Hey there, late to the party as usual...
For this post I'd like to look at the archetypes found in fantasy.
Something that (speaking from personal experience here) seems common to all fantasy is the New Guy. Or the Young Apprentice, or even the Chosen One (But Shhh, He Doesn't Know It Yet). Each of these archetypes are generally the same character. You know the one; the guy who stumbles into a new world or situation, maybe flubs the first meeting, or has to blindly feel his way through all the madcap craziness around him. He'll be someone unassuming, someone you won't expect. He's the one to whom all this is new, and so he's the window, the set of eyes that the reader/viewer can most comfortably look through. After all, we're new to it all too.
Examples? Easy. Toilkein's Frodo Baggins springs to mind, or any of his young hobbits...although, now that I think of it, Sam Gamgee might be a better fit. Sam is entirely unassuming, completely humble, and utterly unselfish. He doesn't see his role as great until it is pointed out to him by Frodo ("What about Samwise the Brave...Frodo never would have got as far as he did without Sam, you know...") and despite the overwhelming nature of Middle Earth, Sam just keeps going.
Another? Sure, how about Pug, from Raymond E. Feist's Wizard's Apprentice. Now, I didn't particularly like this book, nor did I finish it, but I didn't have to to see that Pug fits this role perfectly. He's a bit of nobody, but through a rather odd series of events, some how manages to end up apprenticed (there's that word...) to the Castle's wizard. Add to that, Pug not only has power magic lying dormant inside him, his magic is different from everyone else's. Pug goes from being something of a communal errand boy to The Next Big Thing.
Let's go for three; Harry. Poor Harry Potter. This kid has got to have the shittiest end of any stick that ever was. I mean, really. This is pretty much his archetype, right here. This kid has pretty much nothing growing up. Knowing what I know about child development, its a miracle he didn't grow up to be a rampaging sociopath. Harry is the foundling, the orphan (and also the Chosen One, but shh, he won't find out til the fourth book). He comes into the Wizarding world without a clue and is pretty much hurled into the deep end. Since this is all completely new to him, the reader has no problem relating to his wonder, his fear, his delight in this new world.
There are a million more that I can think of off the top of my head, but I'd been here all day and so would you.
So, moving on.
Another archetype, which I'm sure everyone is familiar with, is Wizard. You've all met him. Gandalf, Dumbledore, heck even Terry Pratchet's Ridcully, though he's a little unorthodox. Each of them harks back to that old time religion of the Norse gods. Tolkein drew heavily on Norse and Celtic myth, especially for his creation of Gandalf and his opposite, Sauron, the pair of them being the two aspects of One-Eyed Odin.
As I'm sure you can guess, the Wizard is generally a noble creature, perhaps a little eccentric, who appears as a grey bearded old man (whether he actually is old, bearded or in fact a man is sometimes questionable) who has the tendency to be relclusive. His hermitry is generally impeded or broken completely by the Young Apprentice, although in some cases it goes the other way (Frodo and Gandalf, Harry and Dumbledore).
Merlin is probably the one we all remember best from childhood, especially in the Disney rendition "The Sword in the Stone". Disney's Merlin was one odd guy, but he was rather endearingly crotchety...and the perfect introduction to the archetype. His more adult incarnations include Mary Stewart's Myrddin from "The Crystal Caves" and Sam Neil's character in the eponymous mini-series "Merlin", neither of which flinched from the wizard's darker sides.
Which brings us to the final archetype of this diatribe: The Dark Lord. Or Dark Queen, depending on your favored fiction. Now these guys and gals you will find everywhere. I mean, even the very first My Little Pony movie had a Dark Lord. Rescue from Midnight Castle was a classic (I don't care what you say, it was awesome) and its dark lord Tirek was actually pretty scary for a story that was supposed to be all about the glitter and cuddly equines. Other examples include the aforementioned Sauron as well as his predecessor Morgoth, JK Rowling's Voldemort and on the Dark Queen side of things, The White Witch from CS Lewis's Narnia series, Morgra the wolf sorceress from David Clement-Davis's "The Sight" and, let's face it, Maleficent from Disney's "Sleeping Beauty". That chick scared the crap out of me as a kid.
