Basic Comic Characters & Plot

Ingénue The ingénue is a stock character in literature; generally a girl or a young woman who is endearingly innocent and wholesome. “Stock” character is pretty much the same as archetype. She (and sometimes he) is the person we root for, the one who represents the hope for the future, the one who can transform her life, the one who reminds of our shared humanity – I’m deploying a lot of cliché’s here, but such is the nature of archetypes.

Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid

“Rue” in The Hunger Games movie

“Hero” in movie of Much Ado About Nothing

An Ingénue can also be male (aka -- really cute guy)

John Cusak in Say Anything

Justin Bieber

“Claudio” in film of Much Ado About Nothing

Ingénue & Really Cute Guy As an archetype, they represent Spring, with all its frivolity and fertility

“What normally happens is that a young man wants a young woman, that his desire is resisted by some opposition, usually paternal, and that near the end of the play some twist in the plot enables the hero to have his will.” Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism (1957): Theory of Myths: The Mythos of Spring: Comedy (p.163) When the eminent critic, Northrop Frye, says “young man” and “young woman” he’s talking about the ingenue types. And in Shakespearean comedy, the wanting goes both ways. The young woman does some serious wanting of her own.

“some opposition, usually paternal” In Much Ado a little opposition is provided by Leonato, Hero’s Dad, so he’s a “blocking character”

The Blocking Character --A father figure --Set in his ways --Traditionalist -- He blocks the young people’s path to marriage and happiness

The Blocking Character as an Archetype . . . is Old Man Winter, opposed to love and all that is green and growing.

The Blocking Character on Steroids, with Eyeshadow and a Sneer Comic Villains: The Blocking Character on Steroids, with Eyeshadow and a Sneer

Scar

Ursula

Cruella de Ville, who doesn’t really love those puppies.

The Comic Villain in Much Ado About Nothing Keanu Reeves as Don John, the BASTARD brother of Don Pedro.