Category: Joseph Campbell

The Hero’s Journey Toolbox – and a short trip

I am, it will not shock you to learn, far from the first person to attempt to refine Campbell’s model of a hero’s journey. One of the giants on whose shoulders I hope to perch is Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood developer whose 7 page memo on the hero’s journey set the standard for practical applications of the archetype. He’s since written several books on the topic, but you can find a copy of his original memo here.

 

Vogler’s model goes as follows:

—————————————————

  1. Ordinary world
  2. Call to adventure
  3. Refusal of the call
  4. Meeting with the mentor
  5. Crossing the first threshold

—————————————————

  1. Tests, allies and enemies
  2. Approach to the inmost cave
  3. The ordeal
  4. Reward

—————————————————

  1. The road back
  2. The resurrection
  3. Return with the elixir

—————————————————

 

This is a much crisper and more succinct form of the hero’s journey, with my two primary objections to Campbell’s model (the shoehorned Freudian psychoanalysis and transcendental buddhism) neatly removed. Vogler also cut the odious elements introduced by the book’s 1949 publication, such as the entire section dedicated to the idea of Woman as Temptress.

Because of this, I’m going to use Vogler’s model as my starting point. However there are a few personal adjustments I’m considering to tailor the journey to my own vision. They are:

 

1) While there’s no set way for a Hero’s Journey to begin, the second half of The Hero with a Thousand Faces made some valuable observations about how the openings of such stories tend to go. Examples include portents of the hero’s birth, exile from a rightful kingdom, and a grueling, unhappy childhood. The stories don’t have to include these precursors, but they’re so common I think I’d be remiss if I failed to mention them. Therefore, I’m adding a new, optional section before the story begins called, ‘Setting the stage.’

2) The Refusal of the Call is a time-worn and honored trope, but it is not required. In my model, I’ll mark it as ‘optional.’

3) The ‘Meeting with the Mentor’ is a rare moment of regression in Vogler’s model, and winds up a bit overspecific. I prefer Campbell’s more general conception of simple ‘Supernatural Aid.’

4) There’s something about the closing of the story – roughly everything between The Ordeal and the Return with the Elixir – that seems off to me. Each element looks fine on its own, so it could just be that the order is flexible. Alternatively the outline might be better with a few elements added, modified, or removed. The Road Back is a strong candidate for an ‘optional’ tag, and I’m considering where and whether to add an explicit ‘Showdown with the Villain.’.

 

As my tentative tone probably indicated, this conception is not final. Instead it’s a starting point – or rather two.

First, I’ll use it for analyzing the stories I’ve chosen as primary sources for studying the hero’s journey in action. So far I’m including The Hobbit, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone, the Star Wars films and The Matrix, with more to be added as time allows. As these sources attest to or challenge my model, I’ll make adjustments.

Second, I’m adding a new page to the Practice Write project, which I’m calling the Hero’s Journey Toolbox. You can find it on the main page, or by clicking the link here.

In On Writing, Stephen King introduced the metaphor of a ‘writing toolbox,’ filled over time with the implements needed to craft a story. I like the metaphor, so in its spirit I’m putting together a toolbox for creating a hero’s journey. It will be a curated collection of all the valuable information I’ve gleaned from Campbell, Vogler, and the stories I’ll be analyzing in the next several posts. As I gather information and make adjustments it should become more detailed and nuanced, and with any luck will eventually contain the tools I’ll need for my own project.

A stray thought occurs to me – I wonder if writers who are allergic to models might be a bit less offended by the term toolbox.  Rather than the paint-by-the-numbers guide implied by the former, a toolbox suggests the presence of an artisan and the instruments it contains are aids to – not replacements for – their craftsmanship. Depending on how much sophistication you think models can claim this may be a distinction without a difference, but it might be a better way to frame the discussion going forward.

Speaking of forward, for the next two weeks I’ll be on a business trip to Nigeria and may not have the chance to update the blog or Practice Log. If this is the case, I’ll keep track of any writing manually and update the site on my return. See you in a fortnight. 

The Hero with a Thousand Faces – The Critique: Occam, might I borrow your razor for a moment?

The point of this blog is not to attack or criticize the work of other authors, and I want to (despite my naturally cynical disposition) maintain a mostly positive tone. However, there were some parts of The Hero with a Thousand Faces that were so absurd, so irritating and offensive to rationality that I can’t overlook them.

The core of Campbell’s argument goes something like this: there are elements of the human psyche that run so deep humans unconsciously express them through symbolism in our mythology. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces he applies his two favorite modes of thought – Freudian psychoanalysis and transcendental buddhism – to uncovering these primordial archetypes.

But Campbell’s original sin is this – before beginning his investigation, he had already decided what he was trying to discover. Even a casual reading of The Hero with a Thousand Faces makes it clear he did not approach his source material as an investigator. He already knew that the Freudian and transcendental buddhist interpretations were correct and was willing to shamelessly twist or omit evidence to make the mythology conform to that viewpoint.

If you decide to pick up the book I recommend reading it with this in mind: Campbell is not an impartial academic. He’s a lawyer making the best case for his client.

But even lawyers tell the truth sometimes, and there are element’s of Campbell’s case where he does seem to give the best explanation for the evidence. I have been grudgingly forced to admit that there are parts of a story which operate outside of plain view. But we cannot accept this too naively or we’ll leave ourselves open to any bizarre or outright manipulative interpretation that Campbell or others care to suggest.

So how do we cut Campbell’s genuine scholarship free from his ideology? After wrestling with the question for a few months I think I’ve found the right tool: the trusty razor of William of Occam.

 

Freud:

Campbell believed that Freud, Jung, and the other psychoanalysts had basically nailed human nature. To some extent he can be forgiven for this. As I’ve mentioned before, Campbell wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949, and was using the best information he had available at the time.

But the reason forgiveness can only be partial is this: when confronted with evidence that did not fit into a Freudian explanation, Campbell either ignored or downplayed the contradicting facts. One could fill a small book with examples, but two in particular stand out. First, his section on the Atonement with the Father, and second, his descriptions of The Ultimate Boon.

The Atonement with the Father is one of the longest sections in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Campbell crams in every example he can think of where the villain or antagonist is a father figure. One can detect a tinge of desperation as Campbell tries to find links between everything from Greek myths and the vengeful aspect of the Judeo-Christian God to the circumcision rites of aboriginal tribes. After several rereadings, I can’t help but conclude Campbell was trying to make up for his lack of good examples by simply giving more of them.

After attempting to demonstrate that the villains in mythology are really Freudian tyrannical fathers in disguise, Campbell then claims that the moral of all these stories is coming of age. By defeating the malevolent father figure the hero undergoes a spiritual transformation where “-the male phallus, instead of the female breast, is made the central point (axis mundi) of the imagination,” (Campbell 138). Campbell goes on to say:

“The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open is soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe for understanding how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated by the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands – and the two are atoned.” (Campbell 147)

These assertions do not hold up to scrutiny. To start with, Campbell had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find his examples and in doing so cites myths that do not follow the earlier steps of the hero’s journey. He cannot have this both ways. If he wants to claim that the climactic conflict of a hero’s journey is a clash with a father figure, his examples must be taken from stories that fit the model he is proposing. Every example he cites save one fails this test, which leads me to propose that a simpler explanation is likely the correct one: a conflict with a father figure is a compelling and enduring archetype, but there are far more villains a hero can defeat than this one alone

Campbell also carefully ignores stories that clearly are hero’s journeys, but where the final conflict does not involve a father figure. Theseus’s defeat of the Minotaur is often cited as a classic example of Campbell’s monomyth, but his battle with the monster has none of the Freudian symbolism Campbell was so desperate to find. Since he was advocating for a particular worldview, Campbell shrewdly leaves this story out of his analysis.

As for the spiritual transformation Campbell sought to insert, he made a critical error in conflating the stories of a Hero’s Journey and Coming of Age. While there can be significant overlap, the difference between these two archetypes is narrow but deep. It’s entirely possible for mature adults to set out on a hero’s journey, such as Indiana Jones and Odysseus, both of whom had grand adventures without facing any of the angst of a young person trying to discover themselves and their role in society. One of the best ways for a young person to come of age is by undertaking a hero’s journey, but it is not the only method, and once we distinguish between these two types of narratives the spiritual growth Campbell claims is central to a hero’s journey falls apart.

Moving on to the Ultimate Boon, Campbell claims that the prevalence of food and drink as divine reward – a la the peaches of immortality and the never-ending feasts that feature in so many afterlives – symbolizes humanity’s deep-seated and infantile desire to return to the comfort of our mother’s breast. He says:

“The supreme boon desired for the Indestructible Body is uninterrupted residence in the Paradise of the milk that Never Fails . . . Soul and body food, heart’s ease, is the gift of the ‘All Heal,’ the nipple inexhaustible.” (Campbell 176)

Our borrowed razor makes short work of this. Which do you think is more likely, dear reader? That the commonality of food and drink as vessels of divine favor symbolizes our subconscious craving for breastfeeding? Or simply that food is vital to human survival and quality of life, and would have been the subject of great fantasies in ancient times when it was scarce? It is perhaps revealing that the trope of divine feasts doesn’t seem to have continued in modern stories unless the author is deliberately referencing older myths. If you crave a return to your mother’s breast then, well, I guess that’s between you and her, but in this case I’ll stick with the simpler explanation.

