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Avatar: A Hero's Journey

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Avatar Archetypes
“I guess that’s the thing about a hero’s journey. You might not start out as a hero, and you might not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to,” (Kami Garcia). The movie Avatar, released in 2009 and directed by James Cameron, is an example of a main plot and a subplot carried by the hero’s journey and has many examples of other archetypes. Avatar is about Jake Sully, an ex-marine, who takes over his dead brother’s place on a scientific mission to a planet called Pandora. Their goal is to collect a natural resource, Unobtanium, and bring it back to Earth. A clan of Na’vi’, human-like creatures, called the Omaticaya, live in a tree right on top of the main source of the Unobtanium. Jake Sully’s task is to enter an “avatar” body disguised as a Na’vi’ and learn as much as he can about their kind and what the humans have to do to relocate their clan. Eventually, the Omaticaya assimilate Jake into their clan and teach him their ways, not knowing that he is one of the “sky people”, or humans. As the plot of Avatar moves on, Jake begins to change his opinions on the Navi, the idea of nature, and which side he should fight for with help of …show more content…

When Jake goes through his training, Neytiri teaches him to bless all of his kills to Eywa. As he does this, he says “I see you brother, and thank you. Your spirit goes with Eywa, your body stays behind to become part of the People.” When he says “your spirit goes with Eywa”, it implies that there will be afterlife with Eywa and the animal’s spirit will become part of her. The death and rebirth archetype is when the cycle of nature and life are parallel. This is very clear in the movie, because all of life on Pandora has a “network” of connections with nature and

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