The Archetypology of Adolescence Part 3

In this post, we’ll finally get into the main reasons why the Netflix series Adolescence caught my attention and, I think, the real reason for its popularity. On the surface, the story is ludicrous. We’re expected to believe that a 13-year-old boy, who looks as if he hasn’t even hit puberty yet, is so sexually frustrated that he’s prepared to commit murder. To tell such a story, the writers would need to provide us with an intricate character study of the perpetrator, the victim, and the milieu in which they exist. Adolescence does none of that. Instead, it gives us the most generic of settings: everyday life in Britain. Its message appears to be that this is the kind of thing that could happen anytime. That is obviously not true. It’s a simple matter of statistics that murders like these are vanishingly rare among 13-year-olds and are almost always the result of severe psychosis in the perpetrator.

Some critics have taken these observations and concluded that Adolescence is nothing more than the usual anti-male propaganda that is so common these days. But that wouldn’t explain the popularity of the show, which really does seem to have struck a chord with audiences. Propaganda never garners enthusiasm from the general public, as numerous American film studios have found out to their detriment in the last decade. Adolescence must have something going for it to have generated what looks like genuine enthusiasm.

Adolescence looks like propaganda if we assume that the 13-year-old boy, Jamie, is the hero of the story. If that’s true, then the story is in line with propaganda’s usual tactic of presenting a ludicrous premise and expecting everybody to clap along with it. But everything changes once we realise that Jamie is not the hero of the story. Then we get a very different reading. In my initial analysis, I had realised that Jamie was not the hero, but I made the mistake of concluding that there wasn’t a hero at all. That’s not true. Adolescence does have a hero and the key to understanding its meaning opens up once we identify him. That’s the reading that I stumbled upon just a few days ago. I realised that the hero of the story is really Jamie’s father, Eddie.

The brilliant innovation that Adolescence makes is to approach the subject of adolescence not from the point of view of the young boy going through it but from the point of view of his father. That is why the show has resonated with so many people because, as far as I can tell, this story might never have been told before, at least not in the quasi-tragic way that Adolescence achieves. What is especially interesting is that neither the audience nor the makers of the show know what they have done. Everything about the story, the production style, the marketing, and the subsequent public discourse assumes that the young boy is the main character. The filmmakers seem to have accidentally created what might be a genuinely novel story type and it’s that which is resonating with audiences.

To understand this, we need to analyse Adolescence using the archetypology framework. We start with four archetypes that cover the natural human life span: the Child, Orphan, Adult, and Elder. We then analyse these according to three broad domains of identity: the biological, socio-cultural, and higher esoteric. We can map all this in table form as follows:-

	Child	Orphan	Adult	Elder
Higher Esoteric	Instinct	Ego	Will	Soul
Socio-cultural	Family	Apprentice	Parent/Journeyman	Grandparent/Teacher/Master
Biological	Childhood	Adolescence	Maturity	Senescence

A crucial concept to grasp is that there is a metamorphosis that transitions us between the archetypes. This metamorphosis is a process that lasts over a period of years and which resonates across all three domains of character. Since we are talking about the TV series named after the period of adolescence, we are concerned with the metamorphosis between the Child and Orphan archetypes. This is easy to understand at the biological level of being because everybody knows that puberty is a transformation that lasts a number of years. Puberty is the biological metamorphosis that signals the end of the Child archetype and the beginning of the Orphan.

There also metamorphoses at the socio-cultural and higher esoteric domains. If we begin with the latter, adolescence is the age at which the psychoanalysts claim that the birth of the ego occurs. Every culture recognises this change. It is the time when we are considered old enough to understand the world intellectually and morally, to tell the difference between truth and reality, right and wrong. Therefore, it is the time when a person can be held legally, morally, and spiritually responsible for their actions.

But we do not simply wake up one day with full consciousness of truth, beauty, and justice. It is a learning process we must go through. That is directly relevant to the story of Adolescence because we have a young man who has committed a murder and the assumption is that he is capable of taking responsibility for it. Jamie’s character arc of denying and then admitting guilt is a process that takes more than one year. It is the process of taking responsibility.

