Thursday, September 6, 2012

Archetype writing Wednesday

An archetype is a universally recognized symbol. An archetype is something that every country, religion, culture, and society recognizes as the same thing. In other worlds all around the world people would know what this specific think is. An example of this would be a wizard. All people know wizards as someone with a pointy hat and a beard.  An archetype is also something we see present in many stories across the planet. Not necessarily one thing but a type of character.
A very common archetype that we see a lot in stories is a villain. As defined by Google a villain is “A person guilty or capable of a crime or wickedness.” In other words, a villain is someone in a story that is bad or evil. A common story that most people know is The Three Little Pigs. In this story there is a villain…the big bad wolf.  
This archetype represents the evil in the story. They are responsible for being the bad person or the person we are supposed to hate in the story.  Along with the villain comes another archetype. This would be the hero. Just as the villain does something bad or evil in the story the hero comes through at the end of the day and saves everything the villain messed up. The villain and the hero are two archetypes that go hand and hand.
Without the big bad wolf in the Three Little Pigs it would be a very boring story. The wolf is the creator of the commotion in the story. Without the wolf the entire story would be about three little pigs living in three little houses. The villain is universally recognized as someone who causes commotion in the story. The Three Little Pigs is a prime example of this because the wolf is definitely the person we don’t like in the story. Who likes a wolf interrupting three innocent pigs’ happiness?
~forever young~

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