FREQUENTLY PEOPLE ASK ME about archetypes as a way of looking at the world for guidance in their lives. They say, quite rightly, that archetypal figures exist plentifully in fables and fairy tales, but not in the everyday world. In previous columns I've talked about Cinderella as an archetypal tale about courage, and I've also shown how the legend of Bluebeard is best understood as an archetypal tale about accessing one's full self, both male and female aspects, ying and yang. So now let's take a look at a different story, a more modern work that has become a sort of folk tale of its own. I'm referring to Casablanca, the Bogart-Bergman legend that was first screened in 1942, and directed by Michael Curtiz. It shows all the six archetypes - Innocent, Orphan, Pilgrim, Warrior-Lover, Monarch, and Magician, and has some fascinating things to say about how they work.

I think we all know the movie. It was not expected when first released to be any sort of box office smash hit, yet it has endured and become something of a cultural icon. It was seen at the time as a tale that commented fairly overtly on the USA's recently-abandoned policy of neutrality in World War II. Yet its appeal has lingered far beyond that time and exists, in part, because it reflects aspects of spiritual development in the totality of the story, and these have had a deep personal resonance for people for over sixty years.

Most of us know the plot, and perhaps even the words of As Time Goes By when played by Sam the pianist. Still, it may be helpful to outline it again. The movie's central action starts when Rick, a somewhat shady American bar owner in Casablanca, is surprised by the reappearance of Isla, his lover when they were in Paris just as the Germans invaded in 1940. He was hurt by her desertion of him then and is still smarting. Unfortunately for him she is now with her husband, Victor, an anti-Nazi activist who is trying to leave Morocco for the USA to continue his struggle. America is still officially neutral at this time (1941), and Rick makes it quite obvious that he only cares about himself. Through a twist of fate Rick is handed the documents Victor and Ilsa need in order to escape. He thinks about using the documents for his own advantage, and then decides to use them to allow the threatened Victor and Ilsa to escape. He then has to get them and the documents to the airport, outwit both the Nazis in the shape of Major Strasser, and Captain Renault, the French police chief, and convince Ilsa to leave with her husband rather than with Rick himself. It takes some effort, and drags Rick out of his neutrality, turning him once more into a man who believes in something other than making money.

In terms of archetypes the pattern is very clear. At the start of the movie Rick is an Orphan figure, holed up in Casablanca, making various semi-legal deals with the other profiteers and scoundrels. His past is shadowy, everyone deals with him, and he is known variously as Rick, Richard, Ricky, Mr. Rick, and Monsieur Blaine, which is a way of suggesting that he can be anything to anyone as long as business demands it. Like most Orphans he's just trying to get by the best he can within a situation he doesn't try to alter and doesn't seem to believe can be altered. He is defensive about his past, about that lost Innocent self he can no longer quite believe he was.

But there is more to him than this. We discover that he has, in the past, been a gun runner to both the Ethiopians (fighting the Italian fascists) and to the Spanish republicans (fighting Franco's fascists). So his heart was, once, in the right place as he supported people against tyranny. But now he's slipped back into the Orphan's defensive cynicism, seemingly defeated by a cruel world. In many ways he's an image of what any of us could become if we give up our ideals in the face of adversity - and which of us hasn't faced that?

Ilsa now appears. When they met and fell in love in Paris she was, literally, an Orphan, believing her husband dead, lost in a foreign country, and not knowing where to turn. She greets Rick, now, though, as someone who has rediscovered her sense of purpose, as a Warrior-Lover. She loves her husband and she is devoted to his cause. She makes the mistake of trying to talk to Rick and explain herself - she didn't know her husband was still alive when she fell in love with Rick - but he's too drunk and too much in the self-pitying Orphan mind set to be able to hear what she says.

It's a poignant scene. And it reminds us perhaps of all those occasions when we've seen friends and loved ones give up trying. All they want to do is blame us, saying things like, "It's all right for you. You have everything going right in your life..." While they are in this mood no change is possible.

For our discussion we could say that both Ilsa and Rick have been attached to causes that have somehow let them down (if only temporarily in Ilsa's case) so when they meet in Paris it is as Warrior-Lovers, as determined fighters for good causes, who have been disappointed and then slipped back to being Orphans. No wonder they fall in love so easily! They are exactly alike, seeking the shelter of sympathetic arms.

Rick remains a wounded Orphan until Ilsa comes back to see him a second time at his cafe, braving the curfew. She certainly demonstrates courage and when she draws a gun on him to get him to part with the papers she and Victor need, he sees something in her that he had forgotten in himself. For a while she is impressive - then she collapses into his arms saying, "I don't know what's right or wrong anymore." Effectively the strain is too much for her and she slips back into Orphan existence, wanting someone else to decide her fate. And at that point Rick sees the Warrior-Lover that she was and could be again, and decides he has to step forward as well. He stops being a lost Orphan and sees what he has to do. It's a moral wake-up call.

In all this Rick senses something that calls him to be the best person he could be. It is in Rick's consequent double-dealing that he shows himself as the consummate manipulator for a good cause. He is, with the tempering of Ilsa and the sense of love that he recalls, a questioning Pilgrim stepping into the Warrior-Lover's awareness. It is this which enables him to get Victor and Ilsa to the airport, outwitting both Major Strasser and Captain Renault, and even Ilsa, who thinks she's getting on the plane with Rick. It's a masterful piece of dealing. He's not putting himself first anymore.

