An archetype is a pattern seen throughout characters, situations, or symbols in literature, film, and TV. Several archetypes seen today are also in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, a play written over 400 years ago. The play is about the events surrounding the assassination of Julius Caesar. Three archetypes seen in both the play and modern film are the heroic figure, the thunderstorm, and the death of Julius Caesar.
In Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar is looked at as this brave courageous hero. Through out Rome statues and other arts are placed in honor of Julius Caesar. This shows that the Roman civilians look up to Julius Caesar. A modern example of this is the man of steal. In the movie everyone views superman as a hero.
Throughout the story Shakespeare used symbols to help the reader comprehend what’s going to happen next. Shakespeare uses the lions stalking through the city as one of the symbols in this story. I believe Shakespeare uses this symbol to compare the lions to the conspirators. In the modern life when a lion is stalking that means they are getting ready to kill a prey.
In the Tragedy of Julius Caesar, the conspirators and others plotted against Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was given signs telling him that he would die. However, being the courageous brave hero he is Julius ignored the signs. Eventually, the conspirators ambushes Caesar and stabs Caesar until he dies. A modern example of these events is the movie Star Wars, when Yoda warns told Anakin that he was going to go to the dark side.
Being able to identify the different archetypes can be beneficial to the reader. Having this skill can help the reader predict the events that are about to happen in the story. This skill can also help the reader with understanding what is being read in the story by comparing it to modern movies, literature and etc.