Hero Archetypes

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Influenced by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell who saw he hero quest as a model for modern life, Carol S. Pearson wrote a book called The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By, published in 1986, later followed by Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Find Ourselves And Transform Our World in 1991, in which she describes several archetypes of a hero that can be found not only in stories but also in each of us. The Twelve Archetypes described in her book are The Innocent, The Orphan, The Warrior, The Caregiver, The Seeker, The Destroyer, The Lover, The Creator, The Ruler, The Magician, The Sage and The Fool. While Joseph Campbell preferred not to classify heroes by types, believing that stories about heroes are deep and eternal, …show more content…
She distinguishes each of the Archetypes through their goal or quest, their fear, their dragon problem (Middle age traditionally, heroes were aimed to fight dragons, or what could be representative of the “opposant”), their response to the task and their gift and virtue. The goal usually is the quest that the hero archetype has set out on. The hero may not realize he is on such a quest until it is too late to retreat. As for the Warrior this might be to win, to gain fame for their exploits and be “noticed”, while for the Ruler it is to regain order. The hero's fear is usually the motivating factor for undergoing the quest, to remind him why he is taking such risks. So for the Sage, for whom truth is its goal, deception can be its fear. This fear also is the principal danger that lurks in the shadow of the archetypes. In fact each archetype also has a shadow side, that is triggered by its fear and surfaced during the fight with the dragon. In her book Pearson explains, that "Heroes confront dragons, and that these dragons can be of many kinds". When the hero feels awful, he is stuck expressing an archetype in its negative guise. In most quests, the hero meets his dragon, which is the problem or obstacle of the quest, the disruptive element, which can also be a situation. The hero must overcome it in order for the quest to be successful. In order to overcome this problem the hero has a task to accomplish. Succeeding at the task is usually sufficient to overcome the dragon, however, failure can lead to what the hero fears most: becoming his dark self, or shadow. Succeeding at the quest earns the hero rewards of self, the virtue and gift. For the fool this would be for example joy and freedom, for the Destroyer humility.
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