Reading Born a Crime, every essay Trevor writes evaluates different people and different events in his life. The second segment of Born a Crime was mainly focused on his development as an individual rather than the history of apartheid and his mother, his grandmother, great-grandmother, et cetera. Through the beginning of his teenage years, we can see some characters in his life: his mother, his abusive step-father Abel, his first crush Maylene and his mischievous friend Tom take on major archetypal roles in his life, as well as Trevor taking on a few of his own along the way.
Patricia Noah takes on what may be the most important role in Trevor’s life — the Continuing Mentor. As a single mother, she teaches him everything there is to know about living a life worth remembering, from reconnecting with his father after years of separation, to respecting women, to simply how to survive during apartheid. “She was always giving me lessons, little talks, pieces of advice” (Noah 127). She was who created him, who taught him the morals and the values he needed to survive in the world he grew up in and never left his side. She protected him as a Continuing Mentor.
On the other hand, Abel, his violent, impulsive step-father, represents the Shadow in Trevor’s life — his thinly veiled anger and wrathful tendencies are considered socially unacceptable, which allows Trevor to view them in himself and in others easier and to avoid bringing those traits to the surface. When he tells Abel about a minor bullying incident, he describes Abel’s actions as “a grown man venting his rage on a twelve year old boy”. The two countering sides of his teenage parenting, a wholesome mentor against a wrathful Shadow of a human, play into Trevor’s psyche and awareness of people around him, warping the fundamentality of how he will treat others and how he interacts, as well as recognizing those own dark behaviours Abel embodies in his own psyche and shutting it down before he becomes what he despised.
On the non-parental side, the two largest archetypal influences on Trevor are Maylene and Tom. Maylene, Trevor’s first grade-school crush, represents the Shape-Shifter. Being as she switches sides very easily, from loving Trevor to loving the popular boy Lorenzo, she causes a rift in Trevor’s understanding of himself as well as his understanding of romance. Trevor highlights this as he laments, “As devastated as I was, I understood why Maylene made the choice that she did. I would have picked Lorenzo over me, too” (Noah 133). Her embodiment of the shape-shifter carries no malintent but she hides her intentions (being the Valentine of the best boy) and switches her allegiance incredibly fast.
Tom, a companion of Trevor’s who is responsible for Trevor’s horrible prom night (giving him a date who didn’t speak more than three words of English), represents the Trickster. Tom is a neutral character, yet is always working an angle to benefit someone in one way or another. As Trevor so eloquently describes him: “A great guy, but f***ing crazy and a complete liar as well” (164). He disrupts Trevor’s intents very easily, causing bumps in the road such as Trevor’s botched night with his date Babiki, yet he truly has no intention to hurt Trevor in any way — only to work his angle. Another example is when Tom books Trevor as Spliff Star (Busta Rhymes’ hype man) despite him definitely not being Spliff Star, tricking people only for fun and the experience (and a bit of money).
Despite the two being very transient characters in his life, they form a large part of Trevor’s personality. Maylene, to him, represents the turbulence of relationships, that experience sticking with Trevor through his future adventures into love, causing his self-doubt and insecurity in social situations and letting his first love escape from his life. Tom allows him to unlock the part of him that refuses to acknowledge limitations in what he can do, that allows him to be whoever he wants to be despite what he believes and what others believe, and to realize that nothing is truly impossible without a little imagination — but he also teaches Trevor to never trust anything on sight, that there is always another side to the story, and that romance is harder than meets the eye.
Trevor himself does not take on the traditional heroic role. He does not follow a stereotypical hero’s quest other than the quest of human self-discovery, and rather represents someone very normal, very relatable, nothing alike to an incredible hero who saves the world or a tragic hero who falls victim to his own flaw. The most prominent archetype in Trevor is the Persona. In his own words, “You don’t ask to be accepted for everything you are, just the one part of yourself you’re willing to share. For me it was humor” (141). The effects of other friends in his life, the effect of his insecurities in his appearance all lead to himself becoming the epitome of the Persona — the funnyman who lifts others up and represents liveliness and animosity. He hides the rest of himself behind that jovial mask, and this is very evident from the contrast between the stories of his childhood that gave him so much depth to his personality and what he decides to show to his peers. He may also take on the role of the Unwilling Hero later in the story, dependant on whether his story fits in the monomyth. Below is a video exploring Joseph Campbell’s theory of the hero’s journey to give you a bit of preface.
Despite Trevor not taking on the traditional heroic role early in his memoir, there are some elements of the archetypal hero’s journey included in his own journey that can contribute to him taking on the Unwilling Hero archetype. A catalyst in his personal development that might be considered his call to adventure, what takes him from being comfortable and settled in his youth, is when his father leaves at age thirteen. That leads to the introduction of Abel, “crossing the threshold”, and Abel’s presence in Trevor’s life, “the unknown world”, Abel being an intended replacement for Trevor’s father figure that quickly goes sour and becomes his “trials”. Among these trials, among his teenage years with Abel, he grows as a person, acknowledging that Abel represents the darker side of personality and human impulses with his violence and threats. Trevor develops, yet he is not free from the unknown world.
With Abel being the core of Trevor’s ‘heroic’ journey, the course is far from over. Abel has been just introduced into the story, in bits and pieces that acknowledge the beginning of Trevor’s path into the unknown. Based on the journey archetype, I expect Trevor to, in a way, defeat Abel after his own rebirth. It is known that Abel is abusive or at least on the verge of that, perhaps towards Trevor’s mother or Trevor himself. Domestic violence is not to be taken lightly, and I believe that Trevor’s first experience with that will lead to his metaphorical “death/rebirth”, and his atonement and changing of personality might be him taking the lead in his own life rather than his mother and getting rid of Abel, once and for all. When he returns to the regular world, a world without Abel, he will come out stronger, finally freeing himself from his Persona and embracing his heroic qualities that he had been hiding.
Although this is a work of non-fiction and Trevor’s story does not align perfectly with the traditional fiction concept of the monomyth, drawing parallels to other biographies is often easier than not. On first glance, with the memoir of an unremarkable story, something anecdotal, it isn’t easy to outline a hero’s journey. Rather, the monomyth is a cycle, and the average person goes through their own heroic journey many times over life. It is within the story they share with us, the anecdotes and memories they display where we can view and break down just one of their many hero’s journeys. It is those stories that form a person, and it is within those stories that we see the warping of the stereotypical archetypes. Born a Crime is one of the best examples of this, being as the essays progress farther along, Trevor deepens from a Persona, a shell of a person, to the strongest Unwilling Hero.
(If you or a loved one are a victim of domestic violence, don’t stay silent. The National Domestic Hotline is available online or on the phone in many languages 24/7.)
Archetypally, Born a Crime is enlightening. Analysing the memoir of a person, determining those real-life archetypes that often go unnoticed, it’s so easy to supplement our own lives being aware of the people around us and who they truly will be to us, how they will affect us and how long that will last. Trevor’s story, one of his many monomyths, is developing as I read into the third part, and the way it ends will dictate the verity of a monomyth in the average human experience. A memoir is merely experiences — it is those experiences that form what we believe to be the peak archetypal story.
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