The Seeker may at first glance seem similar to the Innocent, since both pursue some grand objective, but the distinction is that the Seeker desires to achieve their goal through hard work and realistic expectations: they are looking for something that allows them to make the world a better place (or at least allows them to transform the world, which they will then use for "good").

Background

For those of us just seeing this series for the first time, I'm writing a series on using Pearson's personality archetypes (affiliate link) in storytelling. This profile, of the Seeker, is the tenth of twelve entries in this series, following the Destroyer, Orphan, Innocent, the Sage, the Warrior, the Ruler, the Magician, the Caregiver, and the Lover. You might also be interested in my earlier series on the Hero and Hero's Journey and the Nemesis.

If you just want a quick recap or introduction, here's the gist: archetypes are recurring patterns that have proven to be pretty universal. They're cognitive schemes that allow us to examine behavior and narratives in light of a coherent whole. That makes them valuable tools to audiences and storytellers, since they make stories authentic and lend them meaning.

Understanding the Seeker

The Seeker is someone who goes past the known toward the unknown to try and bring about a change in their world. They are distinct from the Innocent, who desires to have some grand vision come to pass but are hazy on the details and practical implementation of those ideas, and from the Sage, who seeks Truth because of what it is. They are also distinct from the Magician, who seeks power in (oft-forbidden) knowledge itself.

The Seeker's goal is a means to a particular end; they have some objective, and they define their life around grasping it and bringing it into reality.

This is not to say that the Seeker is never utopian and starry-eyed, but if they are their objectives are to find the thing which brings about their utopia, not merely worship its form and ideal.

The Seeker thrives in the unknown world–the supernatural world–of the Hero's Journey. They are willing to forego the comforts of home if it means a chance at a better future. The Seeker leaves home, both literally and metaphorically, to become who they will be, and achieve what they can.

This can take a variety of diverse forms and be the product of any set of motives, from the desire to find a better life to, like Gilgamesh, a desire to pursue immortality. King Arthur's knights search for the Holy Grail, a divine object that grants life and power to its possessor. Explorers seek the first land of a new world, either across the oceans or across the stars.

King Arthur's knights and a vision of the Holy Grail, by Evrard d'Espinques

The Seeker is the traditional Hero archetype distilled to its core, where the motivation for the Hero's Journey is intrinsic. They do not need a visible, pressing problem to drive them to go on their adventures, because they want these adventures as part of their core.

The Seeker is able to do things that nobody else would do because they are comfortable with a self-imposed exile, leaving behind everything they know to go and seek the unknown.

The Seeker's Shadow

The weakness of the Seeker is that their pursuit is that they can disconnect from the world around them, either becoming arrogant, disconnected, prideful, or self-destructively monomaniacal.

Arrogance comes in the Seeker's willingness to leave their community. After adventuring into the unknown and finding it to be safe, they often have an over-wrought view of their own importance, making them into tragic figures capable of going beyond boundaries that they have long ago ceased to recognize but which are still important in their lives.

A disconnect from others can also haunt them: leaving a community is their main call in life, but a healthy Seeker does not leave a community for the sake of leaving. A dysfunctional Seeker may not find anything in their world to bring them back, and as a result when they go beyond the ordinary world and into the supernatural world they never return; even if they are triumphant they have nowhere to bring light back into because they no longer care about their place of origin.

That is inherently tragic, but the Seeker who is truly lost at sea may also weaken themselves, causing them to fail when a more loyal counterpart would succeed. Seekers can also grow restless, continuously starting new journeys even before their first is finished, leading themselves down a road of misery where they will eventually find that they have nothing to value.

Pride is another problem that can develop as a result of the Seeker's outlook and actions. They believe that they are so perfect due to their endeavors that they no longer respect others, and they may also begin to hold themselves to impossible standards. The end result of this is that the Seeker has unrealistic expectations along the same lines as the Innocent, but without the willingness to rely on others that the Innocent can fall back to.

Finally, the Seeker can be destructively monomaniacal, seeking one objective to the point of destruction, like a fighter pilot who refuses to pull up because he can fire another set of missiles at a target on the ground. When you combine this with the ability of some Seekers to rapidly shift the focus of their adventures, these Seekers can quickly burn themselves out, leaving humanity behind as they seek something that lies further and further in the unknown beyond.

The Villainous Seeker

The villainous Seeker pursues profane goals, or the obliteration of the human inside them.

