The Role Archetypes series is focused on presenting archetypal character roles in a way that focuses on their development throughout stories, with a particular eye to games (although most of the examples given will be taken from literature).
Today we're going to talk about the Shapeshifter, the eighth of ten roles we'll explore. As usual for the more recent entries, I'm going to split this into two parts: today I'm going to give an overview and some examples.
The Shapeshifter in Narrative
The Shapeshifter is slippery and hard to pin down. This applies not only to their literal form, but also in the sense that it is difficult to describe the Shapeshifter in truly universal terms.
The truth is that the Shapeshifter may actually be a sort of meta-archetype, the archetype that exists when a character shifts between two archetypes and can no longer be considered one. But then other questions come up: Shapeshifters may not fully pass between multiple archetypes, and there are stable hybrids of multiple archetypes (e.g. the Underdog, which often combines with the Hero or Ally in a single character) that would not be able to be called the Shapeshifter.
To steal from Carl Jung's dichotomy of order and chaos in the form of the great father and great mother figures, the Shapeshifter owes no allegiance to either. They represent a third form, but not the Hero's harmonious blending of the two. They're the border, the liminal space between the two in which it is impossible to draw a clear distinction between one element and another.
This is what makes the Shapeshifter interesting as a character. They can't be pinned down because they are an incarnation of change; order and chaos are reflected in the Hero and the Serpent. The Serpent is an absolute existence within one state, and the Hero is a figure that mediates between the two.
Order and Chaos versus Change
As a brief aside, it's worth noting that chaos is not change. Change is the alteration in fundamental alignment between one or the other. While the Hero seeks balance, which permits the world to flourish, the Shapeshifter does not represent balance. This is not necessarily to say that they live dissolute and meaningless lives, but rather that they are constantly in flux.
To bring a comparison, the death of a loved one represents a significant change in our lives. It is the shift from order to chaos (unless, of course, the circumstances of our life have provided us with a belief structure that make death a non-disordering phenomena; religion and philosophy have this as one of their core purposes), but if it were to happen during war time it would not mark a shift from chaos to order.
The Shapeshifter does not live in chaos, nor do they live in order. They are a nomad. For this reason they often take on a roguish tint, engaging in behavior which is not necessarily acceptable in their society, at least under normal rules, but also holding a peculiar moral code unique to them. This can lead to a false association with the Outsider, but the Outsider knows no such transition: the Shapeshifter sins even as in his heart he knows better, while the Outsider is innocent or ignorant.
Order and chaos reflect known and unknown, and both of these have positive and negative inflections: known benefit, known detriment, unknown benefit, and unknown detriment.
The Shapeshifter moves between at least two of these four positions over the course of a story, typically between known and unknown but at least between benefit and detriment. This often takes them between two archetypal roles, but it is not necessarily a requirement for this to occur.
The Incomplete Persona
The Shapeshifter can be thought of as a failed Hero, though they may not necessarily be heroic in nature. They are not, necessarily, an anti-hero, but there are definitely anti-heroes who can be Shapeshifters. This is not necessarily true, either, because the Shapeshifter has not received a Call to Adventure.
In fact, a lot of Shapeshifters actually turn out to be echoes of the heroic figure: Snape in the Harry Potter books, for instance, often appears as a villain or antagonist to Harry, but turns out to have been acting in tune with the directives of Harry's mentor figure, Dumbledore.
The Shapeshifter is made significant by the valuation they receive from the Hero and the audience of the work. They, in a manner similar to the Outsider, must exist outside the Hero's known universe, but unlike the Outsider they exist on the same axis of chaos and order that the Hero must transfer between.
To steal a philosophical lens from the Classical era, think of the Shapeshifter as one who wears masks: they are like the actor behind the various personae of the stage. They play their role, often adopting the mantle of other archetypes. They are not stable enough in one position to have it carry them through the whole story, however.
Revelation and Maturation
This is not to say that a Shapeshifter is inherently duplicitous. They are uncertain, questioning, and often can be redeemed by the Hero. Unlike the Outsider, the Shapeshifter has similar motivations and common cause with the Hero, if only they can be persuaded to walk the same path.
