Patterns and Expectations
Introduced| English |
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| archetypes/ˈɑːkɪtaɪps/ |
Some dramatic situations are very old
- Some patterns in dramatic situations are so common that they are considered archetypes 原型.
- The journey home, the inheritance, the return of someone thought lost.
- You have read them before, in other stories, and so has every reader.
The journey home is an archetype; getting lost because the traveller refuses directions is characterisation.
On the AP exam you should identify and label the archetype you find.
The CED says outright that students are not expected to do this.
They create expectations
- These archetypes create certain expectations for how the dramatic situations will progress and be resolved.
- The expectation exists before the story does anything with it.
- So the reader arrives at each page already predicting — and the text can use that.
What earns marks about a common pattern is...
Met, delayed or refused — that is the analysable thing.
You are not asked to name them
- The CED adds a note in its own voice: for the exam, students are not expected to identify or label archetypes.
- So an essay that announces "this is the hero's journey" is spending words on something unrewarded.
- What is rewarded is the expectation and what the story does with it.
Watch a pattern set up an expectation
Patterns matter because a reader starts predicting — and the text can then confirm or break the prediction.
Select all the things a story can do with an expectation.
Explaining an expectation is criticism, not narrative.
The CED says outright that you are not expected to identify or label archetypes on the exam. Naming one costs words and earns nothing. What earns marks is the expectation the pattern creates and what the story does with it — met, delayed, or refused.
The expectation exists ____ the story does anything with it.
The reader arrives at each page already predicting.
Met, delayed, or refused
- An expectation can be met, and the story reads as confirmation.
- It can be delayed, and the delay itself becomes the tension.
- It can be refused, and the refusal is a statement about the pattern the reader brought.
Put the pattern pass in order.
Writing the prediction down is what makes the gap measurable.
A pattern pass
- Halfway through, write down what you expect to happen. Do not name the pattern.
- At the end, compare: met, delayed or refused?
- The gap between your prediction and the ending is the analysable thing.
A soldier comes home after years away. Every reader expects a recognition scene. The story gives him three days in the house before anyone asks where he has been — and the delay, not the pattern's name, is what the essay is about.
Common patterns in dramatic situations are archetypes, and they create expectations about how a situation will progress and be resolved. The CED states you are not expected to identify or label them — write about the expectation and whether the story meets, delays or refuses it.