To be fair to Campbell, he admits that the above ‘divine food’ imagery cannot be interpreted as purely psychological. However, that doesn’t stop him from trying to cite Freud to add some substance to his theory, only to back out when he realizes how weak his proposed connection is. I found this to be an excellent demonstration of Campbell’s thought process; he does his best to apply his preferred theories to his source material, and if they don’t seem to take he walks back just enough to avoid rank absurdity but never stops to wonder if he may need to reevaluate his approach. Well if he won’t, I’ll do it for him: the majority of the Freudian connections he wants to draw are ridiculous and we’ll understand both the mythology and hero’s journey better if we start by assuming they’re incorrect until proven otherwise.

 

Religion:

The following quote is perhaps my favorite in all of The Hero with a Thousand Faces because it so clearly illustrates the author’s mindset as he wrote the book. Watch with amazement as Campbell begins by stating a fairly reasonable literary interpretation, shifts to some dodgy philosophy, and finally pivots to a declaration that anyone save the most fervent religious believer would blush to repeat in public.

“The battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every creature lives on the death of another. A realization of the inevitable guilt of life may so sicken the heart that, like Hamlet or like Arjuna, one may refuse to go on with it. On the other hand, like most of the rest of us, one may invent a false, finally unjustified, image of oneself as an exceptional phenomenon in the world, not guilty as others are, but justified in one’s inevitable sinning because one represents the good. Such self-righteousness leads to a misunderstanding, not only of oneself but of the nature of both man and the cosmos. The goal of myth is to dispel the need for such life ignorance by effecting a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the universal will. And this is effected through a realization of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time with the imperishable life that lives and dies in all.” (Campbell 238)

While listening to this passage in the audiobook, I suddenly heard myself mutter aloud, “Oh, you’re going to explain the nature of time to me, motherfucker?”

Perhaps this reveals a bit more about myself than Campbell, but by that point I was fed up with Campbell’s love affair with transcendental Buddhism. It’s influence on his work was omnipresent and corrosive, causing Campbell to not just say, but write down and publish the most impressively stupid things.

Campbell believed that there was a universal consciousness – or ‘source,’ as he sometimes referred to it – that all our individual minds spring from. Mythology is an attempt to pierce the veil of the everyday and reach this transcendent ideal. There’s no room for cultural nuance here – according to Campbell all of mythology is a part of this noble endeavor, whether its creators were aware of it or not.

Even if we leave aside the metaphysical proof Campbell would need for these claims – which, you should know, he does not even attempt to provide – his central assertion is easily cut down by our dear friend Occam. I invite you to choose the simpler explanation: that the rich mythology of the Vikings, Greeks, Native Americans, and countless other peoples were all unconscious attempts to reach the ego-destroying bliss of nirvana, or that the author we’re examining imposed his own beliefs on the stories he examined.

I’ll happily grant that trying to understand transcendence can be a motivation for some myths, but it is not the only motivation. The nature of time, the roles of men and women, and what it means to be a conscious being are similarly hard problems that myth can attempt to address.  But by claiming that all myths are unconsciously seeking Buddhist spirituality, Campbell makes a fool of himself and attempts to make a fool of us.

Finally, there’s one last bit of religious nonsense from Campbell that needs a direct response:

“Briefly formulated, the universal doctrine teaches that all the visible structures of the world – all things and beings – are the effects of a ubiquitous power out of which they rise, which supports and fills them during the period of their manifestation, and back into which they must ultimately dissolve. This is the power known to science as energy, to the Melanesians as mana, to the Sioux Indians as wakonda, the Hindus as shakti, and the Christians as the power of God.” (Campbell 257)

This is not the first time or the last that, like a poorly educated new-ager or a cleric flailing in the face of incisive questioning, Campbell attempts to meld science and religion.  It’s a trick, one that counts on the audience being too credulous or stupid to notice that a thief has nicked a respectable man’s clothes. There is an unsubtle difference between spiritualism and science, and that is the ability to make testable predictions. Campbell would prefer that you forget this distinction in favor of superficial similarities, and I can only hope he felt a pang of conscience each time he tried to support his theories by drawing a patently false equivalence.

—

This is a truncated version of my objections to Campbell, but it’s representative of the overall book. I’d say to think of it as, ‘including, but not limited to.’

Now that it’s finished, we’ll move on to my final post on Joseph Campbell, where I’ll take the best parts of his work and use them to start constructing my own model for the Hero’s Journey.

Thank you for reading.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces – The Second Half

All right, the post is finally up! This is the first time I’ve tried to keep a blog, and boy, have I learned a few things over the past few weeks.

First, when the post starts running long, don’t just try to power through. I’d meant to just breeze past the sections in part 2 of the Hero with a Thousand Faces that I didn’t find valuable, which probably would have left this post at about half its final length. But as I was writing the post I began to feel slightly dishonest for not giving each section a fair shake, and started to wonder if I was doing a disservice to fellow writers who may find a given part more useful than I did.

When I decided to include at least a brief explanation of all the sections the post’s length began to balloon out of control. So, lesson learned: if the post needs to be longer than I initially thought, break it into more manageable sections instead of trying to get it all done in one fell swoop.

Second: try to write the post contemporaneously with reading the book, or at least shortly thereafter. I finished The Hero with a Thousand Faces a few weeks ago and as the days went by my interest naturally shifted to other things. Waiting too long to write about the book saps the emotional energy of my first readthrough and forces me to spend time rereading.

Third and finally, treat the classics with a tad more respect. I assumed that I’d be able to blow through The Hero with a Thousand Faces in a few weeks, or maybe at most a month. Instead it’s taken nearly three months and I’m still not entirely finished. While I don’t regret starting with The Hero with a Thousand faces (given that I’m studying the hero’s journey I don’t think I really had a choice) it would have been wise to assume there was some fire beneath the smoke of prestige and I would need to contend with the book seriously.

So with all that said, what are we looking at in this post?

This post covers the entirety of part 2 of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I go chapter by chapter, give a brief description of what they’re about, and pull out the most useful elements for you to consider.

By far the most valuable chapter in part 2 is Chapter 3: Transformations of the Hero, so most of this post will focus on that. (If you just want the information that is useful for writers, feel free to skip to the section on Chapter 3).

Let’s get started with:

 

 

Chapter 1: Emanations

Campbell starts this chapter by discussing how he believes myth relates to psychology and metaphysics. This directly relates to a lot of my critiques of Campbell’s work, so I’m going to save it for the next post.

He then moves on to creation myths, and says that this type of mythology follows a cycle of ascension and diminution. Just like day/night and the idea of birth/death/rebirth, the world is created, ends, and is created again.   

When it’s time for the universe to be created (or re-created), Campbell lays out the basic form of:

 

The universe is created out of the void

v

Within the universe, life appears

v

The universe is broken into different pieces.

 

The third, breaking into pieces stage of a creation myth usually involves some kind of fall, or at least general worsening of the world. Before this event everything was perfect and unified – but then something happens that splits heaven and earth, male and female, and so on. Often the divisive event is necessary or ends with a net positive, but it still carries at least a tinge of destruction.

For writing, if a story needs a lot of worldbuilding (and especially if it involves religion) this creation myth outline is probably worth keeping in mind. If your story doesn’t, it’s safe to skip over this chapter.

 

 

Chapter 2: The Virgin Birth

Campbell really outdid himself here, and this chapter may be the most abstruse in the entire book. As best I can tell it’s discussing the creation of humanity, but I couldn’t find any hard rules for what distinguished it from Emanations.  

At first I thought that the creation and maturation of humanity would mark the boundary, yet in some of Campbell’s examples humanity was clearly created in the early parts of Emanations. Conversely, given that there’s an entire section in the Emanations chapter titled ‘Within Space – Life,’ it would stand to reason that life should already be established by the time of the Virgin Birth. But in one of the longest myths Campbell recounts the work of spreading plants, animals, and other life throughout the world is completed concurrently with this event.

This suggests to me that either I’m too ignorant to understand what Campbell was going for, or that the pattern he wanted to establish here wasn’t quite supported by the mythology so he decided to fudge his definitions a little. I’ll leave it up to your judgement.

As best I can tell, the general theme of The Virgin Birth is this: a masculine and feminine force come together to create humanity (and possibly the rest of the world). The masculine force is common but optional, and some societies leave it out in favor of just a creating mother.

After various events – the details vary – these parental figures leave humanity to its own devices. As soon as mom and dad leave town for the weekend humanity predictably descends into greed, stupidity, violence, and worship of the superficial. Eventually, things get so bad that the two creative forces have to come back and set things right.

