The document discusses archetypes and their relationship to creative works and pedagogy. It provides an overview of Jungian archetypes like the shadow, wise old man, mother, and explains how archetypes emerge in symbols and influence human experience across cultures. Case studies of To Kill a Mockingbird and Sons and Lovers are presented, showing how racial archetypes impact the former and how denial of the male archetype affects the protagonist in the latter. The document proposes having students map archetypes in texts and outlines creative writing applications involving archetype mapping.

1. Implications for Pedagogy and
Creative Writing Applications

2. Contents
• I. Overview- Impact of Digital Information Age
 II. The (deep) Nature of Archetypes
 a. The Relevance of Archetypes
 Examples of Chief Jungian Archetypes
 b. The Relevance of Archetypes, cont’d
• III. The Bodying Forth of Archetypes in Signs & Symbols
• a. From Archetype to Symbol
• b. The Chief Use of Symbols: Their Ideal Function
• IV. Archetypes’ Relation to Technology
• V. Several Case Studies (archetypes)
• a. Case Study: Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
• b. Case Study: D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
• VI. Creative Options in Teaching and Student Work
• a. Asking students to map the archetype(s)
• b. Creative Writing Applications

3. I. Impact of Digital Information Age
 “… in a Babel of signals, we must listen to a great deal of chatter to hear
one bit of information we really want. We discover that information
can become noiselike when it is irrelevant or interferes with desired
signals… All too often media and computers speed up the impact of
information upon us without adding to its meaning for us. By taking in
too much noise, a peson becomes cluttered, not integrated. The result
for our information society is that we suffer a lag in which the slow
horse of meaning is unable to keep up with the fast
horse of mere information.”
 -- Orrin Edgar Klapp, Inflation of Symbols: Loss of Values in American Culture
“About a month ago I began legging up my
endurance horse…” [unnamed web source]

4. II. The Nature of Archetypes
1. The Nature of Archetypes (their continuing relevance for self-recognition and
cultural identification)
 Jungian Theory:
Where do the archetypes come from? In his earlier work, Jung tried to link
archetypes to heredity and regarded them as instinctual. We are born with
these patterns which structure our imagination and make it distinctly human.
Archetypes are thus very closely linked to our bodies. In his later work, Jung was
convinced that the archetypes are psychoid, that is, "they shape matter (nature)
as well as mind (psyche)" (Houston Smith, Forgotten Truth, 40). In other words,
archetypes are elemental forces which play a vital role in the creation of the
world and of the human mind itself. The ancients called them elemental spirits.
How do archetypes operate? Jung found the archetypal patterns and images in
every culture and in every time period of human history. They behaved according
to the same laws in all cases. He postulated the Universal Unconscious to
account for this fact. We humans do not have separate, personal unconscious
minds. We share a single Universal Unconscious. Mind is rooted in the
Unconscious just as a tree is rooted in the ground. [iloveulove.com]

5. a. The Relevance of Archetypes
 Substratum of All Human Experience, from When Signs and Symbols
Emerge:
“Archetypes form a dynamic substratum common to all humanity, upon the
foundation of which each individual builds his own experience of life,
developing a unique array of psychological characteristics. Thus, while
archetypes themselves may be conceived as a relative few innate nebulous
forms, from these may arise innumerable images, symbols and patterns of
behavior. While the emerging images and forms are apprehended
consciously, the archetypes which inform them are elementary structures
which are unconscious and impossible to apprehend.
“Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced
indirectly by examining behavior, images, art, myths, etc. They are
inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter
consciousness as images [symbols] or manifest in behavior on
interaction with the outside world.” [wikipedia]

6. Examples of Chief Jungian Archetypes
 Jung described archetypal events: birth, death,
separation from parents, initiation, marriage, the
union of opposites etc.; archetypal figures:
“…great mother, father, child, devil, God, wise old man, wise old woman,
trickster, hero - not to mention "Oedipus ... the first archetype Freud
discovered"[9] or "number ... an archetype of order";[10] and archetypal motifs:
the Apocalypse, the Deluge, the Creation, etc. Although the number of
archetypes is limitless, there are a few particularly notable, recurring
archetypal images, "the chief among them being" (according to Jung) "the
shadow, the Wise Old Man, the child (including the child hero), the mother ...
and her counterpart, the maiden, and lastly the anima [female principle] in
man and the animus [male principle] in woman".[11] Alternately he would speak
of "the emergence of certain definite archetypes ... the shadow, the animal, the
wise old man, the anima, the animus, the mother, the child".[12] [Wikipedia]

7. b. Relevance of Archetypes, cont’d
 Cultural Relevance: Archetypes help to provide
identifying clues to our innermost impulses, thoughts,
dreams– and so, link us to the human family, often
across religions, cultures, economic status, beliefs…
 Personal Relevance (psychological/emotional
development): Change/Risk dilemmas in adolescents
can find direction in a myriad of natural identifications
that can trigger access to archetypal senses of identity,
and belonging. Archetypes (and symbols) can provide
context and a sense of rootedness in culture(s)
toadolescents perhaps facing feelings of upheaval in the
midst of personal change…

8. From Archetype to Symbol
 Symbols range from high religious images and artifacts
to cultural symbols, symbols based on animal life (as
in early religions), or vegetative life (fertility/sterility
symbols), and of course, nationalistic and political
symbols, symbols of struggle and symbols of ease,
symbols of national and state service groups and
military organizations, professional symbols,
professional clubs (kiwanis, masons, elks), athletic
symbols, symbols of towns and neighborhoods, and so
on… in other words– Symbols are what you make of
them! (a teaspoon can be a symbol– see Eliot’s J.
Alfred Prufrock)

9. The Chief Use of Symbols: Their Ideal Function
 So: Symbols provide a “context” in a work or art or
meditative work in which to place an idea, conveniently
enough, or archetype– “Stow your idea of beauty in me,”
said the David, emerging under the master’s chisel …
Symbols bring intangible ideas into tangible existence, No
Small Thing!
 To challenge readers/viewers to think analogically…as the
artist moves from idea to symbol, the reader moves from
symbol to idea which then can be transformed symbolically
through plot [actions or descriptions] that can
enlarge/reshape/transform the symbol… so that Ideas Can
Indeed Come to (analogic, figurative) Life!

