Name three characters from Cry, the Beloved Country and describe their archetypes.

An archetype is a symbol that
is representative of all human experience and is embedded in what Carl Jung calls the
collective conscious, which is the shared experience of a
race or culture or of all of humankind. Significantly, it is debatable as to whether
Alan Paton wrote Cry, the Beloved Country with the idea of
archetypes in mind.

In fact, it could be argued that Paton
was so far away from writing archetypal literature that if archetypal criticism were
applied, brand new archetypes would have to be identified ( href="http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_a.html">Archetype:
An original model or pattern from which other later copies are made, especially a
character, an action, or situation that seems to represent common patterns of human
life. [Literary Terms and Definitions. Dr. Kip Wheeler, Department of English,
Carson-Newman Collage.]).

Under such a scenario, the new
archetypal situation identified might be the corruption of the innocent by the city,
while the new archetypal characters might be the entangled and doomed innocent, the
dismayed and impotent questor, and the aggrieved helper. The reason for this is that
Paton's point is that Absalom's and Stephen's story is not a previously universally
shared experience; it is a new experience, an experience in which the location in which
life is lived does, by virtue of the characteristics of that location, destroy the human
life that sojourns there. It is this revelation that allows Stephen to reach some
measure of peace at the end of the story, at the time of his son's execution, and it is
reinforced by Arthur Jarvis's papers.

Having made this case
against archetypal criticism, the application of this criticism to Cry, the
Beloved Country can yield identifiable href="http://people.sinclair.edu/mildredmelendez/docs/267/archetype.pdf">archetypes.
There is no traditional Hero in Cry, the Beloved Country, only a
protagonist who is dismayed, devastated and broken in spirit. There is no Scapegoat
whose public execution removes a taint from the community, it only amplifies the taint.
It may be said there is The Outcast though. Stephen's son
Absalom is the outcast who has been banished from the community for breaking the
archetypal taboo against murder. In a way, James Jarvis
represents the archetype of the Earth Mother because after
reading his slain son's papers he has an epiphany and brings food to the children and an
adviser to restore the valley's habitat; an earth mother provides nurturing in abundance
and gives emotional and spiritual sustenance to those around about. Gertrude fits
the Fallen Woman archetype that represents innocence
manipulated and forced into degraded circumstances. Finally, John Kumalo represents
the Devil Figure archetype because his only motives are
that of selfish, self-seeking self-gain. Some href="http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_a.html">archetypal
situations, besides Absalom's breaking the taboo against
murder, are inescapable death, punishment, and fate.