Previously on my blog, I talked about Part one of the book JPod by Douglas Coupland. The beginning of the Part 2 starts 4 months after Steven, JPod’s boss, goes missing.
Ethan is sent to find Steven after his skateboarding game turned turtle skateboarding game becomes an Aladdin-esque game with magic carpets and Princes. Him and his coworkers despise the new game, Sprite Quest, and are determined to end it and hope that bringing back Steven will solve their problems.
The plot of this section of the book is vaguely similar to the archetypal plot, in the sense that Ethan begins this part of the book in his hometown of Vancouver but he finds himself in China looking for his boss, Steven. After finding Steven they return back to Vancouver. This is best described as a ‘Voyage and Return’ plot, which is when the protagonists are “suddenly thrust into strange and alien worlds“. This “strange world” in the story of JPod is China, seeing that Ethan has never been.
Since Ethan was in a foreign place, many of the things he did required him to hope that it was right. For example, “Under a setting sun, we sped off in what we hoped was the direction of Shanghai,”(“Coupland”, pg.326). After getting out of quarantine with barely any water and food, Ethan and Steven had to pray that they were heading in the right direction or else death would occur. The setting sun symbolizes that death is right over the horizon and that their time was running out on how long they could survive (Archetypal Symbols, slide 7).
When I first started reading the book, I thought that there was no way that Ethan is the hero of the book, he is just so…weird. But further investigation shows that Ethan does in fact share characteristics with archetypal heroes such as Simba and Hercules. Ethan, Simba, and Hercules, in different ways, show courage and take a path to right a wrong in their home. For Ethan it is bringing back Steven to fix the game, Simba fights Scar to reclaim his home, and Hercules must find his way back home and defeat Hades. Although quite different, there are still some definite similarities between these characters.
Part 2 was quite the journey and I cannot wait to see what happens next. What happens to Spritequest? Will there be any complications with Steven’s return? Who knows? Until next time 😉
Works Cited:
“Archetypal Symbols”. Powerpoint presentation.
Coupland, Douglas. JPod. Frassinelli, 2006.Walker, Tommy.
“The 7 Story Archetypes, and How They Can Dramatically Improve Your Marketing.” Social Media Today, 31 Oct. 2011, http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/7-story-archetypes-and-how-they-can-dramatically-improve-your-marketing.
Janey's Blog 