According to Campbell, the favored form of intervention is the birth of a hero via a virgin mother. The virgin, due to her purity, takes on the role of the feminine creative force. Based on Campbell’s examples, the masculine god seems to show up in person.

Does this pattern hold true in societies that forego a masculine creative force? Who knows – Campbell never addresses it.

My recommendation? Skim this chapter, or better yet read the cliff notes. The outline it presents is potentially useful for setting the stage before the hero arrives, but it’s too vague and self-contradictory to help us develop our writing.

 

 

Chapter 3: Transformations of the Hero

Oh yeah, it’s time for some learnin’.

This chapter had, by far, the most valuable information of any part of the Hero with a Thousand Faces. It’s divided into eight sections and we’re going to spend some time looking at all of them. That might sound like a lot, but believe me, it’s worth it.

 

1) The Primordial Hero and the Human

Campbell lays out an interesting concept here. He says that mythologies tend to start in the utterly fantastic, such as the world being created from an egg. These stories are so obviously absurd that everyone understands they should be understood symbolically.

Then over time the supernatural element cools, moving from the obviously fanciful to the merely extremely unlikely. Examples include the half-man, half-bull Minotaur, or a founding patriarch that single-handedly created the arts of fishing, hunting, and animal husbandry, as well as the social structures of clan and marriage. These figures clearly have some fantastic elements, but are a touch more realistic and could potentially be based on genuine historical figures.

Finally, we enter the world of the everyday, with all the common moral and social failings humanity is cursed with. It’s into this world that the hero is born.

The hero, Campbell argues, is a throwback to the earlier, more glorious ages. He describes it as reconnecting with a primordial consciousness, and while I have no interest in that particular cup of Kool-Aid, I agree with the central proposition that heroes are generally working to restore something of value which has been lost.

To give an example of these three pieces in action, in Star Wars the mystical energy field ‘the Force’ binds the universe together. This is the truly fantastic, the piece of the story which is so unlikely that Han Solo calls it a hokey religion. In the next tier down – the middle ground of the merely unlikely – is the order of supernaturally empowered Jedi Knights. Everyone admits they once existed, but the officers under Grand Moff Tarkin express open contempt for Darth Vader’s ‘sorcerer’s ways.’  

Luke Skywalker is born after the Jedi have already been destroyed, in an era of darkness and oppression under the evil empire. His journey is to reconnect with their lost glory and bring the Jedi and the Force back into the modern age.

A return to past prosperity is probably not the only thing that can motivate the hero, but I’m genuinely struggling to think of examples where a hero seeks to enact a new and untested vision of the world.  Heroes that want to reclaim their lost gold from The Lonely Mountain seem vastly more common than those who march out and claim a fortune which has never been theirs, and we should design our stories accordingly.

(EDIT: A thoughtful reader by the name of T.G. Ellis provides the obvious counter-example of King Arthur and his quest for a kingdom. I still think that returns to lost glory are the more common breed, but the tale of the good king is a seminal hero’s journey that runs exactly the other way. Clearly we have some room in which to work.)

 

2) Childhood of the Human Hero

While the hero can be a normal person who rose to the occasion when adventure presented itself, it’s more common for at least a hint of their destiny appear before the call to adventure. This is exemplified in Hagrid’s famous line,

“Did you ever make anything happen? Anything you couldn’t explain – when you were angry, or scared?”

(Yeah, yeah, I used the line from the movie. In this one instance, I think it’s better than what was said in the book.)

These hints of destiny often – though not always – lead to the child hero having some proto adventures before the Call to Adventure is delivered. Wart’s experiences being transformed into different animals by Merlin in The Once and Future King is probably the best example, but the same theme can be found in Harry Potter’s run in with the snake in the zoo.

Despite their strange powers, the hero’s childhood tends to be less than pleasant. Campbell points out two specific ways this can manifest.

First, the hero is exiled from his rightful kingdom. If this happens, part of the hero’s journey will involve a triumphant return to their homeland.

Second, after being exiled, the hero must spend their early life in some sort of menial or degrading position. This might mean living as a servant, squire, abused stepdaughter, or in the cupboard under the stairs.

When the hero’s powers or heritage are finally noticed, it usually causes some sort of crisis that marks the end of the hero’s time in obscurity. This probably involves their call to adventure, and leads to the next step, The Hero as Warrior.

 

3) The Hero as Warrior

This is my favorite section in all of The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Campbell starts by saying that when the hero sets out on their journey, they’re trying to change things. He’s adamant on this point, and says:

“For the mythological hero is the champion not of things become but of things becoming. The dragon to be slain by him is precisely the monster of the status quo: Holdfast, the keeper of the past. From obscurity the hero emerges, but the enemy is great and conspicuous in the seat of power; he is enemy, dragon, tyrant, because he turns to his own advantage the authority of his position. He is Holdfast not because he keeps the past but because he keeps.” (Campbell, 337)

The above quote also draws attention to two key elements of the hero’s quest. First, the hero usually starts out unknown and rises to glory, whereas the villain is already in a position of authority. Second, the villain is a villain precisely because they are abusing their position for selfish ends. (The hero will have to contend with this temptation later on, during ‘The Hero as Emperor and Tyrant.’)

When the time comes for the hero to defeat the villain, Campbell says,

“The tyrant is proud, and therein resides his doom. He is proud because he thinks his strength is his own; thus he is in the clown role, as a mistaker of shadow for substance; it is his destiny to be tricked. The mythological hero, reappearing from the darkness that is the source of the shapes of the day, brings a knowledge of the secret of the tyrant’s doom. With a gesture as simple as the pressing of a button, he annihilates the impressive configuration.” (Campbell, 337)

The last line in resonated with me due to the prevalence of self-destruct sequences, collapsing castles, and other mechanisms that, after a relatively simple activation, completely dismantle the villain’s power base.

I’ve also noticed that villains are almost never defeated through superior skill, power, or even will. I can’t think of a book or film where the hero simply powered up to the point where they could overcome the villain in an honest fight.  I suspect that this is at least partly due to the audience’s preference for underdogs, but Campbell’s point is also well taken – it’s a rare villain whose arrogance and trust in his own power does not directly cause their downfall.

When the villain’s weak point is found, defeat is instant and crushing. Examples include Luke Skywalker shooting a thermal exhaust port (which gets bonus points, because Grand Moff Tarkin expressly refuses to evacuate in his moment of triumph), as well as Iron Man defeating the Ironmonger by luring him into an overloading arc reactor, and Harry Potter securing the Philosopher’s Stone from right under Voldemort’s nose. This doesn’t mean that beating the villain is easy, just that when the hero finally succeeds it’s usually over in a flash.

 

4) The Hero as Lover

With the villain gone, the hero can set about righting the world. I feel like this is a pretty brief section in modern stories, lasting just long enough to give the reader the feeling that everything’s going to be alright. Once we know that the hero is going to correct all the villain’s wrongs we don’t need to waste time in the nitty-gritty of rebuilding cities, restoring an economy, and so on.

Campbell says that in mythology this righting of the world is usually symbolized by the rescue of a maiden. I can already hear gagging from many readers, but before we lampoon Campbell too harshly I think it’s worth pointing out that from a purely analytical standpoint Campbell is probably correct. If we took all the great myths from around the world and counted 1) how many involve a male hero, and 2) how many of these male heroes end up rescuing a woman, I think we’d find it to be an incredibly common and durable trope. Even Harry Potter rescues his eventual love interest from the Chamber of Secrets. All this does not mean that the trope is immune to criticism or we shouldn’t subvert it, just that trying to pretend it doesn’t exist is factually dubious.

Per Campbell the woman who’s rescued is the hero’s other half, complementing both his strengths and weaknesses. Through their union, a new world is born. Even if the hero has already defeated the villain they may have to go through some further trials to to rescue the maiden, and until he does the world will remain unhealed.

Campbell notes that there’s even a sub-type of story centered entirely around the hero being thwarted from reaching his true love by overly controlling parents. In these stories, the hero’s journey is the tale of the hero overcoming a series of impossible tasks issued by the maiden’s parents and eventually winning the hand of his one true love.

 

5) The Hero as Emperor and Tyrant

It may seem like most modern stories end before reaching this stage, but we’re living in the middle of a major exception: The Avengers.

At first glance the Avengers films seem to challenge Campbell’s notion that a defining element of the hero’s journey is destroying a corrupt status quo. The majority of the Avengers’ storylines have these roles inverted, with the superheroes acting as agents of the status quo trying to stop a renegade villain.

More generally, I’ve heard it commented that superheroes are often reactive and tend to spend their time protecting something like Metropolis or Gotham rather than enacting a plan for making the world a better place. Does this mean that superheroes are a different type of hero than the one that sets out on a hero’s journey?

Campbell would say no – they’re just a bit further along. After defeating the villain and repairing the damage their evil has wrought, the hero becomes the protector and sometimes ruler of the new world. Campbell describes this as becoming a representative of the divine will and medium between the earth and heavens. I don’t think this spiritual framing is necessary, but if we substitute virtue for divinity the model works just as well.

