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The Nightmare Before Christmas has two lead characters, Sally and Jack, whose archetypal bases are less than stereotypical. Austrian psychologist Carl Jung proposed the concept of the "collective unconscious," which is a set of "archetypes, or primordial images, myths and evolutionary symbols that represent inborn and universal ways of perceiving and comprehending the world" (Enns 127). These archetypes are as diverse as human culture, but are useful ways the unconscious mind makes sense of abstractions such as literature, films, and other such media. Gender partisans have long pointed to archetypes, especially those in mythology, to drive their ideas of what men and women should be. Sally is a hybrid character of the archetypes that exemplify modern feminist intellectuals. Elaine Showalter's essay on modern feminist intellectuals can be viewed in light of three mythical or archetypal roles, the Cassandra, the Messiah, and the Dark Lady. Sally is a hybrid of the Dark Lady and the Cassandra. The Dark Lady is described as "the token woman or exceptional intellectual in a community of men"(Showalter 136). Sally is the only overtly "feminine" woman in all of Halloweentown. Cassandras "are 'very unhappy at present' because their intellectual style does not fit into the expectations of the masculine world"(Showalter 134). Further, Cassandra, as the prophetess cursed with sight is also the archetype of the wise woman who is doomed to be disbelieved. While Jack is attempting to understand what makes Christmas so special by empirically examining it in his study, Sally, who is in the graveyard below, receives a vision in which a flower turns into a beautiful Christmas tree and then spontaneously ignites, leaving the "tree" in ashes. She makes repeated attempts to tell Jack of her disastrous vision but he will not listen to her and neither will anyone else. She is the only person who understands that nothing good will come of the attempt to be something other than what one is, the lone intellectual among men who is wise but yet disbelieved. She is the Dark Lady and, both figuratively and in a literal sense, Cassandra. But because she is the heroine, the young girls who view this movie may assimilate these stronger views of women as intellectuals into their personalities and become less like the traditional submissive female stereotype.

The lead male character, Jack Skellington, on the other hand, embodies two archetypes of men that are often viewed as incompatible. Jack, a skeleton, is the ruler of Halloweentown who dreams of something more than that which he has always known. The mythopoetic men's movement arose in response to the rise of feminism and sought reclaim the masculinity of the "soft male." They claimed the soft male was in psychological pain caused by the oppression of women. They called for a return of the archetypal roles of warrior and king to redefine manliness. Carolyn Enns offers criticism to the movement saying, "It is unlikely that images of warriors and wild men and experiences of fierceness will help men feel more positively about sharing power with women in the work world, become more comfortable with emotions related to vulnerability and responsiveness, or assume greater responsibility for providing emotional nourishment to the next generation" (Enns 130). Critics of this movement point to the lack of emotional attachment on the part of these archetypal men, and the ease with which they reinforce traditional gender roles. Jack Skellington's crisis reveals himself to be a hybrid of the king and this softer male. The crisis that drives his growth is emotional in nature. In his song "Jack's Lament," he sings of all his accomplishments and yet it ends with, "the fame and praise come year after year does nothing for these empty tears"( Burton ). Jack is displaying an ability for men to rule and still have emotional needs. This quality would activate a more sensitive archetypal male in the collective unconscious and allow for the possibility of integration into the conscious of the young boys who watch it. Jack represents a character that provides a role model that works against the mythopoetic men's movement, disrupting the dominant view of how men should be, and offering an alternative of sensitivity for the young boys who watch him.