Archetypes In The Walking Dead

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“The Walking Dead” is a comic book that now has the rare privilege of being adapted into a television show, and admittedly a great one at that. While the two differ slightly, we will be referring to the show adaptation of the franchise. So what is “The Walking Dead,” and why is it so important to reference when it comes to Campbell’s archetypes? Well “The Walking Dead” is a survival horror story that revolves around your everyman Rick Grimes, a man dedicated to his family and his job as the county sheriff. When disaster strikes and Rick finds himself waking up from a coma to find that the world has been torn apart, our hero’s journey begins. Because of Rick’s inability to accept his new apocalyptic world, he will become a reluctant hero during…show more content…
When he finds a group of survivors (including his son Carl, his wife Lori, and his former police partner, Shane) Rick’s character arche really incites. So before going any further, we need to define what a “hero” truly is in the dystopian setting Rick now lives in. A hero by most standards is someone who saves the day, and usually gets a fair maiden at the end because of it. This has been shoved down our throats time and time again with video games like “Super Mario Bros”, “The Legend of Zelda”, and even other comic books like “Superman”. But for Rick, his fair maiden is keeping his people safe. All Rick is ever looking for is sanctuary. However due to the cruelty of this new world, rick and his group are forced to do heinous things in order to survive. At it's core, "The Walking Dead" is what it's advertised as, a survival horror. That includes whatever basic survival instincts that man reacts on, which for Rick and his group unfortunately usually means killing other people. So unlike many other stories, in "The Walking Dead" a true hero is someone who outlasts all else; survival of the fittest. With that established, lets look at Shane, a character very important to Rick's

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