Avatar Archetypes Archetypes are one of the rare things in the world that speak a universal language. By using powerful archetypes in literature, an author can move a story forward and make it more comprehensible for the reader. The movie Avatar was written and directed by James Camryn in 2009 and is a prime example of powerful archetypes that propel a story forward. Avatar takes place in the futuristic world of 2154. Humans in Avatar are on a planet called Pandora where a strange species called Na’vi live.
These creatures have human-like intelligence, however, the Omaticaya Na’vi tribe’s home is located right where a huge load of valuable metal called unobtanium can be found. The human’s mission on Pandora is to gain the valuable metal. In an effort to gain unobtanium, humans are being turned into artificial Na’vi people to try to get to know the Omaticaya tribe in order to strike a trade with them. Jake Sully is taking over his brother’s role as an artificial Na’vi, called an Avatar, but ends up going through a greater adventure than he had ever imagined.
Avatar has both a main plot and subplot. The main plot involves Jakes original journey to acquire unobtanium and the subplot involves Jake’s journey as an Avatar with the Na’vi people. The fact that Avatar has many character, situational, and symbolic archetypes, helps the movie progress forward in a very understandable way. Both the subplot and plot follow the “hero’s journey”, which clearly lays out Jake’s steps to success. Avatar’s archetypes of the “hero’s journey”, character, situational, and symbolic archetypes all connect in a way that is necessary to move the plot forward.
The most important character archetypes in Avatar are Jake, as the hero role, and Grace and Neytiri as the two mentor roles. The mentors help create the strong protagonist character of Jake and are companions in Jake’s fight to a resolution. In both the plot and subplot of Avatar, if Grace and Neytiri wouldn’t have taught Jake important lessons, he would have never been able to achieve ultimate success. In the main plot of Avatar, Grace aids Jake with the assimilation into an unknown culture. An example of Grace helping Jake is when she gives Jake advice to save his life when put up against a large rhino-like creature.
Grace tells jake to stand his ground as not attack him, which saves Jake’s life. Neytiri taught Jake the importance of Nature, how to hunt, and how to do everyday tasks in Na’vi life such as connecting her halo with his direhorse. Since Jake is living in a society that is completely unfamiliar to him, both Grace and Neytiri teach Jake about a society that they themselves are familiar with. Without the mentor and hero archetype, Jake would have been oblivious to the Pandora society and would have never been able to defend himself and the Na’vi people.
The mentors turn Jake from an average human into a warrior that had something worth fighting for. The skills that Neytiri and Grace taught Jake Sully, were essential to his survival and progress throughout the movie. While the heroes and mentors are very important archetypes to further Avatar, if it weren’t for the archetype of the friendly beast, the Toruk, Jake would have never succeeded in his journey. Friendly beast archetypes show that nature is on the side of the hero. When the Toruk obeyed Jake, it was clear that nature is on the side of the Na’vi since the Na’vi people are trying to protect nature.
After Neytiri and the rest of the Na’vi people found out that Jake was helping the humans, the Omaticaya tribe turned against Jake and lost trust in him. The trust that Jake lost was very difficult for Jake to gain in the first place when the Na’vi tribe first met him. Jake knew that even though all of the tribes did not want any part of him anymore, he had to help them fight against the “sky people”. On Jake’s journey back to the Na’vi people, Jake leaped onto the Toruk and road back to the tribes.
When Jake road to the tribes and the Na’vi saw him riding on the Toruk, which is a creature that is ighly respected and only appears when it is absolutely needed, the Na’vi realized that Jake was an important ally in their battle against humans. It was a very rare occurrence for the Toruk to show up and it’s appearance showed what side or the fight Jake was really on and where his loyalties really lie. If this “beast” would have never transported Jake in triumph, the Na’vi people would have never respected and trusted Jake enough to fight alongside him and win the ultimate battle. Various characters all take on a role in situational archetypes.
The most prevalent situational archetype in Avatar is nature vs. the mechanistic world. Nature vs. mechanistic world is a situation in which futuristic humans go against nature. The futuristic humans in Avatar are the soldiers and the kernel and nature are the Na’vi. The Na’vi are very nature oriented and live in nature as well as rely on it for everyday life. The mechanistic world is the antagonist in the Avatar subplot because the humans tried to destroy the Omaticaya tribe’s home which is in the heart of nature at a large tree that is referred to as the “home tree”.
The Na’vi people were disgraced by the destruction of the home tree and it pushed them to fight even harder and become even more powerful which overall lead to the human or “mechanistic world” to lose the battle. After the kernel decides to attack the Na’vi instead of trying to make a deal with them is when the nature vs. mechanistic world conflict starts to occur. If Camryn would have never included this situation in the movie, the plot and subplot would never have developed a conflict. The nature vs. mechanistic world archetype sets up the main plot and conflict of the movie.
