In the movie Finding Nemo, Dory plays the trickster archetype. She shows the characteristics of the trickster archetype by playing the clownish sidekick, hidden troublemaker, and village idiot. Throughout the movie, she is a catalyst for change and cuts egos down to size.
She shows the characteristic of clownish sidekick when she meets Marlin, first by literally running right into him and smacking heads with him and then shortly after she invites him to follow her to find the boat that took Marlin’s son, Nemo, she forgets where they are going and gets mad at him for following her saying “Will you quit it? I’m trying to swim here.” From that point on, she is his clownish sidekick accompanying him on the journey to find his lost son,
Nemo. Her perpetual optimism shines when Marlin
…show more content…
She is a catalyst for change throughout the movie as she leads Marlin out of his comfort zone and teaching him to embrace the unknown. One example of this is in the whale scene when she tells
Marlin that the whale said “It’s time to let go” and Marlin resists asking “How do you know something bad isn’t going to happen?” and Dory tells him “I don’t.” They both let go and whale shoots them out the blowhole into Sydney harbor. Towards the end of the movie when they get to Sydney, Dory finds Nemo after Marlin left, she asks one of the crabs to help and the crab sasses her saying “Yeah, I saw him, Bluey. But I'm not telling you where he went! And there's no way you're gonna make me” so she grabs him, takes him to the surface forcing him to give in so he doesn’t get eaten by the birds, this shows Dory cutting egos down to size. In the end, Dory is the ultimate catalyst for change in Marlin’s treatment of Nemo; she gets Marlin to realize that he has to stop being so overprotective and let Nemo live a little. These are the five characteristics of a trickster that Dory shows throughout the movie, Finding Nemo