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One Verse Every Week 'THE REBEL ARCHETYPE'

Updated: Apr 30, 2022


The Rebel Archetype

There are twelve main literary archetypes derived from Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung's findings. The Rebel is one of the twelve:


The Rebel archetype represents a very strong sense of justice, so much so that they, typically, are unwilling to make any compromises. The Rebels refuse to abide by social norms. The rebellion is often loud and on display. Prince Hamlet, the titular character of Shakespeare's play, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, seeks revenge for his father's murder. In seeking revenge he feigns madness, to embarrass, confuse and shock his uncle Claudius, the murderer and his mother Gertrude, who instead of mourning her husband's death, has wasted no time in marrying her husband's brother and the murderer. Hamlet's madness is him rebelling against the new King and his mother Gertrude — for he refuses to accept and forgive his mother's naivety. This intense exchange between Hamlet and his mother is an example of the archetype the Rebel:


QUEEN GERTRUDE What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me? HAMLET Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow: Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act. QUEEN GERTRUDE Ay me, what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index? HAMLET Look here, upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See, what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man: This was your husband. Look you now, what follows: Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have, Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err, Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd But it reserved some quantity of choice, To serve in such a difference. What devil was't That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, Since frost itself as actively doth burn And reason panders will. QUEEN GERTRUDE O Hamlet, speak no more: Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct. HAMLET Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty,-- QUEEN GERTRUDE O, speak to me no more; These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears; No more, sweet Hamlet!

[III.iv.45-107]


And Prince Hamlet engages in conversations with other characters of the play, in a similar manner.

 

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