International Journal of Innovation and Applied Studies ISSN 2028-9324 Vol. 34 No. 3 Nov. 2021, pp. 643-656 © 2021 Innovative Space of Scientific Research Journals http://www.ijias.issr-journals.org/ Corresponding Author: Fiston Mugisho Ntanga 643 Character archetypes in Literature, a picture of what exists elsewhere: A Study of Gabriel Okara’s The Voice Fiston Mugisho Ntanga Teaching assistant, Department of English and African culture, ISP-Kaziba, Bukavu, South-Kivu, RD Congo Copyright © 2021 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT: It has been found out that the appearance of characters in different literary works around the world, tend to look alike and sometimes readers confuse them by the fact that they play the same roles. This is because the writer paints his characters according to the shape and existing models so that his work may be taken in the depth of other existing works around the world. Thence, characters, due to this fact, in a literary work appear as intelligent, polite, courageous, coward, rich, poor, etc, and play roles of chief, thieve, killer, ambassador, minister, crowd, messenger, elder, advisor, etc, by looking like other characters found in other literary works. The understanding of characters’ roles in a literary work helps the reader attribute different archetypes to them, like hero, villain, mentor, scapegoat, outcast, good mother, femme fatale, young innocent, evil mother, etc. This has been done in this paper by the fact that all the characters acting directly with Okolo, the main character of the novel under study, look like other characters in other works around the world. So, different archetypal patterns are drawn from the roles Gabriel Okara attributed to his characters. Some of his characters fit more than one archetype like Okolo and Tuere who are called scapegoats, outcasts and young innocent thanks to different situations in which they are found. To carry out the present work, the library, documentary and internet were used as main methods while the close and repetitive readings and comparison were taken as major techniques. KEYWORDS: Character archetype, archetypal criticism, literature, role playing, the voice. 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY Sometimes readers of literary works confuse stories they have read about and fail to relate them to the novels in which they are from, even their authors. This problem emanates from the fact of meeting characters who play the same roles in different novels, then, bring the likeness of the novels. By so doing, the understanding a reader can have vis-à-vis this likeness is expressed by their confusing ideas while referring to different authors. As matter of fact, many readers support the idea that writers of literature copy one from another for their works look alike. They say that, writers simply change characters but leave the same sequences and story in their works. In Gabriel Okara’s The Voice, it has been noticed that Okolo, the main character, has different traits with other characters found in works produced by other writers. Okolo can have the same qualities as Waiyaki, main character of Ngugi’s The River Between, and Njoroge, main character of Weep Not Child. It is may be because those two writer, though from different areas, share the same colonial system, then experience. 1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT The problem this study investigates relates the fact that many readers sometimes confuse what they have read in different literary works. It is an opportunity to discover why are writers using the same characters? Why many readers are getting confused after having read different works? and explain how different characters found in the Okara’s The Voice fit different archetypes.