Biag ni Lam-ang (Archetypal Approach)

The story deals with the extra ordinary adventures of a Philippine hero, Lam-ang. An adventure which was orally passed through generations. It's story containing different weird adventures and exaggerations are wildly known by almost all Filipinos.

Myth is ubiquitous in time as well as place: it is a dynamic factor everywhere in human society; it transcends time, uniting the past (traditional modes of belief) with the present (current values) and reaching toward the future (spiritual and cultural aspirations).

Archetypal approach in connection to the story itself, Biag ni Lam-ang has become one of the all-time favorite stories of the Filipinos. The story contains almost all of the images of a myth:

 Water: the mystery of creation; birth-death-resurrection; purification and redemption; fertility and growth. According to Carl Jung, water is also the commonest symbol for the unconscious.

a. The Sea: the Mother of all Life; spiritual mystery, and infinity;    death and rebirth; timelessness and eternity; the unconscious.

b.     Rivers: also death and rebirth (baptism); the flowing of time into eternity; transitional phases of the life cycle; incarnations of deities.

This scene was evident when Lam-ang was bathed by a hundred maidens. The death of the fishes and other sea creatures living in the river shows his rebirth, and purification, killing and removing all the harmful elements that hinder him.

The Archetypal Woman (including the Jungian anima):

a. The Great Mother, Good Mother, Earth Mother: as sociated with birth, warmth, protection, fertility, growth, abundance; the unconscious.

b. The Terrible Mother: the witch, sorceress, siren—associated with fear, danger, and death.

c. The Soul-Mate: the princess or “beautiful lady”—in carnation of inspiration and spiritual fulfillment.

It was depicted by Ines Kannoyan, the beautiful maiden who was chosen by lam-ang to be his wife.

The story also contains all of the archetypal patterns starting from how he was born, his impossible growth,, his marriage, his death, and his rebirth. 

Creation: this is perhaps the most fundamental of all archetypal motifs; virtually every mythology is built on some account of how the Cosmos, Nature, and Man were brought into existence by some supernatural Being or Beings.

2. Immortality: another fundamental archetype, generally taking one of two basic narrative forms:

a. Escape from Time: the “Return to Paradise,” the state of perfect, timeless bliss enjoyed by man before his tragic Fall into corruption and mortality.

b. Mystical Submersion into Cyclical Time: the theme of endless death and regeneration—man achieves a kind of immortality by submitting to the vast, mysterious rhythm of Nature’s eternal cycle, particularly the cycle of the seasons.

3. Hero Archetypes (archetypes of transformation and redemption)

a) The Quest: the Hero (Savior or Deliverer) undertakes some long journey during which he must perform impossible ( tasks, battle with monsters, solve unanswerable riddles, and overcome insurmountable obstacles in order to save the \ kingdom and perhaps marry the princess.

(b. Initiation: the Hero undergoes a series of excruciating ordeals in passing from ignorance and immaturity to social and spiritual adulthood, that is, in achieving maturity and becoming a full-fledged member of his social group. The initiation most commonly consists of three stages or phases:

(1) separation, (2) transformation, and (3) return. Like the Quest, this is a variation of the Death-and-Rebirth archetype.

c. The Sacrificial Scapegoat: the Hero, with whom the welfare of the tribe or nation is identified, must die in order to atone for the people’s sins and restore the land to fruitfulness.

Finally, in addition to appearing as images and motifs, archetypes may be found in even more complex combinations as genres or types of literature which conform with the major phases of the seasonal cycle. In Fables of Identity (Harcourt, 1963), Northrop Frye provides the following table of archetypal phases with their correspondent literary types. (The reader may wish to consult Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism for an extended explanation of these categories.)

1. The dawn, spring and birth phase. Myths of the birth of the hero, of revival and resurrection, of creation and (be cause the four phases are a cycle) of the defeat of the powers of darkness, winter and death. Subordinate characters: the father and the mother. The archetype of romance and of most dithyrambic and rhapsodic poetry.

2. The zenith, summer, and marriage or triumph phase. Myths of apotheosis, of the sacred marriage, and of entering into Paradise. Subordinate characters: the companion and the bride. The archetype of com and idyll.

3. The sunset, autumn and death phase. Myths of fall, of the dying god, of violent death and sacrifice and of the isolation of the hero. Subordinate characters: the traitor and the siren. The archetype of tragedy and elegy.

4. The darkness, winter and dissolution phase. Myths of the triumph of these powers; myths of floods and the return of chaos, of the defeat of the hero. . . . Subordinate characters: the ogre and the witch. The archetype of satire. .