Monday, November 15, 2010

Character Archetypes

Right now, I'm in the middle of the novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I found that there were many different archetypes in the book since there are so many characters. I would classify Susie Salmon as a hero archetype because she is self sacrificed in the book. Susie is fourteen when she is raped and murdered, and the rest of the story is told by her watching from heaven. She is a reluctant hero because she has to sacrifice her life but is obviously not willing. The shadow in the book would be George Harvey, who rapes and murders Susie along with a bunch of other women. George is a shadow because he is the villian in the story- the one who killed the Salmon's daughter in the first place and he is a negative figure that we would like to eliminate. Here's a quote from the book that would classify Mr.Harvey as a shadow. "He felt a calm flood him. He kept the lights out in the bathroom and felt the warm water wash me away and he felt thoughts of me then. My muffled scream in his ear. My delicious death moan. The glorious white flesh that had never seen sun, like an infant's, and the split, so perfectly, with the blade of his knife."- Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones Page 16.  Obviously he is the villian/shadow.  If you want to learn more about the book here's a link of the trailer.


3 comments:

  1. Awwwwwwwwwww, what a pretty blog post! I LOVE IT..

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  2. It's wonderful, it makes me want to cry. Plus i like the background. It's great. I LOVE IT AND.. that's all.

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