Related to these psychological developments is the socio-cultural metamorphosis that accompanies adolescence. It seems to be also a universal of human culture that children are left to the care of their parents during the first years of life. Because of this, we can say that the Child’s psychological and social development occurs almost entirely within the family unit. There are cultures where this is less true, e.g., hunter-gatherer tribes, but even then we can say that the Parent-Child relationship is the primary one from the Child’s point of view.

Because children are not seen to be personally responsible, it is their parents who hold responsibility for their physical, social, and psychological well-being. That changes at puberty, where the individual is expected to take up a role in broader society. Abstract ideas about legal and moral responsibility are given form by the fact that the individual is now a contributing member of the wider group. Their actions now have consequences.

Putting all this together, we say that the Child-Parent relationship dominates during the Child phase of life. The Child is not considered an independent and responsible person but is a ward of its parents. That is what changes during the metamorphosis into the Orphan phase of life with the biological metamorphosis of puberty, the psychological metamorphosis of the birth of the ego, and the socio-cultural metamorphosis of initiation into the institutions of society.

The name of the Orphan archetype represents the fact that adolescence is the time when the dominance of the Parent comes to an end. Of course, the Parent does not die in a literal sense, but in a symbolic sense they do. Furthermore, it seems to be a universal of human culture that adolescence deprecates the status of the Parent. We find this in the rites of passage that accompany the metamorphosis into adolescence and especially in stories that are told about that metamorphosis. It is this dynamic that is crucial to understand the Netflix show Adolescence because the real underlying drama in that show revolves around the Child-Parent dynamic between Jamie and Eddie. Jamie is now an adolescent, yet Eddie is still somewhat responsible for him. Eddie’s mission is to let go of that responsibility and Jamie’s mission is to take it.

To say it again, adolescence implies the deprecation of the Child-Parent relationship. In many cultures, this dynamic is made overt and the Parent’s role is expressly downgraded. To take two completely unrelated examples, in Australian Aboriginal culture, the young boy is literally taken from the arms of his mother and carried off by the men of the tribe for initiation. As a boy, he has spent most of his time with the women. But when he returns from initiation, that is no longer acceptable. His relationship with his parents has also now changed for good, and it is usually the maternal uncle who will become his mentor until he reaches adulthood.

This explicit change in the role of the Parent appears to be a common feature of tribal initiation. It is one a series of explicit role changes that include taboos and other overt regulation of behaviour. Freud speculated that these explicit changes to the Child-Parent relationships in tribal society were there as a protective measure against incest once the child has become sexually mature. Perhaps there is some truth to that, but the broader meaning is consonant with the Orphan archetype’s need for independence from the Parent.

To take another example of an overt deprecation of the Parent role, the Catholic rite that marks the onset of the Orphan phase of life is Confirmation. The initiate is “given away” by the godparents at this ceremony while personally re-affirming the baptism vows that the godparents had once done on their behalf. The symbolism is that the godparents’ active role is now over. Accordingly, the Orphan is now paired with an older member from the congregation who will become their mentor. We can see that this follows the same pattern as Aboriginal society i.e. deprecation of the Parent role in favour of a mentor (Elder).

The specific dynamic that occurs at the beginning of adolescence is that the Child-Parent relationship is reduced in importance. The Child becomes an Orphan and is paired up with mentors (Orphan-Elder relationship) whose role it is to initiate them into the institutions of society. In the modern West, the Elder role is filled by teachers, sports coaches, religious Elders, psychologists, counsellors, etc. At the same time that the Parent must step back from their dominance over the Child, the Elder steps forward to become the mentor for the Orphan.

Just as we find this dynamic everywhere in the anthropological literature, we find it in stories from around the world. The coming-of-age story is one of the most common and is a universal of human culture. It is the story about the transition into the Orphan archetype and it almost always features an Elder who takes the Orphan hero under their wing and provides initiation. Famous examples of Orphan initiation from the modern West include Luke Skywalker, whose Elders are Obi-Wan and Yoda. Neo’s Elder is Morpheus in The Matrix. Jake is initiated into the Na’vi tribe in Avatar. Paul receives initiation from the Reverend Mother in Dune.