They go beyond mere mortality, beyond good and evil. The focus of their goals is no longer considered as part of a grand scheme of things, much like the focus of an Innocent consumed by Shadow, and instead becomes Meaning, rather than something which may be meaningful.

The villainous Seeker can justify any destruction, just as the villainous Innocent can, but the difference is that the Seeker will go out into the unknown to find it. Many villainous Seekers may look like the Magician or the Ruler, when in reality their focus is far more personal and far more internally bitter. Pearson argues that Lucifer is an example of the Seeker archetype–one who wants to become so great and so beautiful that this pursuit becomes wicked in its own right because it automatically leads to the negation of everyone else.

This villainous Seeker forgets morals, forgets ethics, forgets others. When they voyage into the unknown, they do not embrace or explore it: they trample it. While this may not be evil in and of itself (after all, the unknown can be a place of wickedness and worthlessness) the attitude that they take toward everything else is a hybrid of cynical apathy and self-righteous disdain.

They may forget what they are, becoming Nietzsche's self-created monster that once sought to fight its own kind. But they never reach the sacrificial destruction of the Destroyer: their destruction is driven, motivated, and not just predatory but visionary.

The Seeker in Star Wars

Chirrut Îmwe in Rogue One is an example of the Seeker in Star Wars. A monk and one of the Guardians of the Whills, he has pursued a mastery of the Force as the goal of his journey.

Despite being blind, the Force permits Îmwe (a developed Seeker) to follow the Force, and his companion, Baze Malbus, becomes a hesitant Seeker over the course of the movie.

The emphasis of the Seeker in this film is complicated; in many places Îmwe serves as a Sage figure, but the focus is different: the call of adventure hangs in the air for the two Guardians, who follow it to become embroiled in a conflict that will shake the galaxy.

This is not uncommon for Seekers, who make great heroic figures. Both Îmwe and Malbus serve as characters that bridge the gap between the ordinary, mundane world of the characters that surround them, and the mystical world of the Force, as many members of the Jedi did in the era of the Republic.

Using the Seeker in Storytelling

The Seeker is a powerful archetype because of its symbiotic relationship with the Hero's Journey. Because their goal is self-motivating for them, they can be great as an impetus for a story, being essentially able to shape a narrative entirely by their independent goals and the way that they respond to the obstacles in their way.

As a result, adding a Seeker is possible in almost any context and any story. Even if there is no massive unknown world, the Seeker can search for something within themselves that pushes them beyond their mortal limits in a process of self-improvement.

The Seeker also makes a great tragic figure. Their internal flaws become exacerbated as they place themselves under pressure, making for a great opportunity for someone older and wiser to set them on the road to correct principles or set up a tragedy without relying on bad intentions, information, or moral flaws that would involve the deliberate mistreatment of others.

The Seeker also resonates with people on a deep psychological level, as does any other archetype, but they are aspirational in their goals. Because they reach for the stars, they are able to ennoble us in a unique way, inspiring us to our own endeavors.

Seekers, should they be healthy in worldview and outlook, push us to look at things with a balanced approach: they don't seek power for power's sake, but also appreciate its worth; they don't control others, but are not dependent on them; they don't seek confrontation, or shy away from it.

Seekers open up opportunities because they are able to look around them and use their heads. As they fall to their Shadow, they lose this ability, but still believe that they have it. This makes them powerful villains, because they can often come to a realization of what they have done and redeem themselves, or at least experience regret for their wrong actions.

Using the Seeker in Gaming

Seekers in games go beyond what others do because they can. They want to have an opportunity to open new frontiers, to break the mold. They experiment and explore for the sake of experimentation and exploration, and they quest with the end-goal in mind.

To give the Seeker room to shine, you need to make sure three things are available:

• A distant, but obtainable (or plausible) goal
• Room for improvement in characters
• A home to be left behind on the journey

Remember that the Seeker is closely tied to the Hero's Journey, so they need to be able to bring the journey to fruition: leaving home, improving themselves, slaying the dragon, and returning home again to change the world for the better–this last step is often lacking and is crucial to a Seeker's well-rounded development.

Wrapping Up

The Seeker wants to find a way to change and improve their world, which requires them to explore and change themselves to be worthy of the opportunity. They blend a mature approach to their own self with the courage and discretion needed to handle the threats, and while they may still need help from others they are able to venture into the unknown world with confidence.

The weakness of the Seeker is their ability to detach and form delusional views of themselves, inflating their ego or distancing themselves from their fellows.