This is not to say that the shift is necessarily positive. There are times when the Shapeshifter initially takes the form of a benevolent figure, only to reveal a treasonous figure. Like Nietszche's tarantulas, "they speak in favour of life... because they would thereby do injury." A common example of this is a false Mentor figure, who shifts into the Serpent. This can occur in multiple forms; either early on in a story (e.g. Scar in The Lion King, who appears to Simba as a Mentor but to the Audience as a Serpent) in an echo of the archetypal Fall from Eden, or near the end as a dramatic plot twist (e.g. Obadiah Stane in Iron Man, who serves as a mentor to Tony Stark before betraying him and adopting the Iron Monger mantle).
In the case of The Lion King, which I mentioned above, a Shapeshifter is often revealed through dramatic irony: Shakespeare's Iago who betrays Othello is no less a Shapeshifter for plotting his superior's demise throughout the course of a whole play.
Of course, the Shapeshifter can also be a figure with extreme shifts in value without necessarily changing their role. Sean Bean's Errol Partridge in Equilibrium serves as a Mentor to Christian Bale's John Preston, but turns out to be guilty of crimes against the state: Preston kills his Mentor, but ultimately follows his footsteps. Without substantitively changing archetypes, the character of Partridge still bears the dual role of Shapeshifter because of his deep secrets he carries. This is the sort of substantial revelation that comes out to make a character into a Shapeshifter if they bear only a single archetype).
Simply maturing within a single role does not turn one into a Shapeshifter. Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings is a Heroic figure throughout the whole story, even though he goes from being a stranger to being a king.
Literal versus Archetypal Shapeshifters
It's worth noting that pretty much any character who can change shape is a Shapeshifter, but this is not a rule. To steal from Harry Potter another example, Sirius Black is both a literal shapeshifter but also an archetypal Shapeshifter in the form of going from a wanted fugitive to Harry's most dedicated guardian. On the other hand, Professor McGonagall, who possesses similar abilities, is not a Shapeshifter in an archetypal sense; she has deeper complexity that Harry is unaware of but she never changes from a positive to negative figure or from a figure of order to a figure of chaos.
It is, however, a natural association for literal shapeshifters to be archetypal ones as well. The ability to easily alter or change identity is a powerful tool for deception, and it is easy for a Shapeshifter to be deceptive if they can change their identity. Otherwise they need to actually change, and this can cause them to supersede the Hero within the story. As a result, you tend to either see mysterious, distant Shapeshifters, or Shapeshifters whose whole identity is formed around the Hero.
Examples
There are a few good examples of the Shapeshifter that are well-known.
To gloss over the complexities of each, Shakespeare's Cassius (of "Julius Caesar"), Edmund (of "King Lear") and Iago (of "Othello") are all great Shapeshifters, and usually they can be found as such in the first scene.
Edmund, in particular, has a great monologue in which he shows himself to be a Shapeshifter:
Video courtesy of Guardian Culture.
Edmund becomes a Shapeshifter by intentionally wearing two masks: the loyal brother and son and the power-hungry bastard, but he also reflects one of the issues that comes as a result of stage performances.
A caution that an audience has to be aware of with Shakespeare's Shapeshifters is that their nature is known to the audience, and they are also archetypal Serpent figures. One needs to look at the protagonists of the plays and see that these characters present as archetypal Ally or Mentor figures to them to be absolutely certain.
Cassius of "Julius Caesar" is probably the most interesting of these, because he is the Serpent who corrupts Brutus by convincing him to assassinate Caesar (though Brutus' motives remain pure), but later becomes an Ally, a rare redemption of a Serpent into a positive figure that goes uncommented by Shakespeare: Cassius never pursues redemption, but his figure in the later acts is aligned with heroic Brutus rather than villainous treachery. His role as such almost gives me pause to classify him as a Shapeshifter, but I think he fits the description incontrovertibly despite his oddity.
Loki, both as a mythical figure and a character within the prominent Marvel Cinematic Universe is also a Shapeshifter. In each story he can appear as a beneficial or deleterious figure, and the roles that he takes reflect the situation more than any internal consistency. When he wants to help, he does, and when he wants to harm, he does. This capriciousness is a fundamental character trait of the Shapeshifter.
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