In various works of literature and film, archetypes have been implemented to showcase societal views of the time and ever-changing gender and racial roles. Women, in particular, are represented by many personality traits that can critique or uplift them based on male ideals of women’s behavior. For example, Charlotte P. Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper” details the life of Jane, an obedient housewife, dealing with postpartum depression while her husband and family are dismissing her illness. On the other hand, Alex Garland's Ex Machina portrays Ava, a robot created to defeat the Turing test. This test is used to experiment with computer intelligence, seeing if AI’s can replicate human interactions and responses indistinguishably. However, Ava manages to gain consciousness and escape, as she is a manipulative, femme fatale. …show more content…
The femme fatale archetype stems from the fears that men have when it comes to female sexuality. Crewe states, “The femme fatale--seducer and betrayer of the hapless hero.” and “More often, she manipulates the men drawn into her orbit to kill for her.” (Crewe, pp. 16+). These statements play into the notion that the femme fatale character is generally a negative role, with a woman using her sexuality to harm men. This is the ideal literary representation of Ava’s character in Ex Machina. In classic femme fatale fashion, Ava manipulates Caleb the entire film by faking an attraction to him, all to get him to betray Nathan and set her free. The femme fatale archetype is used to make the audience sympathize with Caleb, viewing Ava as evil for entrapping him, ignoring that he only helped her escape because he believed he would get a romantic relationship out of it. This idea is apparent through the various scenes of him imagining them in the real world together, along with the sheer fact that Ava’s face is based on Caleb’s pornographic search history (Garland,
In the Count of Monte Cristo directed by Kevin Reynolds Edmond Dantes is betrayed, deceived and imprisoned. After many years of mentorship Dantes gains the skills he needs to seek his revenge. Dantes is motivated through betrayal and anger seeks his well deserved, justified revenge.
After discovering a God-given talent, a young boy struggles to achieve his only dream; to become the best there ever was. Baseball is all he has ever known, so he prevails through the temptations and situations laid before him by those out to destroy his career. His hopes and dreams outweigh all the temptations along his journey. These hopes, dreams, and temptations are depicted through archetypes in the movie The Natural.
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 to advance the story. One of the most useful in advancing this story is the typical powerful character. Whether it be supernatural or cunningness this character always comes out on top in the situation and holds the most control over others and their actions. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”,
In modern times, phrases such as “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” are commonly used. Also, the mere word revenge holds negative connotations as it is seen as immature and unnecessary. The theme of revenge uses archetypes to develop ideas without having to reiterate their meaning. According to the creator of the term, Carl Jung, “archetypes are defined as being a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.” (Dictionary) The Count of Monte Cristo, one of the novels that pioneer this theme, tells the story of a man’s quest for revenge on those who betrayed him. This man spends 14 years of his life imprisoned because of his betrayers, but he manages to escape to avenge his suffering. In the novel The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas uses the archetypes of the byronic hero, the betrayer and the old sage to demonstrate that one’s suffering doesn’t give them the right to seek revenge on those who have failed them.
The Maze Runner is a 2014 mystery/science fiction film that can be viewed from an archetypal perspective. An archetype can be described as a pattern that can and is copied and recurring symbols or characters. The concept of archetypes came from Carl Jung a psychiatrist who believed that all cultures use archetypes to build stories without communicating to each other about them. Two groups of archetypes are the character and symbolic archetypes. The film The Maze Runner should be analyzed through an archetypal perspective because it has character and symbolic archetypes.
As a result, women were stuck at home, usually alone, until their husbands got home. In the story, Jane is at home staring at the wallpaper in her room. The wallpaper’s color is described by Jane as being “repellent, almost revolting” (3) and the pattern is “torturing” and “like a bad dream” (10). The description of the wallpaper represents Jane’s and all women’s thoughts about the ideologies and rules upheld by men prior to the First World War. It is made evident that this wallpaper represents the screen made up of men’s ideologies at the time caging in women. Jane is subconsciously repelled by this screen and represents her discovering continuously figuring out what she wants. Metaphorically, Jane is trapped in that room by a culture established by men. Furthermore, Jane compares the wallpaper’s pattern to bars putting further emphasis on her feelings of being trapped and helpless. Later in the narrative, she catches Jennie staring at the wallpaper’s pattern and then decides to study the pattern and determine what it means herself. Her study of the pattern is representative of her trying to analyze the situation in which she’s in. By studying the pattern, she progressively discovers herself, especially when she sees the woman behind the
Psychologist Carl Jung proposed that humankind has a collective unconscious, which is manifested in myths and dreams, which harbors themes and images that all humans inherit. Carl Jung’s proposal about the collective unconscious is expressed when archetypal and mythological criticism applies to literary works (Archetypal Criticism). Neverwhere is a novel written by Neil Gaiman, which is heavily influenced by archetypal and mythological concepts. Neverwhere is the story of a young man who tries to help an injured girl named Door on the street, when he soon realizes that this is no ordinary person that he has come across and he has to go into the underworld to get her help. Richard goes to get her help from a man in the underworld named Marquis
Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells her readers the story of a woman desperate to be free. Gilman’s use of symbolism is nothing short of brilliant in telling the story of a new mother suffering from postpartum depression and fighting her way through societies ideas of what a woman should be. When her husband, John, also known as her physician, tells her nothing is wrong with her mind, at first she believes him because she knows that society tells her she should. However, with her husband’s misdiagnosis, or attempt to keep his wife sane for the sake of their reputation, comes a short journey into madness for his wife, Jane. Jane’s downward spiral, as one may call it, turns out to be not so downward when the reader
During the late 1800’s, the oppression of women was far too common, and while some women accepted this inequality, others realized the injustice and made the first steps to exposing the ugly truth and creating the society in which we live today: where single-sex dominance is frowned upon and equality is fought for publically and proudly. The author of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gillman, was one of these strong-headed women who, despite living amongst a society who knew no different, believed that a woman should be permitted to live her life alongside her husband-or alone if so chose- instead of under his reproachful stare and dominating thumb. She voiced this through the overwhelming symbolism threaded throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper,” choosing both animate and inanimate characters to each symbolically represent a piece of the oppression system.
Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale depicts many aspects of humanity at times of crisis as the protagonist, and narrator, of this novel is experiencing and seen through her eyes throughout the novel. The form of government in this novel is totalitarian with Christianity guidelines in which men have higher roles and women are put into submission and into supporting roles with no equal footing as it one was before and where Offred is forced to adjust with these new restrictions. Throughout the centuries, women have been put into submitting rules mainly due to their physical appearances; the dainty hands, smooth skin, and their natural motherly nature are seen as weak and should be an object of protection. It is true that women do not possess the physical strength that the male sex do, as it is seen throughout Atwood’s novel where the male military Commanders wield considerable power over the lesser male roles, women such as Offred are highly valued not for their strength but for their fertility. Although women have made considerable progress in putting themselves in an equal standing in society today, as can be seen with the number of women in government and highly appointed job positions, there is still that underlying prejudice that women are inferior. “Women hold 17 percent of the seats in Congress”, says Jessica Valenti in the popular newspaper The Washington Post, and follows with the argument that “more than 85 percent of counties in the United States have no provider; women work outside the home, but they make about 76 cents to a man's dollar and make up the majority of Americans living in poverty”.
Although these stereotypes are horrific, they are the harrowing reality women face every day. Kincaid uses repetitive details to critique women’s role in society. These repetitive details, a subset of realistic details, illuminate social issues. Likewise, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper” and Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” employ realistic details to convey social critiques.
Imagine reading a prominent piece of literature that includes a substantial array of archetypes. These archetypes in this piece of literature fabricate the characters in the plot to a great extent and unravel an amazing tale of love and tragedy that appeal to twenty-century Americans. This stunning literary piece, known as Romeo and Juliet, is written by the great mind of Shakespeare. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses numerous conventional archetypes such as, star-crossed lovers, tragic hero, and mentor to create archetypal characters, therefore making Romeo and Juliet important to twenty-first century American readers.
Carl Jung was a disciple of Sigmund Freud, despite the two having conflicting ideas. One of Jung’s most well known and accepted theories was the existence of different types of archetypes in the brain. These include the ego, which is where our conscious awareness and sense of identity reside, and the shadow, which is the part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. In the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the protagonist Gene exemplifies the shadow, while his friend, Finny, personifies the ego. The author narrates through the shadow, though he clearly supports the ego. However, he also makes it apparent that it is wrong to be dominated by either archetype.
The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.” (Gilman, 533). Setting and metaphors tend to extend the vision of a short story into a vivid sense of place and time for the reader; as well as allude to a specific ideal. In this story, setting and metaphors play a large role in formulating the bond between ‘Jane’ and her husband, ‘John’ by her examination of the intricacies of the yellow wallpaper. While John tries to suppress Jane’s desire to be an individual in order to maintain patriarchal control, it actually fuels her desire even more internally, to be a person; someone free to express individuality and intelligence. It is clear that Jane feels some sort of conflict about her “nervousness,” by which she expresses through metaphors within her setting—the setting, being the yellow wallpaper. Although John tries to sound loving and caring, his words are met with ill intention, of which Jane notes, and only drives her writing into an abyss of images pertaining to being captive and breaking free. All of this symbolizes the idea that underneath the dynamics created within the oppression of woman and the progression of man, the desire of individuality still remains present. Similar to the desire of a bird to fly free from its’ cage, Janes’ imagination creates a reflective symbolic transcription of the yellow wallpaper, which gives her stimulation she is being denied and of breaking free—at least in
The femme fatale, a seductive woman who entices men into perilous and compromising positions by way of charisma and mystery, is a classic, and often enthralling, character who can be found in many sources of literature and mythology of various origins and eras (“Femme Fatale” 1).