not be relatable and the reader may have difficulty connecting with them, taking away from the excitement of the plot and making for a boring story. Using stereotypical characters will always make for an attractive story because of the different stereotype interactions. In the Maltese Falcon the characters are often fighting each other, but the story would still be just as interesting if they had to work together to accomplish something, which is use as the framework of many other stories. We actually see this a bit from time to time in The Maltese Falcon, but
Archetypes are a recurring pattern, symbol, or situation that connects to basic human experiences. These symbols/patterns are portrayed in the film Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers directed by Peter Jackson. Recurring archetypes represent characteristic traits and symbols of Gollum/Smeagol which may connect to the viewers on a personal level. “....Yes, precious, false! They will cheat you, hurt you, lie…”, states Gollum (Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers). Gollum characterizes the lost soul and good vs. evil in the film Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers; both these traits/symbols will connect to basic human experiences that the viewers may have experienced in their day.
An archetype in literature is defined as a typical example of a certain type of person. A character in a poem or play can be placed into many different archetype categories. Archetypes help a reader to gain a better understanding of who a character in the work is on the inside. This deeper insight into the character allows the reader to follow the flow of the story easier and more effectively. There are many different archetypes that can help advance the story.
They are characters that the audience can empathize with because a single human is born with nothing but as they walk life they will be neither purely evil nor good but a mix of both. These characters are timeless for if you want to label them as purely evil or purely good it’s impossible because they aren’t. These characters touch upon issues that society are conflicted about and allow the audience to work out these issues for their self throughout the story or play letting us decided the truth within these stories. Like how Mary Shelley had force the reader to see within the heart of the creature and the society viewpoint for us to decide for their self who we thought were the real monsters within the story of Frankenstein. These characters are also seen as more realistic because even if they are the most pure characters the audience may had read about with the purest intentions they may still fallen to their darkness in the end showing that the world isn’t filled with demons or angels that like humans these characters can feel, they can wary and fall to their temptation, that they can still hope, get hurt, cry, feel guilt, depression, happiness, and paranoia. Because like in reality the audiences are living in a morally ambiguous world where most of the world 's solutions to their problem aren’t clear and may be difficulties in choosing what the right thing to do. This makes the story more engaging, realist, and makes it easier
Santiago is a shepherd trying to pursue his personal legend. His personal legend is the recurring dream about the hidden treasure at the foot of the Egyptian pyramids. In his dream he starts playing in a field with his sheep, when a child appeared and began to play with the animals. This was strange to him because sheep are afraid of strangers, but the sheep and children play along just fine. Then a child grabbed his hands and took him to the foot of the Egyptian pyramids. He begins his journey locally trying to find answers from a gypsy and a man named
Some examples of archetypes are, the wounded child, the victim, the villain, the rebel, the savior, finding redemption, death, and the happy ending. Now that there is an understanding of what an archetype is, we can look at four different archetypes in The Bell Jar. The first archetype in The Bell Jar, is the character of Doreen, who would be seen as the bad girl. She is very easy, not very smart but very pretty, she relates well to the character of Helen of Troy who embodied all of the things she had before. The second example is the character of Esther, she can be seen as the victim and as the heroine.
Characterization is an author’s or poet’s use of description, dialogue, dialect, and action to create an emotional or intellectual reaction, in the reader, to a character or to make a character more vivid and realistic. When characterizing Daedalus, the reader sees the brilliance in his inventions, the lack of rational decisions, and the impulse and jealousy in his life. First of all, Daedalus is a brilliant inventor, who created lots. One of Daedalus’ big downfalls as an inventor is his jealously. Daedalus gets exiled to Crete because he threw his nephew, Perdix, out of the temple, and killed him and said it was an accident. He gets exiled all because he couldn’t stand that his nephew had a few better ideas. When Daedalus and Icarus get exiled to Crete, you see Daedalus’ true inventive self. He uses his surroundings and brains to create wings to fly out of Crete because that was the only way that wasn’t guarded.
For a time, the main characters in a story, poem, or narrative were easily classified as either being a hero or a villain. A hero would be easy to identify by the traits he'd possess, such as bravery, honesty, selflessness, trustworthiness, courage, leadership, and more. The villain would be easy to identify as well, possessing traits such as maliciousness, deceitfulness, immorality, dark, wishing harm upon others, and more. But what if the character lacked the natural heroic qualities but wasn't a villain either? What if the person displayed personality flaws that would traditionally be associated with a villain, but has heroic intentions? These questions were finally answered with the emergence of the anti-hero in literature.