So how well do the Avengers follow the model? Well, each of the major heroes that make up the team (sorry Hawkeye and Black Widow) started with a solo film where they went through extremely traditional hero’s journeys. These earlier films moved the characters through the four steps I’ve just outlined. When it was time for a true Avengers film that involved the whole team, the heroes were already established as Emperors protecting a revivified world.

So while it would probably be unwise to start a novel here, the Hero as Emperor and Tyrant is an excellent guide if one of our stories extends into sequels or a series. I’ve found many storylines – particularly in anime and manga – that become very samey due to repeated resets of the hero’s position. Every time the hero defeats the big bad an even more powerful villain appears who sends the hero back to the position of questing adventurer. If this is repeated too many times the audience will lose interest, so we should remember that after completing a full adventure we can shift our emphasis from the hero building a new world to protecting a good one.

One final point on The Hero as Emperor and Tyrant – Campbell says that after assuming power the hero may fail to remain pure and thereby become a tyrant rather than protector. If this happens the gaudy, earthly empire they’ve built will inevitably come crashing down around them. I see two main ways for us to apply this to storytelling.

The first is to incorporate it into worldbuilding and set up our villain as a fallen hero. Darth Vader is the quintessential example, who through his arrogance and anger destroyed everything he’d meant to protect.

The second is to use it as a means to prod a complacent hero. After achieving victory the hero may become slothful, consumed by vices or even corrupt, and when their world falls apart they’re forced to return to the virtues that originally allowed them to achieve success.

 

6) The Hero as World Redeemer

In the Hero as World Redeemer, the hero has gone beyond serving as a representative of the divine and is now one with the divine will. Anyone who has even the faintest familiarity with Christianity will recognize this immediately: through death and rebirth, Jesus moves from being the son of God – the earthly representative of the divine – to becoming god himself.

This event is the end of a story. Campbell says there are two other events that can take place after this one, but they’re more like variants on a theme than continuations of a narrative. In fact, most stories will end well before this event (probably at step 4 or 5), and while Campbell would argue this simply means those stories didn’t go through the full hero’s journey, I think it’s entirely appropriate for a hero’s journey to end before they become a Christ allegory.

If we choose to apply this event in our stories, it’s worth noting that it doesn’t necessarily have to involve the religious or supernatural. To give a purely secular example, a hero who found themselves in conflict with a mentor may come to understand what the mentor was trying to achieve and take up the mentor’s mantle after they die. The symbolism of the hero sublimating their own desires for the good of the world is the key element of this event, and any supernatural elements are – while flashy and fun – not required.

 

7) The Hero as Saint

If for some reason the hero’s earthly body remains after the Hero as World Redeemer event, they may continue living as a hermit or the titular saint. Campbell says the Hero as Saint involves the hero’s ego being completely dissolved, leaving them at one with the universe. Their body may still be around, but ‘Dave’s not here man,’ and their previous personality ceases to be relevant.

This strikes me as Hero as World Redeemer on steroids, and the only way I can see to incorporate it into a story is to have other characters meet the saint. I suspect that almost anything told from the saint’s point of view would be too alien or just flat-out boring to hold an audience.

 

8) Departure of the Hero

All good things must come to an end, and every hero must eventually die. Campbell says that to be a hero, death must hold no terror for the character and the hero will go willingly into the long night. It’s worth pointing out that he seemed to envision the hero’s death as coming after the ego-destruction of the Hero as World Redeemer and the Hero as Saint, so if the hero meets their demise before ascending to a higher state of being they may feel a bit less sanguine about the whole thing.

Campbell’s most interesting point here was how often the hero doesn’t actually die. Many, like King Arthur, instead retreat from the world to rest, recover from wounds or simply sleep, and vow to return in their people’s hour of greatest need. I like this trope a lot and will keep it in mind as a potential way of wrapping up the story of an especially popular protagonist. The hint that they could return, even if there are no plans for future books, is tantalizing for the reader and paradoxically a bit more memorable than a final end.

 

 

Chapter 4: Dissolutions

 

1) End of the Microcosm

This section is all about death and the afterlife. To make Campbell’s long, long stories short, the transition to the afterlife is often filled with peril and the hero must go through yet another journey to reach their ultimate end.

The myths Campbell recounted here were vibrant and strange, so I marked it as a potential reference should I ever write a story that involves the transition to the afterlife. My personal favorite is the ancient Egyptian tale of how a dead soul takes on the body parts of different gods during their journey. Their eyes become the eyes of Hathor, their ears the ears of Apaut, their nose the nose of Khenti-khas, and so on. Once their whole body has been transformed, Campbell says,

“ . . . the soul comes into the fullness of stature and power through assimilating the deities that had been thought to be separate from and outside of it. They are projections of its own being; and as it returns to its true state they all are reassumed.” (Campbell 371)

But while the myths of entering the afterlife are colorful, their structure is still that of the hero’s journey. My recommendation is to just read this section for the stories.

 

2) End of the Macrocosm

Now it’s time for the grand finale, the end of the world. Like the End of the Microcosm this section is brief – really just a retelling of a few grand apocalyptic myths. Campbell doesn’t do much investigation or mention any commonalities in the stories about how the world will end. If you’d like some inspiration feel free to check out this section, but if we want to tell a story about the end of the world (which sounds like an awful lot of fun, come to think of it), we’ll have to examine the mythologies ourselves and see if there are any norms armageddon adheres to.

 

 

Whew, that was longer than I’d intended. Apologies again for taking such a long time to get this post up, but at least I can say I learned a lot from it. After the End of the Macrocosm Campbell gives us an epilogue where he talks about myth and the role he sees for it in in society, but I’m going to save that for the next post where I’ll discuss the flaws in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

At long last, there’s just two posts left on Campbell. The next one will be the aforementioned critique, after which I’m going to put everything of value from the book together in a TL;DR for easy future reference. Thank you for reading.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces – The Return: Light at the end of the tunnel

Have you ever had a homework assignment that looked simple, but the more you worked on it the harder it got?

Joseph Campbell has been like that for me. I’ve been bothering my wife with periodic exclamations of “F**king Joseph Campbell. Jesus F**king Christ,” for the last few weeks, and by now I’m sure she’s almost as eager as I am to get past this book.

This is not to imply that Campbell’s work is worthless – far from it. But as I’ve mentioned previously it’s agonizing to try to wrest the value from him, and I’m looking forward to my post on the flaws of The Hero with a Thousand Faces with the mixed terror and relief of a patient about to lance a particularly nasty boil.  

Fortunately, it’s close to coming to a head. Let’s get into The Return.

—

The Return is the final stage of the hero’s journey. After completing their quest and gaining the Ultimate Boon, the hero returns to the normal world and shares what they gained with the community they left behind.

I’m not entirely sure how to approach The Return, because it seems to me that only a few modern stories include this part of the hero’s journey. The more recent stories I’ve observed tend to have the first stages of the supernatural world transform into a sort of ‘neo-ordinary’ world via the defeat of the Big Bad.

For example, Harry Potter does not leave the wizarding world in the end of The Deathly Hallows. Instead, because Voldemort is defeated (spoiler alert), the wizarding world becomes Harry’s new home and takes on the mantle of the ordinary. This is similar to what Campbell describes, but not exactly the same.

Let’s start by looking at how Campbell describes The Return. As we’ve seen in previous chapters, he begins by breaking The Return into six parts, and like The Initiation they do not all have to be included in a given story. They stages of The Return are:

 

  1. Refusal of the return
  2. The magic flight
  3. Rescue from without
  4. The crossing of the return threshold
  5. Master of the 2 worlds
  6. Freedom to live

 

—

1) Refusal of the Return

The hero may refuse to go back to the ordinary world, instead preferring to stay in the land of adventure.

 

And who can blame them, right? This always nagged at me when reading myths and fairy tales – after a hero finally escapes their banal life, why do so many storytellers compel them to give it all up at the end of the story? This comic from Oglaf perfectly lays out my objection:

Image result for oglaf turnips are awesome

(A side note on Oglaf – the comic is both terrifically funny and unbelievably NSFW. I recommend it, but click at your own risk.)

 

Campbell doesn’t come out and say this, but the implication I got is that the Refusal of the Return is a test of selfishness. There’s an axiomatic assumption that any moral hero will return home and share the benefits of their adventure, so a hero who does not may be seen as greedy, aloof, or antisocial. It’s a bit like bringing a box of donuts to work; refusing to share doesn’t harm your coworkers, but it will get you talked about.

I also suspect that refusing to leave the land of adventure makes a hero appear immature. It’s all well and good to go on adventures when you’re young, but continuing for too long may be a sign that the hero is socially maladjusted or trying to escape from something. This is exemplified in the story of Peter Pan and his refusal to leave Neverland.

So while it may be in the character’s best interest to stay in the supernatural, to be a true hero they must accept the responsibility of sharing the ultimate boon with the ordinary world. This sparks . . .

 

2) The Magic Flight

The hero must flee from the land of adventure.

