Archetypes: How You Know The Stepmother Is Evil

Archetypes: How you know the Stepmother is Evil
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess with skin the color of snow who lived with her stepmother. In one sentence you already know what is going to happen. You know who you are suppose to like, who the villain is, and you can probably guess the basic plot line and the ending. You know that the stepmother will be evil, she will try to hurt and/or kill the princess, who will undoubtable be saved by a prince on a gallant steed, and they will rid off into the sunset living happily ever after. How do you know this is going to happen? Why is it that with one sentence you feel like you have already read the story? It is because you have. Literature is filled with examples of the same characters and the same plot lines. This …show more content…
Webster defines archetypes as the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies (Webster). They are used throughout literature to concisely convey personality traits of characters and to quickly inform readers of the roles characters will play, allowing readers to better understand the plot. Though this makes archetypes very helpful, they also keep characters from having dimension. The evil queen is only evil, and the damsel in distress is only pure and good. Neither characters can cross the line of moral ambiguity. This makes characters seem unrealistic, and unrelatable. In modern literature, it is often the practice to set up characters as a particular archetype, and put them in their expected story, but then to give them human qualities. In this way authors uses archetypes to illuminate the humanness of their characters. In two of his comics, The Sleeper and the Spindle, and The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman uses common