If you’ve ever seen The Breakfast Club, you’ll know that at the beginning of the movie each teen identified as and viewed each other as a different archetype: a brain, an athlete, a basket-case, a princess, and a criminal. But by the end of the film, they were able to understand and admit that they all share many of the characteristics associated with each other’s groups, and that they had all simplified each other to a stereotype. This is how I feel about archetypes, too—archetypes are easy and can fit one’s surface, but they are not realistic. Humans are dynamic beings and no person can fit into one static stereotype. Sometimes, our species may seem like the only thing we have in common with another person, but if you look beyond their exterior, you are guaranteed to be surprised. It’s our natural instinct to judge quickly—a necessary means of survival by assessing a situation for danger. It’s when these judgments are retained and then applied to others that archetypes are formed. However, this leads to the generalization of whole groups of individuals who have many different qualities outside of the characteristics stereotypically …show more content…
I imagine that it would be hard to fit me into an archetype, but for someone who doesn’t know my variety of interests, sorting me into a convenient classification might be easy. Another reason that I believe archetypes cannot be realistic is the fact that people change. People change by the day, by the hour, by the minute. A definition excludes the possibility for change. I cannot embrace an archetype because I embrace change. I am a multitude. I do not identify as any archetype, and I don’t think that any other person could correctly identify as one either. Identity archetypes are a system of quick classification that we use to manage our social observations, but you can’t truly believe them, because they cannot comprehend an entire