Assigment VI

One Story

An archetype is the original patter or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or are based. Fairytales tend to all follow the same outline. There's always a lady who has had a rough life searching for something more, love, a man searching for his true love, and some sort of enemy whose purpose is to keep this love from falling into place. A familiar example of this is Cinderella. Cinderella is the lady who has been a maid all of her life. The man, Prince Charming, has a ball arranged in order for him to meet new women. The enemy, or in this case enemies, are Cinderella's evil step sisters and step mother who are constantly keeping her locked up and out of Prince Charming's search for his lost love.


...And Rarely Just an Illness

I Am Legend shows a characters death in a novel that represents much more than a loss. In I Am Legend, Robert Neville is the last survivor of a disease that swept through the city of Los Angeles. He and his dog, Sam, live together as he works on finding a cure. The infected survivors, or vampires, still live in this area, but can only come out at night due to the sunlight. When Sam gets bitten by a vampire, it is clear to Robert that she will soon become one too. He sits with her on her last night to give her a shot that will put her to sleep. Sam represented sanity in Robert. She was his only other non-infected companion, and his only friend. After her death, Robert loses it. He begins acting crazy like the vampires and even attempts to kill himself. And even after he finds two other survivors, he never fully connects with them but keeps to himself, as if he now fears anything he gets close to will be taken away too soon. This death reflects a few of the principles. First, its origin is mysterious. If the death had a known cause and cure, then Robert's sense of losing himself would be completely taken from the death scene. Second, the death proved to be more than just a lose of one characters life, but of another characters whole sense of being.