Pygmalion Archetype Essay

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An Archetype is a typical character, or action and situation that seem to represent universal patterns of human nature. For example a hero such as superman, he is a character who mainly shows goodness and struggles against evil in order to restore justice to society. Also, the joker is an archetype of a villain whose function is to go maintain evil and do harm to their enemy. The myth of Pygmalion is one of the most powerful and motivated ancient Greek myths, and became the main theme for theatrical plays, movies and artistic paintings. The myth talks about how the roman poet Ovid became disgusted by some local prostitutes, and lost interest in women. He dedicated himself and his art work and soon created a statue. The statue was named Galatea, …show more content…

He wished to the gods that Galatea would come to life and his wishes were true and they both had a baby. Another myth that compares to the Pygmalion myth is the play Pygmalion written by George Bernard Shaw. In the play Higgins creates this lady and somehow towards the end seems to fall in love with her just like the man fell in love with sculpture. They both created something so powerful and fell in love with it. The role of education in Pygmalion plays a big role in the play. Education shows that it can be used as a tool for independent work for individuals. Eliza has to give up personal features to be transformed into this classy educated lady. Language is connected into her identity and through education and learning the right way to speak and dress to find a new identity. Eliza goes from saying things like “Don’t you be saucy. You ain’t heard what I come for yet.”(act1) To transforming and saying things like “The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.”(act2) Eliza realizes this whole time she has been taught to be a lady but all she really needed to do is to be nice and be much more lady like. The role of integrity and morality also plays out in this play. In this play Higgins teaches Eliza what the right and proper way to speak. Higgins in the beginning is very rude and insincere towards Eliza’s feelings. He says unnecessary things like “she’s no