Just as these stories always feature an Elder who will guide the Orphan through initiation, they also represent the deprecation of the Child-Parent relationship. This is most commonly done by representing the hero of the story as a literal orphan, whose parents are either dead or missing in action. There are countless examples of this. Luke Skywalker’s parents are dead in the first Star Wars movie. Harry Potter’s parents are dead. Hamlet’s father is dead. Batman’s parents are dead. Cinderella, Snow White, Oliver Twist, Spiderman, Superman, Jane Eyre – the list could go on and on.

The symbolic meaning of the dead-parent trope is to force the hero to undertake the Orphan’s mission of forging their own identity. The Orphan must leave the safety and security of the family home and step into the wider world. Since that is not an easy thing to do, there is always the temptation to avoid the difficulty. But if the parents die, the hero has no choice but to take up the challenge. More generally, the death of the parent symbolises the psychological and the socio-cultural reality of the Orphan phase of life. It’s the time when we must separate from our parents emotionally, psychologically, and even physically.

If the mission of the Orphan is to forge an identity separate from their parents, what happens when the parents are not literally dead? What if they are not only still around but also still want to control the Orphan as if it were still a Child? In the “happy path” stories, the hero’s parents are already dead, and the hero is free to forge their own identity with the help of the Elder. The second most common variation on the story is that the parents are still around, and they work to impede the Orphan’s mission by continuing to impose their parental will. In this latter case, the Parents become the bad guys by default because they are subverting the mission of the hero. We find this dynamic of the smothering Parent in Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, Dead Poets Society, Finding Nemo and many others.

The reason why the coming-of-age story is a universal of human culture is because we all must go through the transition from Child to Orphan. Since that transition requires the deprecation of the Parent role, the two main variations on the story are that the Parent is dead or the Parent is still around to cause trouble by refusing to step back from their dominant role in the life of their Child. This makes perfect sense according to the archetypal logic at play.

Because the hero of the coming-of-age story is the Orphan, the story is told from their point of view and the Parent’s attitude is only ever shown tangentially. We may get some insight into why the Parent does not want to let go, but this is never dealt with in depth because the hero of the story is the Orphan and we are concerned with their perspective. Therefore, the Orphan story tends to gloss over the genuine difficulties that Parents face in letting go of their children. These difficulties are not just due to selfishness or narcissism. It is a genuinely ambiguous question of when the Child is ready for independence.

Cultures where the Parent role is explicitly deprecated by initiation do not have such problems, because the Parent’s decision is made for them. But this does not happen in societies such as ours. Therefore, a long ambiguous period is created that both Parent and Orphan must navigate through.

This leads to an interesting insight that I had never thought about before. I can’t think of a single story which explores these issues from the Parents’ point of view. It seems that the difficulties faced by the Parent are only ever addressed as a secondary theme in the coming-of-age story. Thus, in the movie Finding Nemo, the B-story is about the father learning to allow Nemo his independence and struggling as he watches Nemo get himself into trouble as a result. The theme is also present at the end of Romeo and Juliet, where the parents of the star-crossed lovers must lament that their children’s struggle for independence has ended in death. But in these stories, the Parent is not the hero.

And this brings us all the way back to Adolescence because what I realised just a few days ago is that this is exactly what that story is really about. It is telling the story of adolescence not from the point of view of the Orphan but from the point of view of the Parents. The hero of the story is not the 13-year-old boy, Jamie, but his father, Eddie. Adolescence is specifically about the difficulty faced by the Parent who has to let go of their Child and allow them to become an Orphan. By incorporating the theme of murder, Adolescence amplifies the dynamic to Shakespearean proportions.

Because Adolescence is a modern story shot in the ultra-realistic style of a documentary, everybody interprets its meaning in a literal sense, and we therefore assume the story really is about the murder with Jamie as the central character. This reading is reinforced by the fact that the show is called “Adolescence” and that all of the public relations around the show have focused on the issue of murder. But once we understand that Eddie is the real hero of the story, our interpretation completely changes. What the Parent must do when their Child becomes an Orphan is to let them go, to allow them space and freedom. But that freedom comes with consequences. Are those consequences the responsibility of the Parent or the Orphan?

