The Archetypal Pantheon
Archetypes are everywhere, both in real life and in literature around the world, and humans know them all. American Gods is a fantasy novel written by Neil Gaiman in 2001. The book revolves around the premise that every god that has been believed in has manifested into human form and has traveled to America through the minds of immigrants. Shadow Moon is the main character in this novel, which follows his adventure with the American gods. Wednesday, Odin, is Shadow’s boss and also the strongest advocate for fighting the new gods: internet, plastic, and TV. Laura is Shadow’s wife, who died in a car accident at the beginning of the novel, and is staying alive with the help of a magical golden coin. Other characters that
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Lewis, James Cabell, and Tolkien. “The first author I remember being obsessed by, actually realizing ‘I like the way he writes and I like the way he tells stories,’ was C.S. Lewis and the ‘Narnia’ books” (Gaiman). Mr. Gaiman is a modern fantasy author, born in the UK and now living in America. Neil has said that he loved libraries as child, frequenting the local stash of novels which he would read vivaciously. Neil started as a journalist before becoming a full time author, publishing his first novel Duran Duran, an account of a band of the same name. He is a pioneer of the modern comics, making the critically acclaimed Sandman comic series. Gaiman has written books ranged from children stories, to adult novels, to screenplays and TV episodes, many crossing multiple genres at once. Gods and mythology are one of his favorite themes to use in his works, as seen in American Gods, Anansi Boys, and Norse Mythology. Neil uses social media to connect to readers, sustaining a blog with over 1 million followers. He is also a patron of the Open Rights Group and The Science Fiction Foundation. American Gods is one of Gaiman’s most praised novels, winning the Hugo and Nebula award for best fantasy book (neilgaiman.com). In the novel, Shadow goes on a journey to end the disagreement between the old and new gods and gaining self-enlightenment along the way. His hero’s journey takes him to …show more content…
Carl Jung is the father of archetypal criticism and creator of the term collective unconscious. Jung (1875 – 1961) was born in Switzerland and learned from Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalytic critic, before breaking off and creating his own literary theory. Because of his shift to the Archetypal theory, also called mythic criticism, Jung was repelled by the psychoanalytic community, until he came up with the idea of a collective unconscious. “Jung’s ideas caused him to be banished from the psychanalytic community for the next five years. During this time, he formulated his own model of the human psyche, which would become his most important contribution to psychology and literary criticism (Bressler).” The collective unconscious is the common knowledge of themes and archetypes that every human has gained from ancestral memory. This is the bases for Archetypal criticism, the reason for humans being able to recognize archetypes and recurring patterns in literature. Archetypal literary works relate to the beliefs, knowledge, and desires of readers through recognizable themes and archetypes (Bressler 149). Archetypes are universally recognized patterns, characteristics, or objects that invoke similar emotional responses from every person. Archetypes give literary works deeper meaning because
Psychoanalyst Carl Jung suggested all humanity is innately programmed with a set of primordial images as a collective unconscious. These primordial images, which he called archetypes, are buried deep in the subconscious until a triggering event brings them to the forefront. Artists, writers, musicians and p...
Furthermore, Campbell explained such patterns by using Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious, which he was strongly influenced with. Psychological organs that developed through the evolution, is the idea Jung gave of archetypes (Jung 81). To him they are recurring patterns, images and ideas which all humans inherited in their unconsciousness (Volgar 23). In addition, Campbell described his theory as a reoccurring cycle of pattern consisting of three phases: Departure, Initiation and Return, which he calls The Monomyth (Campbell 28), a deep inner journey of transformation that every hero must go through in order to grow (Voytilla vii).
Psychologist Carl Jung, believes that universal and mythic characters, also known as archetypes, display the collective unconscious of people all over the world. Jung’s theory reflects the collective unconscious as the reservoir of our experiences as a species, a kind of knowledge we are all born with, but can never be directly conscious of it. In addition, this collective unconscious is what influences our experiences and behaviors which we only know indirectly by looking at those influences. Archetypal criticism coincides with the idea that archetypes determine the form and function of literary works, and that a text's meaning is shaped by cultural and psychological myths. There are many different archetypes which
What’s that in the sky? A bird? A plane? No, it’s the sidekick! Wait, something is wrong with this situation. It should be the hero who is getting recognition and hype from curious spectators while the sidekick is ignored, but this is not how it should be. The importance of the loyal retainer is so great that without them, the hero would not be the person with such power and nobility. They should not be ignored completely, and authors, directors, and creators have come to this realization that a loyal retainer makes for a great story. This realization has created an archetype used in many pieces of literature across time and cultures everywhere. A loyal retainer has the task of showing a hero’s power and nobility; therefore, this character
In literature, an archetype is a character, situation, or experience that represents the recurring patterns of human nature. Loss of innocence, a well used archetype, tends to focus on young individuals and shows how their innocence fades away, but is replaced by experience and gained knowledge through it. In Ian McEwan’s Atonement, McEwan shows the loss of innocence through Briony Tallis, Robbie Turner, and Lola Quincey. These three characters show how one’s mistake, tragedy, or experience can cause the loss of their innocence, but other character’s futures and innocence as well. Through this archetype, Ian McEwan’s Atonement shows how the loss of innocence plays a major role in each of their lives and how it changes their future, showing
Quite often in life we wish for things bigger than ourselves. Seeming to get wrapped up in our own minds we do not pay attention to reality. As reality comes full force we are not sure how to take it, so we let it take us. In the writing “Where are you going, where have you been?” we see Oates craft archetypes and allegories into the work through detail and word choice in order to help the reader understand the shocking outdistancing of day dreams and the overshadowing sockdolager called reality. These archetypes and allegories provide a way for the reader to join Connie in the story, but also to see the danger of what Connie doesn’t see.
