Six Archetypes
Back with the archetypes, but I feel I have to spell a few things out, so here goes.
If, as my new, so-to-be-available book shows, there are six archetypes that heroes in great literature grow through (and have gone through in about 3000 years of European literature) - then we’re faced with a question. What if we read a book and the hero or anti-hero doesn’t go through all the stages? This is an important question because we have to recall that it’s not the hero who matters, it’s us as readers. so a better question might be: Do we get the chance to see six stages of development in the course of the work? Perhaps the main figure burns out, but we see his effects on another figure. Actually, that’s exactly what happens with King Lear, who never really gets much beyond Orphan phase, but some of the others in the play, particularly Edgar, really do grow through all the stages. Shakespeare is very much a six archetypes man.
So, to put it bluntly, we have a yardstick that allows us to gauge art. Do we get all the six stages? If not then, alas, it may be amusing or diverting but it probably isn’t going to be anything close to great art. It will leave us feeling vaguely cheated. For unless those characters face up to the particular challenges that occur only at certain levels of awareness, they’re basically not fully grown. And while we can learn a lot from a person who isn’t fully emotionally grown, we have to acknowledge that their wisdom may have its limits.
Life’s a bit too short for us to spend time looking for guidance in all the wrong places.
on October 26th, 2007 at 1:30 am
I’m on your wave length but not-quite-all-worked out. Just today, I was questioning the value to the reader of my upcoming memoir: must I demonstrate my own progression through all the archetypal stages for my reader to benefit?
Does the author’s completion of these stages in her memoir bestow comparable insight to the reader? Does the process resemble osmosis and is it quantifiable?
More tomorrow.
MLou
on October 26th, 2007 at 11:46 am
I came to your blog yesterday after hours of analyzing my mss. In search of an overview, I’ve resurrected the 20 ” X 30″ chart I made a year ago of your “Archetypal structure” to see how my rough-cut measures up so far.
If, as you suggest, your archetypes will let readers chart the growth of heroes in literature, how do they apply to the writers of memoir? Will readers of memoir find more personal insights if the writer of memoir intends it? Or does straight-forward writing do the job?
Put another way: as the writer, should I try to make my story conform to your theory? Or is it like the chicken and egg? The story is what it is — and it will or it won’t.
Does memoir’s potential to deliver ilife-lessons account for its current popularity? And, if a memoir does conform, are you saying that a reader will have a “yardstick” to gauge - not art - but his or her life?
Thanks for this opportunity to help me sort out my thinking.
MLou
on October 26th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Dear Mary Lou,
You’ve got the main idea perfectly. We write our Memoirs as truly as we can as a first draft. Then, if we wish, we can go back and look at that draft for the patterns it will show us (patterns of imagery, themes that interweave, and so on). In this re-reading we will almost certainly be able to see the life stages reflected.
Above all, don’t make your story try to ‘conform’ to anything. Write it, and then survey it. One of the delights of Memoir for me is how elevated the awareness of the writer can become when re-reading his or her own work. Thus writing a memoir is, in itself, a vital stage that allows for a ’spiritual upgrade’ - if we’re paying attention. You read your words, and as you do so you stand outside the experience of writing, of remembering. When that happens you move into a different relationship to your own life. That’s when wisdom can emerge. And that’s what the alert reader will notice, the real enduring wisdom of the writer’s experience.
Today’s readers know this intuitively. They know that a good memoir gives them real insight and wisdom (and not just sensationlist fabrications like Monsieur Frey’s) and it enhances their sense of what life can be. The six archetypes is a basic check list that can help us with this, if we choose to see things this way. Think of this as a metaphor. We see a car going very fast. When it stops we walk up to it and see, yes, it’s a low slung sports car; yes, it has those special tires and wheels; yes, it says Porsche on the front…. Each bit of evidence confirms that this really is some sort of high speed car. Then we place our hand on the engine compartment and feel the heat rising. Yup. This car moves under its own power. Up until that point it could, conceivably, have been propelled forward by some other means (one of those huge catapaults they use for jet airplanes on aircraft carriers, perhaps).
The car is the book. The catapault might be the hyperbolic press agency that’s trying to sell an otherwise useless book by persuading us to read the blurb and not the actual book. Many people (publishers) interested in making money will hurl published books past us hoping we won’t know the difference between well packaged trash and the real thing, since it’ll be moving so fast we won’t want to look carefully… That’s where our six item checklist will help us.
Or another comparison: I can go to my corner store and buy a loaf of bread. Fine. It’s fluffy, white, tastes like styrofoam, and has no nutritional value whatsoever. I look at the list of ingredients. Lots of preservatives, but, as it happens, no yeast, no whole flour…. It is, in fact missing about six vital ingredients that make it bread. What we have instead is a facsimile of bread that will never go stale, will never taste of anything, and cannot grow mould, ever. Lots of ingredients but insufficient in the things that make bread bread, as opposed to say wallpaper paste or packaging material.
We consumers know the difference between what’s real and what’s fake. Hemingway put it best when he said all writers need just one thing, an infallible crap detector. I like to think the six archetypes help us to detect it, to know why well disguised crap is still just crap.
As ever, Allan
on October 27th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Dear Allan,
I love the idea that writing a memoir might earn the memoirist a “spiritual upgrade.” That is -as you say -
“if we’re paying attention.”
And with my first memoir, I was not.
Following an accident - and since I’d worked in New York and Boston publishing circles for a few years - I thought that a book contract was the way to earn money while I was on the mend.
(In the seventies, there were more venues for novices than today, so the idea was not as impractical as it sounds.)
By the time I finished my book, I was desperate to collect the final installment of my advance.
Back then. Allan, if you’d spoken to me about a spiritual upgrade, I wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. Today I do. And I think I know why.
After “Sea Run was published in 1981, I vowed never again to depend on a publisher’s largess. In 1983, I started a part-time business in order to support myself in pursuit of “artless art.”
Enjoying memoir’s inherent pleasures as I do today, I know what you mean when you speak of seeing life’s stages “reflected through patterns of imagery and interweaving themes.”
Back in 2002, The Blue Hills Writing Institute and Sandy Kaye turned me away from being a writer-in-isolation to a writer-in-community. Thank you all for the safe haven you have created for me and for like-minded others to reevaluate life.
At the BHWI, we get to “reap the wisdom that can emrge when we stand outside the experience of writing.”
For me, this experience is comparable to stepping into a new dimension.
You have clarified everything, Allan. Thank you.
MLou
on October 28th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Dear MaryLou,
Whay can I say but yes? You know in your blood and bones what Memoir is all about. When we speak or write our truths in the most thoughtful way we can (Memoir being one of the best ways) we change our relationship to ourselves, the world, and our own wisdom.
It’s a privilege to work with you, MaryLou. And please remember, this latest email (above) is you telling yourself what you know and where you are. So I’m happy to accept thanks, and the BHWI is also, and you need to know that it’s you who did all the heavy lifting…. It’s you who deserves the congratulations. Well done! Welcome to a new dimension.
Allan
on October 29th, 2007 at 1:03 am
What can I say but yes?
MLou