If something is archetypal, it is such a clear example of a type that it seems to carry all the important pieces of that type. An archetypal detective in a story notices small things and solves the case — not because every detective is like that, but because that picture is the pattern people measure others against. The word is a little formal; in easy talk people often say typical or classic instead. Though actually typical is weaker: a typical Monday is only usual, while an archetypal hero is the model of that kind of hero. Psychologists and literature teachers also use it, from the noun archetype, for deep patterns in stories and in the mind; in class you can treat that as the same idea, only more abstract. It describes a thing or a person; it is not itself a job or a title.