Archetypes

Look! I drew a picture.

In class on Friday, Sexson briefly mentioned the critique Northrop Frye. Thanks to Prof. Eckert I actually know not only who this man is, but what he believed. Frye's main belief was in archetypes and structure. He believed that archetypes help a reader make sense of the world with language. Salman Rushdie writes a very structured hero story. In Haroun and the Sea of Stories there is a Shadow, Ego, and Anima, as Frye would say. Each of these characters can all be found in our "self" while outside floating around is the collective unconscious. Inside our self, such as in a good story, the Ego has to confront and overpower the Shadow, this allows the ego to understand or achieve the anima. The Anima represents a treasure, usually a woman, but can also be seen as truth or knowledge, although in Beowulf it was actually treasure. The Shadow is, of course, the form of evil in every story. Frye focused on epics, believing that they were the perfect forms of literature because they contained archetypes.

Attaching Frye's theory to Haroun and the Sea of Stories is quite simple, although not as easy as Spencer's The Fairy Queen. Haroun is the main character and also the hero in the hero story. The damsel is Batcheat, but what makes Rushdie's tale so comical is that no one cares to save the damsel, well, except Bolo. Bolo is a funny character as well, he is a confused hero. However, Rushdie gives Bolo all the major components of a knight, such as quickness to anger, rashness in action, a hopeless romantic, but Bolo is an annoying knight who's main purpose is to get in the way. The Shadow in Rushdie's tale is Khattam-Shud, who is shadowless. Khattam-Shud's main objective is to have complete power using darkness and muteness. An interesting point is that the Khattam-Shud that Haroun faces is in fact a shadow. Like Sexson said in class, Rushdie was quite the genius. The characters of Iff and Butt are not in Frye's archetypes, but but but they are very important to Rushdie's story because they represent the question in reality. If this, then that...or There's this, but that. When we put if and but into a sentence we are questioning something. Therefore these characters are important to the fantastical situations in the story that Haroun must believe in order to become the hero.

There is one more situation in Rushdie's story that can be compared to all great epics, as well as Frye's theory, is the use of water. Water, in epic tales, symbolizes the unconciouse or transformation, such as in a baptism. The first use of water is when Haroun drinks the polluted story water. He sees himself failing as a hero, and unconciously Haroun believes that he will fail in his attempt to save his father. Later when Haroun puts on the wet suit and jumps into the acidic water he emerges transformed. He comes from the water, realizes he has the wish water, and comes up with the plan to destroy Khattam-Shud. Water, in this instance, was used as a transformer.

I'm pretty sure Frye would have greatly enjoyed Rushdie's ironic archetypes.