The side of nature in nature vs. mechanistic is demonstrated by the tree symbol archetype. This tree in Avatar is called the Home Tree and is highly important to the Na’vi. In order to gain the valuable metal unobtanium, humans had to destroy the Home Tree. The tree being destroyed was when the Na’vi realized that they were actually in real danger and when they began to plan retaliation. The tree archetype represents immortality, growth, and strength of family. The Family Tree showed the strong bond between the Na’vi and specifically the Omaticaya tribe.
The Na’vi people truly respected and cared for this tree and it represented their strength as a species and family. When the movie showed the reaction of the tribe after the machines started coming in to attack the Home Tree, it showed the true terror of the tribe, especially when many Na’vi people began to die. The tree archetype gave the Na’vi people a reason to fight against the humans, it represented something that was significantly important to their society and triggered the anger they needed to succeed.
The call to adventure is an important step in hero’s journey and sets the tone for the entire story in Avatar. The call to adventure is the catalyst for all other events that take place. In the main plot of Avatar, the call to adventure is when Jake’s brother, Tom Sully dying. Tom Sully was originally in the Avatar program but was sadly murdered by a thief. Luckily, Jake and Tom had identical DNA that was needed to transform his Avatar and Jake was asked to travel to Pandora in order to continue the mission Tom had started.
This is the call to action because if Tom had never died, Jake would have never been asked to travel to Pandora to help become close with the Na’vi. Tom Sully’s death also sparks an emotional connection to Jake’s mission and encourages Jake. The call to adventure in Avatar’s subplot is when Neytiri brings Jake Sully back to her tribe and Mo’at tells Neytiri that she must teach Jake their native ways. Neytiri is not thrilled about teaching Jake because he is very clueless to the society at first. Neytiri teaching jake about everyday life as a Na’vi makes Jake begin to understand, love, and care for the Na’vi people.
This is important to the plot because the eventual love that Jake feels toward the Na’vi people pushes Jake to fight for the Na’vi people in the battle against the humans. In both the plot and subplot, the call to adventure gives lake an emotional attachment that will influence his future decisions throughout the movie. Just as the call to adventure is an important aspect of the “hero’s journey”, the crossing of the threshold show the changes that occurred because of the experiences that happened throughout the movie. In Avatar, the crossing of the threshold is the same in both the subplot and plot.
After the humans lose the war and leave the planet, Jake makes the decision to transfer from his human body to his avatar form in order to become a true Na’vi. The Na’vi have made Jake sully truly understand nature and have made him realize that he will be truly happy if he becomes a Na’vi. In the beginning of the movie, the kernel promised Jacob that if he succeeded in his journey, the kernel would get jake proper legs and ironically, when jake becomes a true Na’vi, he gets the legs he was promised by the person who became his enemy.
While Jake does not cross a physical threshold, he passes a mental threshold and becomes who he was really meant to be and is no longer the person he used to be (literally). Jake has changed his outlooks in life at this point and his priorities have now changed from his old life as he is now Na’vi. This threshold crossing moment makes it easy to understand the change that Jake has gone through throughout the story and is necessary to finish out the plot. The crossing of the threshold wraps up the story in order to give Jake his freedom to live and provides closure to the movie, Avatar.
Through an in-depth analysis of Avatar, the archetypes of the “hero’s journey”, character, situational, and symbolic archetypes all connect in a way that is necessary to move the plot forward. The character archetype of the mentors was necessary to Avatar because they taught Jake, who is the hero, to fight. The character archetype of the friendly beast made the Na’vi people trust Jake in order for him to fight with them in the battle. Nature vs. mechanistic world is a situational archetype that created the conflict is the movie and led to the conclusion.
The symbol of a tree is shown by the Home Tree and when it was destroyed, caused a reaction that leads the Na’vi people to have an important reason to fight for their land. The call to adventure is a part of the “hero’s journey” that is the reason Jake travels to Pandora in the first place and in the subplot is the reason Jake went on the side of the Na’vi rather than the humans. And finally, the crossing of the threshold is when Jake turns into a Na’vi permanently which provides closure to the story.
Through the “hero’s journey”, character, situational, and symbolic archetypes, every piece of the story connects and has a purpose. One part of Avatar is essential to the next, if one archetype was taken out the story would not make sense. In final analysis, archetypes propel the plot forward in Avatar by continuing through stages as in the “hero’s journey”, by creating characters who inspire other characters, by creating situations that create conflict, and by symbolizing important aspects of the plot.