Rick's final speech to Ilsa is worth recalling, when he tells her that if she chooses him she'll only regret it: "May be not today. May be not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life." There is real wisdom in this. Rick knows that he and Ilsa could rekindle their love, but only at the wounded Orphan level they had once known. He recognizes he could never become more than that if getting what he wanted involved betraying a good and noble cause (Victor's anti-fascist struggle), and so there would be no possibility of true, honest growth in their love. Ilsa knows what it is to be part of the next stage - something she'd experienced with Victor - and to work as part of a Monarch Pair. Even if that's hard work, nothing less will ever come close to that experience. Orphans, as we know, tend to take the shelter that is convenient at the moment. Warrior-Lovers know better. Of course Rick doesn't speak in terms of archetypes but it's clear he knows a thing or two about integrity and that their love was not at the highest level possible for each of them. It's an astonishing speech, really. He acknowledges that there are levels of love, and that he's not yet at the highest level, no matter how strong his personal need may be.

Victor Laszlo is in some ways even more interesting because he seems to function as a kind of Magician. He escapes from a concentration camp; his name is everywhere a by-word for resistance to the fascists; and he has a flair for uniting people against oppression. He is legendary for it. In one of the most famous scenes of the movie, the Nazis are in Rick's café singing fascist songs, and Victor orders the band to strike up La Marseillaise. It's worth noting that the bandleader looks for approval to Rick, and he agrees. The band strikes up. All the French stand up and bellow out their national anthem, and the Nazis are taught that they cannot get away with their overbearing ways without exciting a backlash. It's a marvelous, empowered, moment. The victory is short-lived. Rick's café is shut down - as he must have known it would be. But the greater moral point has been made. It's the action of a Magician to get people to be responsible for their deepest feelings and allegiances. Victor mobilizes self-respect and decency, and both are forms of love.

Victor is also interesting at a personal level because he knows that something happened between Ilsa and Rick, and he even asks her if she wants to say anything. He knows that people make mistakes, that they despair and slip into Orphan thinking, and he loves her anyway. He loves the best part of her, not her mistakes. He is in many ways a Magician, working for the highest possible good, risking everything, and bringing out the very best in people in the process. In fact he and Ilsa bring out the best in Rick. One could say that they function as a Monarch Pairing who also bring the Magician into existence when necessary.

At the climax of the movie Rick shoots Major Strasser, Renault gives up in disgust his role as a Vichy French collaborator, Victor and Ilsa take off on the plane, and Rick and Renault walk off to join the free French at Brazzaville. They are an unlikely pair, but the famous line, "This could be the start of a beautiful friendship" in fact shows them as both Warrior-Lovers. Orphans no longer, they are off to fight for a cause. In case we miss the point, we'll recall that both men have given up their shallow sexual lives - Rick has given up the French bargirl, and Renault has had to give up seducing young women who want exits visas - so they have both moved beyond the casual meaningless sex that is so often the Orphan's trait. Perhaps both have been inspired by Ilsa. Perhaps Renault has also been inspired by Rick - who thwarts at least one of Renault's affairs out of a sense of moral outrage. It doesn't matter exactly how it happens because the way of the Magician is that inspiration grows seemingly of itself, and Victor has been around each of them enough that their ways of thinking have changed forever. He's named Victor for a reason - the larger triumph comes through him.

And so we can see that the six archetypes are present in this modern folk tale as well as in the older tales, and that they have to do not just with sexual love, but with a love that is connected to a standard of moral conduct. It's very unlikely that the people who created these stories consciously set out to use archetypes. Instead they composed tales that felt right and true, that came form their hearts. We can understand them better when we see through the lens of archetypes. From ancient fairy tale to modern myth the preoccupations are the same, and we can understand them in all their richness when we see them as unfolding the six stages, showing how anyone can get stuck, and how it is possible to break free again.

So what can we carry away from this? The movie seems to be showing us that the way out of the Orphan's lost-ness and cynicism is to reconnect with the idealism we all once had, and to do so in a self-less way. It's a powerful message, and we need to be reminded of it.

© Dr. Allan Hunter, 2008

Allan Hunter is the author of Stories We Need to Know: Reading Your Life Path In Literature (Findhorn Press, 2008). www.allanhunter.net

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Allan Hunter was born in England in 1955 and completed all his degrees at Oxford University, emerging with a doctorate in English Literature in 1983. His first book was Joseph Conrad and the Ethics of Darwinism. In 1986, after working at Fairleigh Dickinson University's British campus and at Peper Harow Therapeutic Community for disturbed adolescents, he moved to the US. For the past twenty years he has been a professor of literature at Curry College in Massachusetts, and a therapist. He has produced two books specifically aimed at using writing and drawing exercises therapeutically - The Sanity Manual and Life Passages. Both books are based on his revolutionary interactive writing exercises, tried and proven in counselling sessions and classes. While working with clients in this way he began to uncover the presence of a series of archetypes within their writings. This led to his present work with the formulation of the six archetypal stages of spiritual development.

Four years ago he began teaching with the Blue Hills Writing Institute and he has remained with it ever since, working with students to explore the memoir and life-writing. His own experience of this medium is reflected in From Coastal Command to Captivity; The Memoir of a Second World War Airman, a project on which he worked with his father up to the time of his death. It required extensive reworking to bring this memoir to completion. As in all his books, the emphasis is on the healing nature of the stories we weave for ourselves if we choose to connect to the archetypal tales of our culture.