American Archetypes

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American Archetypes
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Leslie Fiedler

• INTERETHNIC MALE BONDING
• Appears over and over in books by white American
  male authors
• Idyllic anti-marriage
• Homoerotic love
• A life-long, passionate (though chaste)
  relationship between two men of different races

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Interethnic Male Bonding (Fiedler)

• Consummated in the wilderness between a
  dark-skinned savage and a white refugee from
  civilization
• On a whaling ship (Moby Dick)
• Ishmael and Queequeg
• On a raft in the Mississippi (Huckleberry Finn)
• Huck Finn and Jim
• In the wilderness of the frontier (The
  Leatherstocking Tales)
• Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook

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Jung would say

• What is revealed in this archetypal story is an
  aspect of our psycho-social fantasy life quite
  different from the nightmare of miscegenation and
  sexual jealousy which has cued most of our past
  history, and a cause therefore for modest hope in
  the future. This hope has seemed justified by
  the persistence of the myth.

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Georges Michel Sarotte, French critic

• Like a Brother, Like a Lover Male Homosexuality
  in the American Novel and Theatre from Herman
  Melville to James Baldwin (1978)
• Four Archetypes of the Homosexual Couple
• Captain/Soldier (Sailor)
• Captain Vere Billy Budd (Melville)
• Black/White
• Huck Finn and Jim
• Hero Worship/Adolescent
• Teacher/Pupil

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Myths About Home

• Domestic Myth Home-as-Heaven
• To be sought in quest of maturity,
  responsibility, and Christian salvation
• Louisa May Alcotts Little Women
• Anti-domestic Myth Home-as-Hell
• To be fled from just for the sake of freedom
• Tom Sawyer Huckleberry Finn
• Kate Chopins The Awakening
• Twain The American home is an artificial
  paradise camouflaging a real Hell.

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Male/Masculine Myths

• Man in Nature
• Male bonding in woods/wild
• Outside of home, family, society
• Alone or with companion (see interethnic male
  bonding)
• If not in reality, then in dreams
• Thoreau
• Natty Bumppo/Leatherstocking Tales
• Jack London stories
• Ernest Hemingway stories

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• Initiation
• Males rite of passage into manhood (the real
  world) through killing
• Native American killing a bear
• Young white boy killing first deer
• White man live by the macho code, Kill or be
  killed

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• Extinction
• the vanishing breed
• The American Cowboy
• Seen in Western movies
• The Native American
• Invisible until recent years

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Archetypal Characters

• Good Bad Boy
• Wicked enough to be interesting, virtuous enough
  not to break female hearts
• Tom Sawyer
• Can be tamed into becoming a Good Man by the
  right woman
• High Noon (Gary Coopers character)

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Archetypal Characters

• Good Good Boy
• Always doing what he is supposed to
• Become bankers and judges

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Archetypal Characters

• Bad Bad Boy
• Become outlaws and Western sheriffs
• Owen Wisters The Virginian
• Jack Shaefers Shane Monty Walsh
• Clint Eastwoods roles as Dirty Harry, Josey
  Wales, man with no name (spaghetti Westerns),
  etc.
• Solitary figure
• Doesnt always do whats right, but has distinct
  morals/values

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Stereotypes of Women

• Fair Virgin
• Pure
• Honor must be defended by the white male
• Dark Lady
• Harlot/prostitute
• Women of questionable heritage
• Honor not worthy of defending

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Archetypal Characters

• Good Good Girl
• Dies at an early age, before being stained with
  worldliness
• Beth in Little Women
• Eva in Uncle Toms Cabin

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Archetypal Characters

• Good Bad Girl
• Shunned by general society because she doesnt
  conform
• Has a good heart
• Western Saloon girl/ Prostitute
• Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke
• Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman

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Archetypal Characters

• Good Mother
• Good White Mother
• Usually absentee/not a major participant
• Good Black Mother
• Substitutes for Good White Mother in many cases
  (mammy)

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Archetypal Characters

• Terrible Mother
• Wicked stepmother
• Witch /sorceress
• Siren
• Whore

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Archetypal Characters

• African American Stereotypes
• Enduring Blacks/Good
• Mammy/Prissy (Gone With the Wind)
• Uncle Tom (Uncle Toms Cabin)
• Kunta Kinte (Roots)
• Bad
• Usually portrayed as rapist
• Richard Wrights Bigger Thomas (Native Son)
• Faulkners Joe Christmas
• The Klansman (Thomas Dixon)

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• Miscegenation
• Marriage or cohabitation between a man and woman
  of different races
• Taboo in American culture

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• Miscegenation
• Rarely depicted in early American literature
• Avoidance of it
• Coopers Last of the Mohicans
• Uncas keeps him from consummating love of woman
  of different race (Cora) by killing them both
• Hawkeye recoils in horror when asked to mate
  with a squaw Theres no cross in my blood.
• Fear of it lead to

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• Interethnic Rape Myth
• Threat from black male South
• Threat from American Indian male
  Western/pre-colonial East
• Only to pure white virginal woman
• Any woman of questionable heritage is not
  considered a violation

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• Animal Motif
• Children nursed/raised by wild animals
• Live by instinct/can never adjust to
  civilization
• Romulus and Remus
• Tarzan
• Jungle Book
• Lucan, Wolf Boy