 

Campbell says that there are two ways the hero can leave the supernatural world. If the hero was sent on their quest by a god or other great supernatural force, their patron will make the return fairly simple. For example, Gandalf helps Bilbo Baggins return to the Shire after his adventures, and the journey across Middle-Earth which initially took hundreds of pages is completed in just seven.

If the hero was opposed by the great forces of the supernatural world, it’s time for them to take their winnings and get the hell out of Dodge. This section of The Hero with a Thousand Faces has several great examples of heroes fleeing from an enraged supernatural world, and on that basis alone I’m keeping it around for future reference.

Finally, Campbell made a great point when he said that the Magic Flight is often caused by a moment of all-too-human weakness. The hero may be told, “Don’t eat that apple,” or “don’t open your eyes.” Perhaps even, “For the love of all that is holy, don’t sleep with the demon-emperor’s daughter.” The hero, of course, violates this seemingly easy to obey rule, and thereby sets off the disaster that forces them to run like hell.

 

3) Rescue From Without

If the hero cannot escape the supernatural world themselves, forces from the ordinary world may come to collect them.

 

If the hero refuses to return of their own free will – or their magic flight ends in disaster – they may need a bit of help. This section was mostly just Campbell recounting myths, so there were only two points that stood out to me.

The first is that the nature of this intrusion has a large effect on how this event plays out. If the hero is in dire straits then the Rescue from Without saves them from a terrible fate. However, if the hero liked where they were and did not wish to be disturbed, the person who interrupts them may face a nasty end.

The second is that Campbell is very clear he believes this rescue must come from the ordinary world. Each of his examples has a clear divide between the two worlds, and the rescue always involves someone coming from the normal to save the hero from the supernatural.

While I see Campbell’s point, I’m not sure if this holds true for modern stories. For example, at the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry is saved from Voldemort/Quirrell by Dumbledore and the other teachers. This section of the book is clearly a Rescue from Without, but the witches and wizards that do the rescuing are not part of the ordinary world Harry left behind when he boarded the Hogwarts Express.

I wouldn’t be so hung up on the point of Campbell’s examples weren’t so stark. It seems to me there’s a middle ground he doesn’t address, a ‘neo-ordinary’ world I referenced earlier in this post that’s established after the hero crosses the first threshold. If the old-ordinary world is abandoned entirely, I think that despite what Campbell says it’s appropriate for the intervening force at this stage to be friends, allies or mentors gained during the hero’s adventure.

 

4) The Crossing of the Return Threshold

The hero must go through a harrowing transition back to the ordinary world.

 

Campbell has a lot to say about how difficult this transition can be, and for many stories I see his point. A hero whose perspective has changed after his adventures may have a hard time relating to their old friends and neighbors.  Bilbo Baggins is a great example – despite all the riches he gained during his journeys with the dwarves, he’s always thought of as strange and the respectable hobbits keep their distance.

If the hero has been touched by the supernatural, re-encountering the ordinary world may be dangerous or even lethal. Campbell tells the story of an Irish hero who, after living for many years in the Land of Youth, wishes to return home to discover what became of his family. He is permitted to go and given a horse to speed him on his way, but is warned that if he ever sets foot upon the ground all the years he spent in the Land of Youth will come back and afflict him at once. The hero, of course, eventually gets off the horse and is immediately transformed into a crippled old man. The supernatural world rarely plays nice with the ordinary, and without some kind of protection or insulation (in this case, the magic horse) forcing them to interact can have catastrophic consequences.

While Crossing of the Return Threshold can be difficult, I’m not convinced this is the only way it can play out.  The great hero Luke Skywalker seems to have had no problem leaving the Death Stars and reuniting with his friends in Episodes IV and VI. In the first case he’s given a medal, and in the second there’s a huge party hosted by feral teddy bears.

This says to me that if the hero’s adventure only benefits themselves – either through material gain or spiritual enrichment – the ordinary world will not be very welcoming. However, if the hero’s adventure benefits the whole community they’re much more likely to be welcomed back.

The lesson is clear: if you bring donuts to work, make sure you bring enough to share.

 

5) Master of The Two Worlds

A hero that crosses the return threshold undamaged can move freely between the ordinary and supernatural worlds.

 

Once the hero becomes the Master of the Two Worlds, I suspect they’re no longer interesting as a character. They’re ‘done,’ so to speak. They’ve completed their adventure and gained the Ultimate Boon, and can now move freely between the ordinary world and the supernatural. There are no great challenges for flaws left for the hero to overcome, so it’s time for us to wrap up the story.

However, we can use a character that’s the Master of the Two Worlds to mentor our hero during their adventure. Obi-Wan Kenobi fits this concept to a T. He’s had his adventures, and can live as a hermit in the ordinary world of Tatooine just as easily as he can sneak around as a Jedi the Death Star.

In this section Campbell introduces the idea of ‘the cosmic man’ – a sort of cultural paragon that a society worships and aspires to. He notes that the cosmic man can vary in race, gender, religion, or any other factor to suit the society that created them. They don’t even have to be human – an animal or tree or anything else that’s especially important can also be used.

While this point is interesting as anthropology, it only further reinforced my conclusion that characters at this stage are too far beyond normal human experience to be the subject of good stories. If we find that a character has become a Master of the Two Worlds, it’s a sign that we should bring their tale to an end as soon as possible.

 

6) Freedom to Live

The story ends. Seriously, that’s all I’ve got.

 

To be frank, this section was useless. The most coherent idea I could pull out was that Campbell was a really big fan of transcendent religious ideas. That’s it.

To start with, the section is only five pages long. In the beginning Campbell asks, “What, now, is the result of the miraculous passage and return?” then proceeds to complete ignore the question. He tells the story of a mythological boy recounting platitudes, briefly references the Bible, and ends with a vague, ‘and they lived happily ever after’ vibe that utterly failed to impress me.

All stories must come to an end, but this felt like floundering. I suspect (though I haven’t done enough research to be sure) that the majority of great myths don’t end in a consistent way, and Campbell’s theory of a monomyth encountered an eleventh hour objection he simply bypassed.

Whether or not that’s the case, we’re going to need to do own research about how to end stories.

 

—

 

The Return Conclusions:

I’m not sure what I can add to my remarks on the previous chapters. I accept most of Campbell’s structure, but almost none of his reasons for why it exists. This has led to some strange moments while listening to the audiobook – the opening and conclusion of a section usually needed detailed notes, but in the middle I was free to zone out and enjoy the weather during my walk.

Fortunately, things do pick up a bit in the second half of the book. Did you know that there a part 2 of The Hero with a Thousand Faces? I certainly didn’t, and was pleasantly surprised by Chapter 3, titled Transformations of the Hero. I think this section has gone criminally underappreciated, so I’m looking forward to discussing it in the next post.

I’ll be honest – even though I learned a lot from part 2, I’m not sure it entirely redeems the time I’ve sacrificed to Campbell. But it makes a hell of an attempt, and I got more out of this part of the book than any other.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. See you next time.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces – The Initiation: To a man with a hammer . . .

As I alluded to in my first post on The Hero with a Thousand Faces, for the book to have any value for us as storytellers we need to separate Joseph Campbell’s study of mythology from his personal beliefs about psychology, religious experience, and spirituality. Unfortunately, Campbell is determined to make this as difficult as possible and weaves the two lines of thought together as though sheer proximity would prove the connection his arguments fail to establish.

I’ve been tempted to just ignore the bizarreness of Campbell’s beliefs. This blog is about learning to write, and I don’t want it to become a polemic against a man who’s been dead for thirty years. It would also be unfair to overlook that the book was published in 1949 and Campbell was very much a product of his times. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s unwise to give Campbell a free pass, because some of his interpretations of myth and symbolism are so utterly absurd that I genuinely believe they’ll damage the storytelling of anyone who takes them too seriously.

So for the sake of clarity going forward, my next several posts will – as much as possible – focus on just the useful elements of Campbell’s work: i.e. his research into the common elements found in myths and legends around the world. Then I’ll address all the problems with the book with a single post, and finally end with a summary or TL;DR post that can serve as a reference for our future projects.

With that out of the way, the next step of the hero’s journey is the Initiation. Let’s get to it.

—

After successfully completing the Departure, the character begins the Initiation that forges them into the hero they’re destined to be. Campbell divides it into six sections, some of which can be left out or swapped around depending on the nature of the story. They are:

  1. The road of trials
  2. The meeting with the goddess
  3. Woman as temptress
  4. Atonement with the father
  5. Apotheosis
  6. The ultimate boon

First up is:

 

1) The Road of Trials

The hero has adventures, meets friends and enemies, develops their skills, and matures into the hero’s role.

 

Once they’ve left the ordinary world, the hero has a series of adventures where they meet friends who support them, battle enemies that resist them, and develop the skills they will need to complete their journey. This is Harry, Ron and Hermione becoming friends through defeating a troll, Neo learning kung-fu, and the heroes in A New Hope nearly getting crushed in a garbage compactor. The road of trials is the heart of a hero’s journey and begins to define the person that the hero will grow into, so it’s often the longest part of a hero’s journey story.

