What is an Archetype?

An archetype is essentially a person, place, object, situation, image, creature – a noun – which functions like a form or pattern. They are universal, discoverable not only in literary and artistic narratives, but also in the private narratives that we create to order our lives and our histories. Archetypal characters, in their simplest forms, are instantly recognizable, and a great deal of primitive story-telling relies on the listener's ability to provide a wealth of associations to characters that are otherwise shallow, or practically non-dimensional. In fairy-tales, for example, if one encounters a Princess, one naturally assumes that she is virtuous, beautiful, and available to be wed, unless the tale specifically states otherwise.

This is not the same thing as stereotype. Archetypes are generally quite flexible. It is possible to have a Princess who is humble, like Cinderella, or who is ugly, or who ends tragically without ever meeting a Prince. A Princess could be a ballerina, or a piano player, or a leader of rebel forces opposing an evil empire. So long as most of the essential characteristics of the character are maintained, and those that are abandoned are deliberately excised, the archetype will still ring true. Stereotypes on the other hand, are limited: the beautiful, helpless, spotlessly virtuous damsel captured by a dragon is a stereotype, Princess Leia is a distinctive character who happens to archetypally be a Princess.

In the construction of narratives, archetypes are essential because they tap into the contents that are already present in the sub-conscious. This has several significant effects: it heightens the reader's engagement in the narrative, it allows readers to make important decisions about whether or not they find a story believable, and it allows authors to produce impactful text with great efficiency.

Readers generally latch on to things that they find familiar. This is why science fiction, in particular, always has to walk a careful line between the alien and the comprehensible: if a story includes notions like “the aliens don't see human colours, but a completely different spectrum unknown to the human eye,” and then proceeds to give labels to these alternative colours, a human reader has no way of relating, and will either artificially associate their own colour-experiences onto those that the author describes, or simply won't picture any colour at all. The same thing happens, on a subtler level, with themes and characters. A reader will generally reserve judgement on a character until they are able to relate them to someone similar – either real people that they know, or characters that they have seen in other stories. If the character is stereotypical, the reader will identify them quickly: this can often be used to comic effect, or to people a bustling narrative with minor characters who can't afford to be given proper development. Many readers, however, will quickly get bored if the main characters remain on the level of stereotype. Archetypal characters, on the other hand, provide the reader with a sense of familiarity, a framework from which to understand and relate to the character, while still providing the feeling that one is meeting a new and unique creation, and not merely a rehash of the same sword-weilding barbarian that we've seen a hundred times before.

Once the audience has, consciously or sub-consciously, identified an archetypal character, they feel safe making judgements about him: he's a hero, or she's a no-good woman. Such judgements are essential to building narrative: if an audience doesn't know who they are supposed to sympathize with, and they are forced to distrust everyone, they will feel very alienated from the story. This is why detectives in mystery stories are usually above suspicion. It is also why Twin Peaks, in which Agent Cooper is so obviously virtuous and heroic, is so successful, while HBO's Carnivale, in which the good characters aren't really particularly any more good than the evil ones, becomes progressively more disappointing before it finally collapses under its own weight. This is also why fans are so often incensed when someone in a long-running television series acts “out of character.” It is not that the viewer has seen that particular character, in that particular mood, in that particular situation before, and knows that they would do something different, but rather that the reader recognizes that the character has broken from their archetypal constraints without sufficient justification. It's as obviously wrong as Cinderella marching into the ball with a sword and demanding the Prince's hand in marriage or his head: it might be amusing as a Monty Python sketch, but it clearly is not the same character.

The sense of familiarity also allows for a kind of sub-conscious short-hand: the reader provides information from a wealth of sub-conscious archetypal associations and automatically fills in details that the author doesn't have time to provide. We are willing to accept, for example, that the narrator in Poe's “Cask of Amontillado” might believably trick a man into descending into some catacombs, there to brick him up and leave him to die for the sake of a minor insult, because we recognize something archetypal in him. His motivations don't seem insufficient because the content of our own subconscious, and our experience of literature and narrative in general, provides them.

On the level of character, archetypes are fairly universal. The same basic types can be found across cultures, though there do seem to be differences in terms of symbolism, colours, and names associated with those characters. Sorting this out is, unfortunately, often something of a mess, particularly because there is not a univerally accepted catalogue of names for archetypes, characters are often lumped together with one another on the basis of superficial details. One example is the common appearance of “Tricksters” in various different cultures. It is certainly true that self-interested, scheming characters that often engage heroes in deceptive contests or bets can be found in the mythology and folk-lore of nearly every culture, and that these characters are all archetypally Tricksters. However, the Trickster label is also sometimes used to identify gods or characters who use riddles to teach, or tricks to bring culprits to justice. This is quite sloppy: everyone knows that the riddling teacher is a sympathetic character who the incompetent and wayward hero ought to obey, just as surely as everyone knows that the fox gambling in the glen is trouble, no matter how nicely he speaks.

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