Archetypes In The Seventh Man Essay

Archetypes play an important role in creating a story, they symbolize an importance that brings meaning to the story. The author places archetypes to help the story flow which also helps to explain an event in the story and its meaning. In the story The Seventh Man by Haruki Murakami, Murakami does a nice job at using archetypes throughout his story to represent things such as life, death and most importantly reincarnation.
The first time we see Murakami’s use of an archetype is towards the middle of the story. The author uses the archetype water to show how K was reincarnated. Murakami shoes this archetype in the quote “And in its crest, inside its cruel transparent tongue, what I saw was K” (354). Through the waters waves, the seventh man was able to see K again. Another example of the archetype water in the story is when the seventh man again imagines that he is seeing K’s body “In the tip of the wave, as if enclosed in some type of transparent capsule, floated K’s body, reclining on its side” (354).

Another archetype is the watercolor paintings that K did. The watercolor paintings are a direct reminder of K to the seventh man. Whenever The Seventh Man sees a watercolor painting, he has flashbacks of K and what he was like. The author shows the connection between K and the watercolor in the quote “ I opened the bundle again and forced myself to take a hard look at Ks watercolor….as I leafed through the bundle, I found myself steeped in warm memories” (353). K refuses to remember K until he sees the watercolor paintings, it is then that K is emotionally ready to remember K. In this quote, the author shows how hard it was too look at the watercolors “I couldn’t make myself do it, though. After several days of indecision, I opened the bundle again and forced myself to take a long, hard look at K.’s watercolors”