English 10 / Unit 3: Character Development and Archetypes
3.6 Situational and Symbolic Archetypes
Notes
Archetypes also include repeated plots, settings and images.
- Situational: the quest, the initiation (coming of age), the fall (loss of innocence), death and rebirth, the battle between good and evil.
- Settings: the garden (innocence, paradise), the wilderness (danger, testing), the crossroads (a major choice).
- Images: water (purification, rebirth), light (knowledge, hope), darkness (ignorance, fear), seasons (spring = birth, winter = death).
- Archetypes give readers a shared language for meaning, but always check that the text supports the reading.
Practice
A teenager spends a summer working on a fishing boat and returns home more mature and independent. The situational archetype is:
Initiation is a coming-of-age passage into adulthood.
After a character survives near-drowning, he begins a new, kinder life. Water here most likely suggests:
Water often symbolizes purification and rebirth.
A story's characters lose their innocence after leaving a beautiful, peaceful valley. The valley functions as an archetypal:
The garden archetype represents innocence and paradise.
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