How to Read Literature Like a Professor

How does the recognition of patterns relate to archetype?

from the book how to read literature like a professor

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“Archetype” is a five-dollar word for “pattern,” or for the mythic original on which a pattern is based. It’s like this: somewhere back in myth, something—a story component, let’s call it—comes into being. It works so well, for one reason or another, that it catches on, hangs around, and keeps popping up in subsequent stories. That component could be anything: a quest, a form of sacrifice, flight, a plunge into water, whatever resonates and catches our imaginations, setting off vibrations deep in our collective consciousness, calling to us, alarming us, inspiring us to dream or nightmare, making us want to hear it again. And again and again and again. You’d think that these components, these archetypes, would wear out with use the way cliché wears out, but they actually work the other way: they take on power with repetition, finding strength in numbers. Here is the aha! factor again. When we hear or see or read one of these instances of archetype, we feel a little frisson of recognition and utter a little satisfied “aha!” And we get that chance with fair frequency, because writers keep employing them.

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