Hello! This is Despicable Us's first blog. We are in Mrs. Elliott's third period class and consist of Shelby Flores, Taylor Cosanella, Anissa Rosales, Chad Larson, Ryan Lenart, and me, Sasan Amini.
I was lucky enough to be the first person in our group to post a blog (-_-). So here we go!
These past couple weeks, our class has been concentrating on the concepts of archetypes and some concepts that stem from it, such as allusions. The oddity of archetypes is the fact that we have known about them for basically all of our lives, yet we just did not know what they were. Everyone knows when they see a hero, he/she is usuallly a good person and when they see a villian, he/she is a bad person. Such examples include Harry Potter/Voldemort, Hercules/Hades, or even Spongebob/Planktin! Who is the hero and who is the villian? Well, that is up to one's perspective.
This concept was essentially begun by Plato. Then, some big time Swiss psychiatrist named Carl Jung furthered Plato's work to what it is now. The basic definition of archetypes is a universal, prenatal image or symbol that can be determined form one's unconsious. Usually they do not require any thought processing to determine, unless they are a hidden archetype. For example, some pieces of literature may include an archetype that has a mixed meaning or that can cause conflict with a person's beliefs. Some people may believe that a snake is a sinister symbol, often compared to the serpeant in the Garden of Eden, others may thing that the snake is lucky entity. Again, a person's perspective is a main factor in determining archetypes.
So if one lived their whole life living with snakes, they will most likely have a positive connotation on snakes in a literature work. Likewise they can compare it to the evil, decieving snake of Eden.
Now, what are your thoughts on archetypes? Do you believe they can only have one meaning, or even just one connotation? Feel free to reply in the comments below!
-Sasan Amini
I could not leave my boy sasan hanging out there with no comments so here I go. I believe Archetypes are generalized. Just like racism. When someone sees another man of a specific race, they subconsciously think about the traits specified to them throughout time. Just like racism, when I see a specific archetype it just clicks in my mind. But as Sasan says in his beautifully written masterpiece, spending time with someone of a different skews the racist traits one tags with the other person. For example, one of the most common stereotypes is the over 9000 intelligence level for Asians. If you spend time with an Asian person who is not smart, you don't think all Asians are smart. If you go to multiple funerals and all you see is the color blue, one would set that color with death and loss of life. Since societies and cultures are close knit to some degree, the archetypes came to be by accident. One person used a specific color when describing money and it stuck on like tape. Since we all live within civilizations, as we age, the archetypes created in the past are passed down to us through stories or lessons from our parents.
ReplyDeleteGreat article Sasan!
- Ali B.