Archetype Example Essay, Research Paper

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She woke up again in the middle of the night dripping with cold sweat. It happened

again the same dream that had plagued her since she was a little girl. There was no

reason logically for her to be having it but it always came. Now more frequently than

before it was coming about every couple of weeks now. As she trembled she recalled the

events in her head she was playing by herself in a grassy field all alone. Then out of the

corner of her eye she saw the movement that terrified her. The thing is that it was a

harmless little baby snake that looked like it would never do anyone harm. Then as she

looked down at the snake again it was slowly wrapping its self around her ankle. As

always she laughed at it because it was so small it tickled her, then the snake began to

gradually grow and wrap its self further and further around her leg until finally it was so

big that it wrapped its self around her completely. It was as if this tiny snake had, by

wrapping its self around her consumed her to the point where she couldn t breath any

more and then just as quickly as the dream started it ended.

Soon the morning came and as always she awoke from her sleepless night barley

in time to go to school and follow her sluggish routine. Still she made it to school and as

always she forced herself to go to each class dispite her lack of ambition. She was an

average student with only a close few friends who even being regarded as close barley

knew her. She being a quiet girl and keeping to herself for was seen as an outcast from

the rest of her peers. She wasn t the typical girl that was occupied with her looks and

which boys were the cutest but more into the intellectual side of things. She had always

pondered the abstract issues that no one of the age of 17 really gave much thought to

such as religion or the world as people knew it.

Her child hood was a normal one with parent that brought her up as a free thinker

and not someone to follow the norm . For this she was extradited by those around her.

Still she continued to be this free thinker and somewhat of an enigma to all. No one

could figure her out and to be honest no one cared to for she never fit in so it didn t

matter.

As time passed she grew distant from people. The parents that loved her, the few

friends that cared and the teachers that knew her full potential as a student. The only

thing that seemed constant was the snake dream the was still reoccurring more and more

frequently as the time passed along. Her parents were obviously worried so they sent her

to counselor after counselor but to no avail. Her school work started to fail and she

closed off all ties with everyone. She was consumed with her readings of religion and

philosophy and the world issues. Thus spiraling her into deep states of depressions. For

everything she read was in a negative context. Only to condemn herself even more so

than ever. School was a joke to her it didn t matter anymore she was now feeling things

that she had never felt before. She had these strong feelings of hate and pent up anger

towards the other girls the would not accept her for who she was. This was to the

complete other end of the spectrum from the way she was only a short couple of months

previous. Everyone now saw the change from the type of music she listened to, to the

way she dressed.

This new image was definatly putting her aside from everyone around her and

also making everyone feel the same way that she felt towards her pure and utter hatred.

She begun to feed on this and thrive the more people hated her the more she would do it

just for the purpose of seeing them get angry or frustrated for no matter how hard her

peers tried they couldn t discredit her from her means. For the knowledge she gained

from reading would give her the means to justify her actions and no one could match her

intellectual state of mind. All that surrounded her were beginning to have this sense of

fear. They were afraid that she would go off on one of her little speels if someone so

much as looked at her the wrong way.

By now the dreams were becoming more and more vivid and also were happening

every night but now instead of waking up in a cold sweat and trembling she loved them

they became part of her almost to a point where they were being absorbed by her soul, by

her very being.

Now every morning she would wake up completely exhausted but still ready to

enter the day with a full arsenal of hate for it was easier to spread hate to everyone than

to look for the good and focus on that. She progressively became worse and now it was

moving on from verbal assaults and was starting to move on to physical assaults to

anyone that was daring enough to say anything at all to her. She was constantly in a state

of depression where no one could reach her it was as if she was in a world all of her own.

So distant that no counselor or psychologist could make any break through she was

killing herself from the inside out and people were just waiting for the final snap before

something very drastic happened and the sad part is that no one could tell what it would

be or when it would happen.

Then one night the dream came more vivid and more lucid than ever before and

instead of waking up with the feeling of power that was now all to familiar she woke to

the old feelings of being scared and the trembling soon followed. She had finally broke

something inside her had snapped. She now sat over her desk in her room and the hate

that she once had fed on is now doing quite the opposite to her and as she sat there alone

at the desk, with a gun to my left temple and tears streaming down both cheeks. She

began to write not for her parents or her peers or anybody else that may have come into

contact with her but for herself. She needed this it had finally consumed her, the serpent

that from the time when she was so little was only a distant nightmare had become the

thing that had finally after all these years consumed her. Just as in the dream it had done

it in real life too the dream ended with her being completely wrapped up in the serpent

and that is what translated into reality. So she sat there crying and tried to realize what

the dream finally meant and as she did the tears poured from her eyes and the gun

dropped from her hands. She had more power over herself than the dream did. The

snake in the dream she figured was this impending evil that was trying to overcome and

take over her. Still the will power of this young girl had overcome the serpents grasp and

with the sound of the gun hitting the floor her parents ran in and saw what a mess their

daughter was in. All they could think to do was to hold her and that made the difference

she had over come her serpent but many others will never over come theirs.

The archetype in the story was that of the serpent representing the evil in life and I used it

in the context of Carl Jung s collective unconscious therefore putting it in the dream of

the girl mentioned. The serpent was the internal struggle that was trying to consume the

girls self worth and as soon as she recognized it for what it was she had the common

sense to stop and to try to right her wrongs.