A Hero With A Thousand Faces: Characters #1
In my previous article I explained the beginning of the our hero's journey. This time we going to see that which characters walk with us for our journey. This is all about which methods are used when creating a story. The methods described here have been used for centuries. I do not offer any new way of narration. I want to create awareness on the existing method and to use these methods better. If you become aware of the methods, you can use them better. The discovery of these methods was also made by Joseph Campbell, which i use his book name on my series. A Hero With A Thousand Faces. If you missed the previous posts you can get them from the links below.
In the first post i mentioned archetypes. I said that archetypes appeared in a different way in each film. But they all served the same purpose. The types of characters I will talk about here also serve the same purpose. All of them have a different mission. They contribute to the hero on his own journey. Even though their mission is different, the supreme purpose is the same: Continue the hero's journey. First of all, lets see what types we have.
1) Mentor: Wise Old Man or Woman
2) Threshold Guardian
3) Herald
4) Shapeshifter
5) Shadow
6) Ally
7) Trickster
Mentor: Wise Old Man or Woman
The mentor will always guide us. There are people we see as guiding in all of our lives. These mentors put us in a good or bad way. Storys always has a mentor. The task of the mentor characters is to put the hero in the adventure. I mentioned it in my first post. Every hero is not enthusiastic about starting the journey. These heroes have some events or characters that will act them. The mentor also symbolize the parents that we dont have. If your mentor is not your dad or mother, they are inadequate in some issues. So we close the missing aspects with other mentors. For example, Yoda in Star Wars is a good mentor character. He is also symbolize Luke Skywalker's dad that he don't have.
Not all mentors are the same. There are good and bad mentors. For example, Batman's mentor, Ducard, is not a good mentor. He's almost torturing to the Batman. But we look closely, If Ducard isn't take Bruce for the training, there will be no Batman. Just like Yoda. If we do not have mentors, we dont't have heroes either. So even though we see that two mentor differently, their mission is essentially the same. Another example, Tony "Duke" Evers in Rocky has a role like Yoda. The mentor Duke gain power to the heroes. All mentor characters can be good or bad. But they are most importantly archetypes in all storys.
As i say, all archetypes has same purpose. But they are not like mentor archetypes at all. They all have different missions. In my next post, i will talk about Threshold Guardian and Herald. They are very interesting archetypes in story telling. When we finish that all archetypes, we can continue that our hero's journey. If you enjoy the serie, stay on follow!
