You have probably done it. You have looked at a person and said, “He [or she] is not my type.” This means that a person does not meet the general characteristics you find necessary for romantic sentiment to blossom. You may be into the Frat Boy type while your friend falls for the Cheerleader type and another person gravitates toward the AP English type. Each of these “types” have certain generic traits most people in our society instantly understand and picture. Likewise, Car Jung, a famous psychologist, theorized that all people across time and culture have certain universal archetypes they can recognize. These archetypes are found not only in people but also in literary characters.
The most prominent archetype I encountered in my reading this summer is what the Carl Jung-inspired The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes and Heroines calls “The Lost Soul.” TamiCowden.com describes The Lost Soul as “a sensitive being, he understands. Tortured, secretive, brooding, and unforgiving. That’s this man.” The characters that fall into this category I found exclusively in books classified as science-fiction: Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451, Bernard Marx from Brave New World, Winston Smith from 1984, and Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse-Five. Each of these four characters fits the Lost Soul archetype because they are all tortured by their society -- sometimes emotionally, sometimes physically, sometimes both -- and each is sensitive to the wrongs of his respective society. Moreover, every character, except perhaps Billy Pilgrim, broods over his situation and is unforgiving in his own way. While generally similar, the authors make the characters in these books unique in their idiosyncrasies an through a key part of the writing mechanism: the setting in which each character acts.
The rest of the books offered a broader array of archetypes. The title character in Sula is clearly The Seductress: Sula seduces her best friend’s husband, is cynical about society’s standards, and “hides a streak of distrust a mile wide and ten miles deep” (tamicowden.com). Nora Helmer from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a cross between The Waif and The Nurturer. In Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents each of the four girls is a pale representation of a different archetype: Carla is The Boss, Sandra is The Waif, Yolanda is The Free Spirit, and Sofia is The Seductress.
The discussion of archetypes here is limited to major characters. However, minor characters in each book also present archetypes in themselves. Besides heroic archetypes, there are also villainous archetypes. However, in most of the texts, the villain is not a single character but the situation created by the broader society or the struggle within him or herself.
Besides using archetypes in their art, authors allude to important and well-known works outside of their own text. These classical allusions surround Christian or Greek religion and religious icons. A few of the texts I read this summer do some interesting things with classical allusion.
In Brave New World the allusion to religion is satirical and not completely an allusion at all. In a world where so much of what we consider “normal” is turned on its head -- the nuclear family is no more -- there remains a vestige of religion. People in Brave New World often say “Our Ford” and have quasi-religious festivals where they sing “’Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,/ Kiss the girls and make them One./ Boys at one with girls at peace;/ Orgy-porgy gives release’” and talk about the “Greater Being” (Huxley 85). The society in Huxley’s world has turned religion into a mantra that certifies the society’s value of self-gratification. “Our Ford” is an allusion to the Christian use of “Our Lord” as a way to draw attention to the Christian God; it is also a way of exalting Henry Ford who brought low-cost automobiles and a semblance of prosperity to the masses. In reality, “Our Ford” is not an allusion at all but an allusion to an allusion.
Fahrenheit 451 also makes allusions to religion. When Guy Montag steals, hides, and reads a forbidden book, he reads out of the Bible. The book he reads and then “becomes” is Ecclesiastes. By drawing attention to this book through Montag, Bradbury is hinting that the reader should also read Ecclesiastes, which has “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven” as one of its central messages (Eccl 3:1). This verse ties into the novel’s message against censorship.
Archetypes help us connect with characters through our shared human experience. Allusions add depth to the reading of a text though its tie-ins to other seminal human works. Together, archetypes and allusions broaden our understanding of a work of literature and of ourselves.
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