When you take all this together, it makes Campbell’s lackadaisical chapter on the event all the more disappointing.

Campbell only gives the Road of Trials 12 pages in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and more than half of the anemic chapter is focused on shamanistic rites or Freudian dream analysis. I’d hoped for some investigation into the types of challenge a hero may face, or perhaps how the trials of great heroes shaped them into the legendary figures we all know, but sadly these are near-absent from Campbell’s work. At the risk of being presumptuous I’ll go so far as to say that there’s nothing of real value for an author in this chapter. Campbell is correct that the Road of Trials is an important part of a hero’s journey, but leaves it criminally shortchanged in his analysis.

So if Campbell won’t do it for us, we’ll do it ourselves. As I’m analyzing hero’s journey stories I’ve started taking notes on the types of trials the hero experiences and considering how those trials define them. An example of what I’m looking for is the trial of facing a Rival, where the hero must overcome an opponent who is not quite evil or dangerous enough to be a true villain, but nevertheless hinders, embarrasses, and otherwise obstructs the main character. My goal is to gather a collection of potent challenges so I’ll have ready inspiration while developing a path of trials for my own character to face.

 

2) The Meeting with the Goddess

The hero meets the ultimate good in their universe and attempts to receive their blessing.

 

At the end of their Path of Trials, the hero faces a penultimate challenge for the blessing they need to ultimately succeed in their quest. The Meeting with the Goddess marks the end of the Road of Trials, and every joy or triumph that preceded it pales in comparison. The blessing the hero receives can vary in form, but usually manifests as some sort of protection or critical insight during the Atonement with the Father.

As best I can tell, the Meeting with the Goddess should always take the form of a worthiness test. Even if the hero has become strong, smart, tricky, charming, and an all around badass during their Road of Trials, the goddess’s favor can only be attained by proving their virtue. This doesn’t have to be an active test (the goddess may be able to determine the hero’s virtue simply by looking at them) but it’s always a measure of the hero’s moral fortitude.

Campbell says that the goddess often exhibits a dual nature – one terrible, the other benevolent – and the hero must learn to understand both. A hero who faces the totality of a goddess when they are not spiritually prepared is in for a rough time. This makes a bit more sense with an example; the goddess in Star Wars is Princess Leia, and she has quite different reactions to meeting Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. The virtuous Luke earns her good graces in fairly short order, while Han Solo is mocked, derided, and otherwise made miserable until he eventually commits to a higher calling in the rebellion.

Related to this, the goddess may appear different ways to different people. Those who view her with lust, fear, or hesitation cannot progress on their hero’s journey. If the hero is not ready to face her in her totality she may choose to only reveal part of herself, and enlighten the hero bit by bit as they become mature enough to handle steadily greater truths.

All of Campbell’s examples are centered around female characters, but it’s entirely possible (if a bit less common) for the character in the goddess role to be male. In fact, after reading the chapter I’m not even sure the ‘goddess’ needs to be a character at all. I suspect that a power, place or thing could serve the same purpose so long as it tests the Hero’s worthiness and grants a boon.

By way of example, in the Marvel universe Mjolnir may be Thor’s goddess. It has all the key traits – he must prove that he is worthy to wield it, and once he does it grants him the power to overcome his greatest trials. I haven’t yet made up my mind on if this is a correct or viable interpretation, but it’s an interesting possibility that Campbell unfortunately does not address.

3) Woman as Temptress

The hero is tempted to stray from the hero’s path by worldly pleasure.

 

I have no idea why this event gets its own section. It’s a fairly simple concept: the hero is tempted to abandon their quest in favor of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. While this is a perfectly acceptable challenge for a hero to have to overcome, it seems to me like the Woman as Temptress is just another obstacle a hero may encounter on the Path of Trials. The majority of heroes I know of go through their entire adventure without facing it. If it makes sense for your story then by all means include it, but I don’t think anyone should feel like it’s a requirement.

A quick aside on Campbell’s titles for the last two sections: Campbell is certainly not the most sexist writer I’ve ever read, but The Hero with a Thousand Faces was written in 1949 and it shows. I don’t know enough about Campbell to comment on if it’s a reflection of his source material or him as a person, but it does lead to such uncomfortable quotes as (from the Meeting with the Goddess chapter):

“And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed- whether she will or no. And if she shunned him, the scales fall from her eyes,; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace.” (Campbell 119)

I’m choosing to ignore the discomfort and salvage everything I can from the book, but your mileage may vary.

 

4) Atonement with the father

The hero has a showdown with the ultimate power in their universe.

 

This is it, the greatest and most dangerous part of a hero’s journey. The hero has a showdown with the most powerful being in their universe, and either defeats it (in the case of an evil, tyrannical father), or earns its favor (in the case of a benign and just father). As the name suggests, Campbell lets Freud take center stage here, and Freud’s idea that children fight with their father for the affection of their mother guides Campbell’s interpretation of all his source material.

The climax of a story is especially important for us writers because it’s what most readers will remember as the best part of our book. In modern stories the battle with an evil force has become far more common than earning the favor of a benevolent one, so audiences can look forward to the hero ousting an evil dictator, slaying a terrible dragon, and generally overcoming incredible odds to save the world. Because of its importance I thought that Campbell would surely draw on great works of mythology to discuss the many forms such a showdown might take and how a hero can overcome them.

But no. Instead, he’d rather talk about the symbolism behind circumcision and cannibalism.

I’m serious. It’s that or Freud for almost the entire section, and even Freud comes across as bland when contrasted with Campbell’s descriptions of genital mutilation and cannibalistic rites that some tribal peoples used when initiating young men from children into adulthood. It starts out disconcerting, but becomes downright irritating when he shackles these acts to the strongest point he makes in this section, which is that the Atonement with the Father can have strong parallels to the transition from child to adult. I think that’s a valuable insight and can help writers with envisioning the emotional challenges our heroes should face at this stage, but he’s chained the idea to two raving mad men shouting things like:

“The culminating instruction of the long series of rites is the release of the boy’s own hero-penis from the protection of its foreskin, through the frightening and painful attack on it by the circumciser.” (Campbell, 138)

As it stands, everything of value that I got out of this chapter can be summed up in the following sentence: the Atonement with the Father is the event that, by finally overcoming it, toughens the hero enough that they can stand on their own as an individual, ready to become a parent, teacher or leader in their own right.

If we want to find anything more useful than that, we’re going to have to look somewhere else.

 

5) Apotheosis

The hero ascends to the highest possible version of themselves.

 

The Apotheosis is the last step of the hero’s personal journey – the final transformation where they reach the pinnacle of their power, wisdom, and purity. The hero may still have work to do out in the world, but the Apotheosis is the end of their internal struggle. It’s Neo realizing he is The One, and Luke becoming a Jedi, like his father before him.  This change must occur before the hero can achieve the Ultimate Boon – i.e. Neo must accept that he is The One before he can free humanity from the Matrix.

Campbell makes a couple good points here. The Apotheosis often, though not always, involves the hero regaining something from the past. He earns bonus points if that something was thought lost forever. Luke becoming the last Jedi is probably the best popular example, but Harry Potter also reclaims a magical heritage, and Neo becomes the latest in a long line of ‘The Ones.’ The enlightenment found in the Apotheosis event is more often reclaimed than discovered for the first time.

The hero may also become a bit otherworldly, as they have ascended so far past everyday experience that it’s difficult for normal people to relate. I know where Campbell is going with this, and I think you’ll understand what I mean when I say there’s something ever so slightly uncanny about people who have achieved the highest possible mastery in their chosen field. In stories this sensation gets magnified for dramatic effect, so a hero who’s gone through the Apotheosis may become an actual magical being or even a god.

Which brings us to the most significant weakness of this section, which is that Campbell spends nearly all of it focusing on a very specific kind of religious enlightenment. He talks, at great length, about the merits of transcendent Buddhism and various divine religious figures, but almost completely ignores more modest heroes who did not set out to become world saviors. Unless you’re writing a story about a saint, this bias towards religious figures makes it a bit difficult to directly apply most of the chapter.

That’s why I’ve taken the liberty of slightly broadening Campbell’s conception of the Apotheosis. Rather than the hero reaching enlightenment or ascending to godhood, I think the key point is that the character becomes the best possible version of themselves. A trickster becomes supremely devious, a fighter becomes the ultimate warrior, and so on. But keep in mind, the personal acceptance and understanding that comes with the Apotheosis is much more important than any power our characters attain. A trickster character may accept that they are a bit of a liar, a bit of a cheat, but also realize those traits don’t mean they have to be evil. This self-acceptance is what allows them to finally attain the Ultimate Boon.

 

6) The Ultimate Boon

The hero achieves the ultimate goal of their quest.

 

At long last, the hero has overcome all the challenges that barred their way and finally completes their destiny. Like Campbell’s writing on the Apotheosis he does his best to hide his insights in a sea of strangeness, but with a bit of work we can fish them out.