10. Archetypes’ Relation to Technology
 These are rival authority structures. Archetypes exist historically
in the flow of all cultural rootedness, where pre-existing
relational archetypes, existing in Jung’s “collective unconscious”,
help to direct emotional traffic and give ongoing meaning and
context to potential emotional chaos.
 The problem today is, that such complications are considered to
jam the information interface, and are ignored if possible. And
yet, such willed ignorance may actually cause cultural amnesia if
meaning is sacrificed to speed and “ease of transmission” such as
data travels on the internet… and “fast horses of info. may easily
outrun slow horses of meaning” (see third slide) unless cultural brakes
are consciously applied, and “information distillates” are allowed to
form such as grow thick enough to hold deeper, richer meanings in
suspension… beyond/below the accretion of data bytes!

11. Several Case Studies (archetypes)
Case Study #1: To Kill A Mockingbird
 – Atticus Finch thinks that justice can prevail for a black man in a white court house in deep-south
Alabama in 1950, but Tom Robinson (defendant) is rooted (being a victim) in the archetype of hatred
such as lynching and the atavistic need to “purify” the culture of black (African) influence and feared
primitivism and tribalism that are perhaps RULING characteristics of Racist Culture. So Tom runs,
trying to escape, disbelieving of walking free (in terms of the archetype waiting to be born) because
he feels that such a miracle is unlikely, or will lead the prevalent racist archetype to rise up in
vengeance. Though he sacrifices his life to this archetype, it rises anyway (great irony here) in the
figure of Bob Ewell, who would kill Atticus’ children in a tribal way to maintain the archetype of
cultural exclusion/racism such as may define Southern culture of the time-- at least in its desire to
subjugate blacks as an archetype of hierarchy that poor whites especially might be likely to enact to
claim their inclusion in white culture… and Only the Ultimate dispossessed outsider, Boo Radley, can
come to their defense because he lives beyond race, beyond culture, in a private world where children
may be lifelong friends and so, to a man his size, worthy of all protection, as being worth so much
MORE than the culture they inhabit! Why Else wouldBoobe out in the woods on lookout fairly late
on Halloween night?!! Did he sense that Ewell was looking for them? Can the innocent sleep at all
when Racism is rampant, even in nature, even in the woods?
Archetype Summary: Existing Racial Archetype Trumps New Justice
Attempt in a Still Racist South (Atticus as Stymied Knight of Progress).

12. Case Study #2: D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
 Paul Morel, son to Gertrude and Walter– In terms of the surface text, Paul
bonds tightly with his mother (certainly an archetypal bond, as Oedipus is a
key Jungian figure) and in opposition to his father, the coal miner who is too
lower-class and grimy from the pit to fit into new middle class domesticity such
as Gertrude represents (new archetype).
 YET: Paul suffers a loss of instinctive connection to male archetypes of power
and position such as mining itself symbolizes, wresting a form of wealth from
the earth, providing economically for the culture– and so suffers indecision and
immolation in the arms of his two love interests in the book, vacillating
between them, one beauty paradigm Miriam, mental energy predominant, one
married and more animistic, Clara. Unable to root himself in the male
archetype that his mother has effectively expelled from the family, Paul is held
in an artistic but emotionally stultifying Oedipal net that nearly destroys him
when Gertrude dies… Thus is the male archetype (providing gender stability
and identity) denied to Paul, with nearly suicidal results (he’s depressive for all
of the last chapter, Derelict, refuses Miriam again, spends lost time in bars,
finally stumbles towards the lights of the city, alone, to attempt some sort of
rebirth…)
Archetype Surprise: The archetype of male role passed from father to son
as abiding strength and rootedness is thwarted. [Paul’s crisis of identity]

13. Asking Students to
Map Textual Archetype(s)
 Use of Tablet to “Map” (w/stylus) possible archetype(s)
Underlay/ Background/Context/Overlay (3-D mapping
software??)
 Size of Shapes on Screen related to amount of perceived
influence– Shapes themselves suggestive of influence,
power, flexibility, vulnerability
 Background Info (as rooted in/exposing archetypes)
 Family context: careers, education
 Local (town, neighborhood, city) Context
 Cultural context
 Historical context
Crisis/Reaction/Revelation Points– Fast Archetype Arrival!

14. Prospective
Creative Writing Applications
 Begin with Mapping (on paper, iPad, etc), adding and sizing elements such as:
 Map #1: Underlying Archetypes
 Family identity/struggle– at the center? the edges?
 Size, shape of neighborhood importance, influence
 Size, force of cultural context, influence
• Map #2: Protagonist’s Characteristics
 Strength of character, force of will
 Knowledge of personal goals: well-defined or ill-defined
 Warmth: caring, compassion index
 Nature: Outgoing/Indwelling– extrovert/introvert index
 Religious/Spiritual Nature
 Romantic Tendencies, Leanings, Goals
Composition Method: Choose Scenic Details (location, season, time of day, other
characters present, etc)– then amalgamate a range of specifics from both maps and allow
these to drive the character into the invented action…

15. Works Cited/Resources
 Orrin Edgar Klapp, Inflation of Symbols: Loss of
Values in American Culture
 Symbols.com
 Wikipedia.com
 Iloveulove.com