Michael Nielson, Dixie State University
Humanities
Character development is arguably the greatest driving force in fiction writing. But how does an author create a believable, complex character? Oftentimes, writers attempt to mimic characters they’ve encountered in literature. These characters repeated over time are generally known as character-specific archetypes; However, these archetypes delve deeper than writers simply copying other writers. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines archetypes as a “symbol, theme, setting, or character-type that recurs in different times and places in myth, literature, folklore, dreams, and rituals so frequently or prominently as to suggest that it embodies some essential element of ‘universal’ human experience.” This paper will survey the effectiveness of writers consciously using character-specific archetypes—such as the hero, the sage, and the jester—drawing upon the expertise of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Victoria Schmidt with specific attention to J. R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings series and Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. Ultimately, I will suggest that the best way to create a believable, complex character is through the conscious use of archetypes, which allows the reader full immersion into the fictional work and fosters the suspension of disbelief.