Archetypes in The Natural After discovering a God-given talent, a young boy struggles to achieve his only dream; to become the best there ever was. Baseball is all he has ever known, so he prevails through the temptations and situations laid before him by those out to destroy his career. His hopes and dreams outweigh all the temptations along his journey. These hopes, dreams, and temptations are depicted through archetypes in the movie The Natural. An archetype is a universal symbol. It is also a term from the criticism that accepts Jung's idea of recurring patterns of situation, character, or symbol existing universally and instinctively in the collective unconscious of man. Archetypes come in three categories: images (symbols), characters, and situations. Feelings are provoked about a certain subject by archetypes. The use of the images of water, sunsets, and circles set the scene of the movie. Characters, including the temptress, the devil figure, and the trickster, contribute to the movie's conflicts that the hero must overcome in order to reach his dream. However, to reach his dream, the hero must also go through many situations such as, the fall, dealing with the unhealable wound, and the task. By using archetypes in the movie, the viewer can obtain more than just the plot and better understand the true theme of the movie: to never give up on dreams. Archetypal imagery in this movie is abundant, but the most obvious and repetitive archetypes are those of water, sunsets, and circles. Prior to Roy Hobb's, the hero's, arrival to the major league, the coach, Pop, comments, "Wouldn't you think I could get a fresh drink of water after all the years that I have been in this game." At this point in the game, his team is losing miserably and Roy's arrival only seems to make the situation worse because his first impression is an overage rookie. When Roy finally gets a chance to prove himself as a ball player and does, the water from the fountain begins to taste good.