Adolescence amplifies that normal, everyday dynamic by making the consequences faced by Jamie and Eddie the most difficult imaginable. What has Jamie done with his newfound freedom? He’s killed somebody. If Jamie was the hero of the story, we would expect the focus to be on his process of taking responsibility or being brought down by the consequences of his actions, as is the case in Romeo and Juliet. But the real hero of Adolescence is Eddie. Thus, the main question explored is to what extent a father is responsible for the actions of his son. The fact that his son is only 13-years-old amplifies the problem because he is right on the borderline where we would start to assign guilt to him instead of his father.

Thus, I’m happy to admit that I got my initial analysis of Adolescence wrong. I was correct in saying that Jamie is not the hero, but incorrect in saying that there was no hero. Adolescence is a hero’s journey with Eddie as hero. We can therefore ask the question of the story, “What is the hero sacrificing, and what do they think they are getting in return?”

The sacrifice Eddie must make is his dominant role in the life of his son. That is the sacrifice that every Parent must make when their Child becomes an Orphan. What do Parents think they are getting in return for this sacrifice? Well, most Parents hope that they have raised their Child well and that their upbringing will allow the Child to flourish. Parents hope to sit back and watch that flourishing take place. That is the dream that is smashed when Eddie gets his door kicked down by police at the beginning of Adolescence (note, it’s also literally the beginning of adolescence for Jamie!). Eddie must confront the fact that his hopes for his son are gone (sacrificed).

Adolescence provides an extreme example of the same dynamic that every Parent must go through. To allow a child their independence is to allow them to do things that the Parent doesn’t approve of. They might form opinions that do not agree with the Parent’s. They might start listening to bad music or following Andrew Tate on Snapchat. The Parent can no longer demand that their child not explore such options. To do so is to become the Tyrannical Father or Devouring Mother, who subverts the mission of the archetypal Orphan.

Just as the death of the Parent in the Orphan Story is a symbol of the fact that the Orphan must forge their own identity in the world independent of the family, the criminality of Jamie in Adolescence is a symbol of the fact that when children grow up, they are potentially going to get into all kinds of trouble while taking on views and actions that their Parent will not approve of. When we examine that dynamic from the Parent’s point of view, we can see the difficulties that emerge. How must a Parent feel when their child takes on the exact opposite viewpoints on social issues? How does a Parent feel when their child behaves in a manner that they consider inappropriate? Anger, embarrassment, and shame are natural responses in such cases. This dynamic is turned up to 11 when the child becomes a murderer.

That is what provides the emotional and moral ground of Adolescence. It’s the anguish of the father who is both responsible and not responsible at the same time. It is fitting that Eddie must be present during the initial interrogation of Jamie since he is still considered the legal guardian. That also implies that he is still the moral guardian too, even though it is clear that Jamie’s actions were independent of his father. It is not clear who is responsible. Eddie must figure it out according to his own conscience. But he must also face the social repercussions for the actions of his son.

What Adolescence also captures is the fact that the sacrifice of the Child-Parent relationship is borne by the Parent. It is their sacrifice to make because the child very rarely sees their newfound independence as a problem. Orphans are not exactly known for being understanding of the opinion of their Parents. From the Orphan’s point of view, they are not sacrificing the Parent relationship but escaping from the domination of the Parent. From the Parent’s point of view, they really are losing their Child. Thus, the emotional resonance of Adolescence is exactly correct.

In summary, Adolescence is a hero’s journey about the Parent as hero in a story about the difficulties of letting their Child become an Orphan. I’m not the only one who missed that fact. Incredibly, it seems that even the writers of the show also don’t understand what they have made. I saw an interview with the writer and main actor, Stephen Graham. When asked why he thought the show was so popular, he said he didn’t know but speculated it had something to do with an exploration of the societal influence on young men.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both the writers of the show are middle-aged men who are married with children. I suspect they have unintentionally written about themselves. Quite by accident, they managed to write what might be a genuinely new kind of story. That would explain its popularity.