The most valuable point I found was this: the hero’s challenges aren’t necessarily over just because they’ve completed the Atonement with the Father. Campbell says that if the hero is a god, saint, chosen one or otherwise perfect being they may reach the Ultimate Boon with little to no struggle, but everyone is going to have one final test. The Ultimate Boon is often held or guarded by someone or something, and an imperfect hero will have to trick, appease, or slay them.

I think this will generally be a less climactic challenge than the Atonement with the Father, and is instead a demonstration of how far the hero has come since they started on their journey. Luke Skywalker battling Darth Vader in the Return of the Jedi was definitely the more dramatic scene, but the true holder of the Ultimate Boon was not Vader, but the Emperor. Even after Luke bested his father (George Lucas was nothing if not literal in applying Campbell’s ideas) he still had to defeat that final foe. This last test took a radically different form than the one before; rather than a direct and violent battle, it’s a moral victory where Luke convinces Vader to turn on his former master.

If the hero manages to achieve the Ultimate Boon without fully maturing during their journey, the boon they seek may ruin them. Campbell points to the story of king Midas and his wish for everything he touched to turn to gold. As an author I see two ways we could apply this concept: either the hero attains the boon before they are ready, experiences disaster, then has to re-achieve the boon after maturing, or another character that was ruined by premature access to the boon serves as a warning to the hero.

Campbell makes a big deal of the fact that in mythology the ultimate boon often takes the form of food and drink. He has strong opinions about the symbolic importance of this commonality, and likens it to the Freudian image of a child yearning for a return to its mother’s milk.  I am, probably predictably by now, not terribly impressed by the Freudian link, but I still thought this point was worth noting in case we ever needed to develop a mythology for our stories or wrote a novel that was deliberately mythological in tone.

 

The Initiation: Conclusions

While this chapter has a few useful gems, I can’t quite bring myself to say it was worth the time I spent reading it. With the exception of the Woman as Temptress section – which still strikes me as entirely superfluous – the structure Campbell presents does a decent job of describing the middle-to-end of the archetypal hero’s journey story. But once we go looking for more than a general outline there’s little to recommend. Sections like the Road of Trials, which would have greatly benefited from additional examples and analysis, are sadly undernourished. Conversely, the Atonement with the Father and Apotheosis are almost grotesquely bloated with symbolic interpretation and religious fetishism that bury what I believe is the real value of Campbell’s work.

The problem could be that I’m approaching the book as a storyteller, and hoped for a much more practical study of myth and legend than Campbell seems interested in providing. The signal to noise ratio has become steadily worse as I progress, which is not encouraging sign. With any luck Campbell’s ship will steady a bit as we head into the next chapter of The Hero with a Thousand Faces: The Return.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces – The Departure Part 2: Now we’re getting to the good stuff

I’ve finished the Departure chapter of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and I’m ready to give it my seal of approval. But before I analyze the chapter as a whole, let’s finish looking at the last three stages of the arc: Supernatural Aid, the Crossing of the First Threshold, and the Belly of the Whale.

 

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3) Supernatural Aid

Once the hero commits to their journey, they receive assistance from forces within the world of adventure.

Campbell says that this aid usually comes directly after the hero accepts the call to adventure, and writes:

“Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, our hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side. Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task.” (Campbell, 72)

There seem to be three main forms the assistance can take, and the hero can receive them in any combination.

The first form is a direct mentor, someone who’s been down the hero’s path before and can guide the young adventurer. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Morpheus are good examples.

The second is a benevolent, usually supernatural or otherwise powerful being who does not directly take the hero as an apprentice, but has a vested interest in their success. This is the role of the Fairy Godmother or Dumbledore.

The third form is the granting of talismans, weapons, or other objects of power that will aid the hero. This is Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, and the string that allowed Theseus to escape the labyrinth after defeating the Minotaur.

Campbell is correct that the hero nearly always receives aid before trying to cross the first threshold, but I’ve noticed that heroes can receive aid later in the story, usually just before tackling additional difficult tasks. Harry Potter leaps to mind; his first supernatural aid is granted in Diagon Alley, where he receives a wand, Hedwig, books on magic, and other useful tools before crossing the first threshold on platform 9 & 3/4. But later on, when he faces a new challenge that his current boons are unable to overcome (namely sneaking around the school), he’s given additional aid in the form of the invisibility cloak.

This suggests to me that the Supernatural Aid and Crossing a Threshold events may exist as a pair, and their appearance in the Departure arc of a hero’s journey is simply the first instance of a more fundamental narrative building block. I’m going keep an eye out for this as I explore other hero’s journey stories, and try to get a measure of how often receiving supernatural aid immediately precedes overcoming a major obstacle.

 

4) The Crossing of the First Threshold

The hero must cross the barrier between the known and unknown worlds.

The barrier between the ordinary world and the world of adventure is not easy to navigate.  There may be a test, obstacles, or enemies that Campbell calls the Threshold Guardians which bar the hero’s way. There’s no avoiding these challenges: to continue on their adventure, the hero must earn the right to pass into the unknown.

The most interesting point Campbell makes in this section is that the barrier should be a test of the hero’s character. The hero will face tests of skill, strength, and cleverness later – the point of the first ordeal is to prove they have the grit and determination to survive in the world of adventure. It’s an easy point to overlook, and I’m sure I’ve made this exact mistake in the past. The first thing that every hero must have is will, and this is where they prove it.

The threshold guardians don’t have to be evil or malevolent, and often serve as representatives of the established order. An overprotective mother could easily fulfill this role, as could a police officer determined to keep things quiet in his little town. Their attempts to keep the hero in the ordinary world may be understandable or even justified, but to become heroes our characters must overcome them all the same.

 

5) The Belly of the Whale

The hero undergoes a transformation, changing from the person they were into a nascent version of the hero they will become.

I have a somewhat tense relationship with symbolism, so I found this final part of the Departure tricky because it’s almost purely symbolic. As best I can tell a belly of the whale event does not need to happen for a story to make sense; the narrative could skip this element entirely and the hero’s journey would still be completely coherent. However, it’s a good way of indicating to the audience that the hero has severed their connection to the ordinary world – or to say it another way, that the hero’s old self has died and been reborn in the hero’s role. Campbell says:

“The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. (Campbell, 90)

And adds on the next page:

“This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation…. But here, instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again.” (Campbell, 91)

Can we ground this with any practical examples? Well, in Star Wars I believe the Belly of the Whale happens when Luke and everyone else in the Millennium Falcon hide in Han’s smuggling compartments. Luke’s still a farm boy when he gets into those compartments, but from the moment he climbs out all his actions take on a heroic character.

The Hogwarts Express in Harry Potter is a less stressful example. It’s a transition from the muggle to the wizarding world, where Harry is given a crash course in wizard culture and his entire social group is replaced by wizards. From that moment on, the Dursleys and the rest of the muggle world are literally not mentioned again until the final two pages.

Neither of these events had to happen to keep the story moving forward. There were other ways for Luke to get aboard the Death Star, and the Hogwarts Express could have been a brief and uneventful train ride. But they’re a great pivot point for the reader, and I think it would have been unwise for George Lucas or JK Rowling to skip over them. Because symbolism comes unnaturally to me the Belly of the Whale will probably be a weak point of mine, so I’m going to give it some extra attention in my studies going forward.

 

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The Departure: Conclusions

Throughout the chapter on the Departure, Campbell draws examples liberally from dreams, myth, religion, and psychoanalysis, and makes an unspoken assertion that all of these are essentially interchangeable. While I think this thesis needs a great deal more support than Campbell provides, the structure he describes for the Departure part of a story is tangible enough that I accept most all of it as correct. The steps he describes can be found, in order, in almost any heroic story one would care to name, and at the risk of dipping into psychoanalysis myself, this implies to me that the structure reflects a genuine component of the human experience.

Here’s what I mean: anything which disrupts our daily lives can be viewed as a call to adventure, and we see so little of the world that there will always be unknown lands of adventure we could potentially cross into. Going to college, changing careers, even just starting a hobby can take the form of a tiny adventure, and will likely contain most or all of the elements Campbell describes. The call to adventure occurs when a new opportunity first attracts our attention. Then we have to decide if we will accept the call or turn away in favor of the safe and familiar. Deciding to pursue the opportunity will often put us in touch with allies we would never have met otherwise, but we may need to overcome obstacles or threshold guardians that work against the change. Finally, committing to the new opportunity will transform us, and with any luck we’ll end up slightly more heroic than when we started.

If you accept this portrayal then readers will find the structure of the Departure intimately familiar, and I think an author should only risk changing it if they have an extremely clear idea of why they are doing so. A master of the storytelling art may be able to create a truly memorable story by twisting or shattering a reader’s expectations for the Departure, but I’m certainly not there yet. For the time being I’m going to treat it as established fact that this is how a hero’s journey story should begin.