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who developed many theories concerning the unconscious mind. Jung’s theories state that the unconscious part of a human’s psyche has two different layers, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is unique to every individual; however, the collective unconscious “is inborn.” (Carl Jung, Four Archetypes, 3) The collective unconscious is present in everyone’s psyche, and it contains archetypes which are “those psychic contents which have not yet been submitted to conscious elaboration” (Jung, Archetypes, 5); they are templates of thought that have been inherited through the collective unconscious. Jung has defined many different archetypes such as the archetype of the mother, the archetype of the hero, the archetype of the shadow, etc. These Jungian archetypes are often projected by the collective unconscious onto others. If the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is examined through a Jungian archetypal lens it is possible to discern different archetypes projected by the protagonist’s unconscious self to illustrate the effects of the collective unconscious on character and plot analysis.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s powerful feminist novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” she tells the story of Janie Stark and her journey into becoming a powerful black woman during the time when those words were not spoken together. Hurston uses Janie as an archetype for what we should all aspire to be, because in Hurston’s eyes, and the eyes of many others, Janie is the only character in the novel that gets it right. The thing about Janie that set her apart from everyone else, the reason that she got it right, was not because she was just born that way, but it was because she used all of the trials and hardships in her life to her advantage. She never crumbled or quit, but she continued to move on and use her life experiences to help mold to her
...hat in addition to the unconscious, to which he referred as the “personal unconscious”, there was also a deeper, more universal layer called the “collective unconscious”. According to Jung, the collective unconscious is a part of the human psyche that contains images, thoughts, and feelings shared by all human beings, organized in underlying patterns, and is modified by each person’s subjective experience (Stevens, 1990; Wedding, Corsini, & Dumont, 2008). Using his own ideas about the psychic structure, Jung began to develop his own theories about dream interpretation. Jung’s theories about dreams were heavily impacted by those of Freud; however, Jung thought that dreams were direct messages, and a natural expression of the unconscious. This was unlike Freud, who believed that dreams are disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes (Stevens, 1990; Lear, 2005).
Discovering the meaning and significance of the archetypes in one’s dreams and the dreams themselves were a sort of process that helped lead the individual towards a God. The suffering and process of analyzing the dreams and manifestations of the archetypes was crucial to resolving one’s entire unconscious and thus being at peace with oneself. When this peace was achieved, it allowed the individual to further their religious experience. Jung believed that all humans had a natural religious function and the expression of their unconscious through archetypes and dreams was crucial.
Psychoanalytic Theory itself has, what seems to be, two contradictory halves: Freudian psychoanalysis and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The first half focuses solely on the author and the unconscious mind; the second considers the unconscious, but prefers to concentrate on outside influences by deconstructing the text itself. According to Freud, interpretation is achieved by examining conflicts and symbols, such as Freudian slips and dream images. These outlets are help to determine whether an individual’s external behavior coincides (or conflicts) with their internal emotion. Freud placed emphasis on sexuality and the Oedipus complex, which is the idea of repressed sexual feelings toward a parent of opposite sex. He also defined three levels of the subconscious mind: the ego, the super-ego, and the id. Barry explains that the stages align with “the consciousness, the conscience, and the unconscious” respectively (93). On the other hand, Lacan, a follower of Freud, concentrated on the relationship between an author and his or her work. He claimed the two were inexorably connected, that objectivity is nonexistent. In an essence: an author’s personality is used to interpret the text and, in contrast, the text is used to gain insight about the author. Regardless of the emphasis, psychoanalytic criticism engages an
The first theory to be discussed is Structurealism, this theory is composed of many different branches. The branches that this paper will be looking into are archetypes. The definition of archetype is typical images, characters, narrative designs and themes and other literary phenomena. Archetypes have their own form of criticism, called archetypal criticism. Archetypal criticism means the generic, recurring and conventional elements in literature that cannot be explained through historical influence or tradition.
Psychoanalytic criticism is a term used to describe how and why a person behaves. There are two different types of psychoanalytic criticisms which were developed by Freud and Jung. Freud’s archetypes are the most common in “The Tell Tale Heart.” Freud’s archetypes are displayed throughout “The Tell Tale Heart” by how the narrator shows Id, which is the most dominant, as he kills the old man, Superego, as he shows remorse, and planning to kill displaying Ego.
Many critics believe that using a psychological criticism approach to understand an author’s literary work leaves common sense behind. For them, such analysis disregards the environment in which an author created their work, as well as disregarding that men and women read differently. One of the main critics of such approach, Karl Popper, states that the creators of psychoanalysis such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Marx “couched their theories in terms which made them amenable only to confirmation.“ What that means is that for Popper, considered one of the greatest philosophers of science in the 20th century, psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience because its statements cannot be testable, thus not falsifiable. When a theory cannot be falsifiable, it ends up representing only one side of the spectrum, because if one states, for example, that Emily Dickinson’s poetry is filled with remarks of her childhood and confined adulthood, there would be no counter argument to refute such statement.
The book Arrow of God follows the story of African tribespeople who are dealing with newly inhabiting white settlers. It gives a unique perspective on what the native people of Africa went through, and is told from the native people’s eyes (Achebe). The movie District 9 explores a similar situation in which aliens come from outer space and are treated poorly. While attempting to relocate the alien refugees, a man named Wikus is poisoned and slowly turns into an alien and has to live like the species that he so passionately hates (Blomkamp). Though both stories tell the story of a group of people being discriminated against, they tell the stories in two different ways and perspectives.