Anyway, I've rambled about as far as I sanely can, so this is me, asking for a few other contributions. Anything you guys wanna add? I know I've missed a few (understatement) so... Any takers?
Hi Aimee,
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see you blogging and engaging with some of the texts covered in the paper.This looks good, but in the future of you could try and answer 2 to 3 of the questions each week, as instructed :)
You will also need to make reference to some of the critical texts which are provided for you are part of your reading each week. There are references to literature above, but it would have been great to see some reference to The Wizard of Earthsea, considering that this was the set text.
I think Frodo is definitely a good example of 'The Chosen One' type of character you highlight. Sam is more like his able assistant - another character that seems commonly occuring. The chosen ones seem to need such assistants to keep them on track and from being corrupted, as we see in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. I'm not sure about the Pug character, but Harry Potter has his friends to help him too and assist in enabling the quest or journey these apprentice/ chosen one type characters are on.
You've provided lots of good examples of archetypes here, just keep in mind the points I mentioned above for your future postings
Esther :)
Definitely, the underdog scenario features heavily in most fantasy which could even (I’ll speculate) be a device to take the reader the furthest away from their reality, presumably their aim in picking up escapist literatures of the like; which isn’t to say fantasy’s elaborate allegories have less appeal than the genre’s ‘escape’ aesthetic, just that genre-entries that are more obviously commodities than they are ‘works’ do exploit this function. The Twilight Saga (if you can call it a saga) for example sees it’s ‘plain-Jane’ heroine Bella become the object of desire for a dashing immortal, her ‘unconventional’ aura being the source of her beauty for the lusty, vampiric Edward. She knows she’s no apparent beauty, and Meyers hopes readers feel similarly blasé about themselves because it’s this teenaged self-consciousness she’s exploiting in weaving an obvious fairytale about the slightly emo girl getting the stud; which, even without it’s vampires and werewolves, makes Twilight a pretty improbable ‘fantasy’ (not to mention that it’s mostly relationship propaganda, cleverly disguising it’s door-to-door preachers as teenaged, celibate creatures of the night). EarthSea on the other hand, though conforming to your indicated Archetype of the intimately identifiable protagonist, doesn’t see Ged overcoming any obvious enemies or winning the girl or even attaining some enviable status in the Roke society; rather, the enemy defeated isn’t an absolute enemy but a doppelganger or other, an autonomous aspect of Ged’s person. In fact, this ‘shadow’ isn’t even defeated, but assimilated into Ged once the latter accepts the other as an equal part of himself. Ged is then a hero that won’t carry discontented readers out of their lives and into resplendent realms to fulfill their own convoluted, thwarted desires; instead, Le Guin uses Ged as a guide for self-reflection, involving readers in the same conflicted processes as she puts upon Ged to participatory effects far exceeding the escapism of pop-fantasy. Thus is EarthSea a master work in as much as it addresses more than fetish in it’s use of the established fantasy archetypes.
ReplyDeleteGreat work, your examples of archetypes are spot on, especially with the dark lord in 'my little pony' i think i remember that one? Wizards they all have similar characteristics especially with the white long beards touching the floor. With dark lords and witches, dark queens, bad guys, its obvious that they are jealous of the 'chosen one' because he/she is destined for greatness and they're not. I can't think of any fantasy fictions where a dark lord has succeeded their quest of accumulating a 'chosen ones' power? However kudos to you I really enjoyed reading you post.
ReplyDeletetHANK YOU TO sAM AND hARRI FOR COMMENTING ON OTHER POSTS - i APPRECIATE IT AND IT IS VALUABLE READING !
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