Up next, we’ll look into the second stage of the hero’s journey: the Initiation. Thank you for reading, and if you have any comments about this post or the Practice Write project in general I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment below or send me a message through the Contact page.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces – The Departure Part 1: Add two parts knowledge to one part crazy and mix thoroughly

The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a tough book to get through.

I tried to read it several years ago, but was left cold by its immediate plunge into Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis. I’m willing to follow Freud’s and Jung’s work down to a certain depth, but once we hit the point that every female relationship relates to Oedipus and every object longer than a square is a phallus I think it’s time to come up for air. Campbell, however, is more than happy to keep swimming all the way down, so I didn’t make much progress in my first attempt.

However, if I’m going to study the hero’s journey there’s no avoiding its seminal work. So on a lark I took a through Audible’s catalogue, and it turns out, The Hero with a Thousand Faces is available as an audiobook. “Ah ha,” I thought. “I’ve discovered a shortcut. The book will be easier to understand when read aloud, and I always listen to audiobooks on the walk to work. I’ll get through it no time.”

How wrong I was. The first day I tried listening to it I spent half the trip stopped on the sidewalk, furiously typing notes into my phone. I spent the rest of the walk rewinding and listening to sections over again, certain that I missed something in Joseph Campbell’s sudden non-sequitur. As an audiobook, The Hero with a Thousand Faces is like a lecture delivered by a genius on mushrooms. It contains genre-defining wisdom, but its insights are hidden among bizarre tangents and I feel like I have to take notes on everything because I’m not sure what will be on the test.

Here’s a good example. Early on in the book Campbell tells the fable of the frog prince in its original version, wherein the princess meets the frog prince after dropping a golden orb into a lake. When describing the symbolism surrounding their meeting, Campbell says:

“The frog, the little dragon, is the nursery counterpart of the underworld serpent whose head supports the earth and who represents the life-progentitive, demiurgic power of the abyss. He comes up with the golden sun ball, his dark deep waters having just taken it down: at this moment resembling the great Chinese dragon of the East, delivering the rising sun in his jaws, or the frog on whose head rides the handsome young immortal, Han Hsiang, carrying in a basket the peaches of immortality.” (Campbell, 52)

Boy, that escalated quickly. On first reading the chain of association seems absolutely absurd, moving from frog to serpent to dragon, and from western to eastern mythology, over the course of just two sentences without any connecting explanation. But despite my initial incredulity I can’t help but think that Campbell was into something. The idea of an unsettling being bringing something of value from unknown depths strikes an emotional chord I can’t bring myself to ignore, and my uncomfortable half-understanding quickly made it clear that even the audiobook demands one’s full attention. As a result, so far I’ve only made it about a third of the way through the book.

With that in mind, my initial opinion is this: Joseph Campbell assumes that the reader accepts religious and psychoanalytical ideas as true in ways I’m not ready to concede, but he’s not talking about nothing. It’s like getting a map from a cartographer with peculiar ideas about geology; he seems to be correct about where the mountains and valleys are, but for the time being I’m maintaining some healthy skepticism about his explanations for the topography.

Campbell starts by breaking the hero’s journey into three acts: Departure, Initiation, and Return. These three acts are further subdivided into 17 possible stages, and I’ll discuss each of these in the coming posts. Not every myth has to contain all of the stages, and some shorter stories (particularly fables and fairy tales) focus on just one or two. The structure Campbell presents is one that’s familiar to people around the world: a hero leaves behind their familiar world, travels through an unfamiliar land of grave risk and great reward, then finally returns to bring the benefits of their adventure to the community they left behind.

There are already several well-written summaries of Campbell’s work, so I’ll start with just a brief explanation of the stage to ground the conversation, then focus on what stood out to me and how we can apply Campbell’s work to our writing. If you’re completely unfamiliar with the concept of the hero’s journey I’d recommend starting by reading the Wikipedia entry or the tvtropes listing.

 

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Part 1: Departure

The first of the Hero’s Journey’s three acts, the Departure is when the hero leaves their old life behind and steps into an unfamiliar world of danger and opportunity.

Campbell explains that at the start of a hero’s journey the world must be deficient in some way. The problem can be very large, such as the rule of a tyrant king, but some stories feature small or even petty problems, such as the hero desiring a certain golden ring. I suspect that it’s easier to hold a reader’s attention when the problem is a major one, so as newer writers we may want to build our worlds with more blatant deficiencies until we’re skilled enough that our characters alone are enough to keep the pages turning.

By the end of the story this deficiency should be either addressed or transcended by the hero. This choice of words stuck with me – addressed or transcended. Campbell explains that while the story may end with the hero directly resolving the problem, it’s also possible or even appropriate for the hero and the world to be so changed by the adventure that the initial deficiency is simply irrelevant. When I think about the deficiency that got, say, Harry Potter to enter the world of adventure – in his case, abuse by the Dursleys – I wonder if the hero transcending the initial deficiency may be more common than straightforwardly addressing it.

Before we start on our own original works, it’s worth taking some time to clearly articulate what the deficiencies of our various worlds will be and why they drive our hero into accepting what comes next:

 

1) The Call to Adventure

A hero’s journey story starts in the ordinary, deficient world. But this is quickly disrupted by an intrusion from the world of adventure that calls on the hero to leave their old life behind.

As a rule, I don’t like coincidence in stories. They’re unavoidable of course, just as coincidences are unavoidable in real life, and here’s an old writing adage which offers guidance by saying, “Coincidences that get your characters into trouble are fine, but coincidences that get them out of trouble are bad.” The idea behind this maxim is clearly correct, since unexpected problems are much easier to accept than deus ex machina, but I still I can’t entirely agree that coincidences are fine so long as they cause the characters trouble. If something happens in a story that’s completely random, with no noticeable relationship to previous events, I feel slightly cheated.

But a sudden intrusion from the world of adventure is almost by definition unpredictable. So how do we square this circle, and bring a world-changing event into the character’s life in a way that doesn’t seem like a lightning bolt from a clear sky?

Reading Campbell helped answer this. In his description of the Call to Adventure, he says that the hero will often have a seemingly random encounter with the supernatural world and develop some sort of relationship to forces within it. But he follows up with a critical point: when done correctly, this encounter is a reflection of the hero’s own internal desires and conflicts. The call isn’t pure coincidence – it’s already been foreshadowed by the struggles within the hero’s heart. With this in mind, in our original works we should make sure that we establish the hero’s desires and conflicts clearly, and that Call to Adventure flows naturally from them.

When the call finally comes, it’s usually delivered by a character Campbell terms the Herald. For a long time I made the mistake of conflating the Herald and the Mentor, and this chapter helped sort out my misconception. In Star Wars, for example, the herald is R2-D2, and the mentor is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Even though Obi-Wan is the person who suggests that Luke leave Tatooine and come with him to Alderaan, the Call to Adventure actually came when R2-D2 delivered Leia’s message. From that moment on Luke’s focus, or as Campbell describes it, his “spiritual center of gravity,” has shifted away from his old life to the world of adventure that R2 represents.

In modern stories the herald is usually benevolent or at least benign, but Campbell notes that in older tales this is not always the case. The character can be downright malevolent and still serve their purpose as the herald so long as they indicate it’s time for the hero to change from who they were into who they’re destined to become.

After receiving the call the hero may temporarily return to the ordinary world, but it will seem flat and meaningless after their tantalizing glimpse into the world of adventure. There is a narrow but deep distinction between this temporary respite and the Refusal of the Call stage we’ll talk about next. The Refusal of the Call is a choice by the hero to try to avoid their destiny, while the respite occurs before the hero chooses whether or not to accept the call.

 

2) Refusal of the Call

The hero resists entering the world of adventure, perhaps because of fear, a feeling of inadequacy, or lingering connections to the ordinary world.

What stood out to me most about the Refusal of the Call is it’s an invaluable opportunity to humanize our characters. It’s a strange person that, upon being exposed to a realm of chaos, danger, leaps into it with nary a look back. Showing why our nascent hero is reluctant to leave their old life reveals the attachments and flaws they’ll have to overcome to transform into a true heroic figure.  

Not all heroes refuse the call, and some only make minor protests. If we’re writing a hero that’s a reckless hot-head or their previous life was so awful they’re willing to risk anything to get away, this is our place to show it.

Campbell observes that some myths (usually shorter stories, such as fables or parables) explore the dire consequences of the hero successfully refusing the call. Rather than eventually accepting their destiny in spite of some initial reluctance, these tragic figures are ruined by their unwillingness to leave their old world and old selves behind. While a novel that followed this plotline would probably not be very fun to read, I made a note of it because it could be an interesting path for a secondary character to follow, especially one serving as a foil for the hero.

Finally, Campbell says that refusing the Call to Adventure can be akin to the first step in a negotiation. An especially introspective or prudent hero won’t go running off on a harebrained adventure the moment that destiny beckons. Like recalcitrant cats, these heroes may have to be enticed by steadily more insistent, or even forceful, calls to adventure.

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In the next post, we’ll finish up the next three stages of the Departure: Supernatural Aid, the Crossing of the First Threshold, and the Belly of the Whale.