Joseph Campbell's Monomyth Of The Hero Theory In The Movie Wall-E

The Romance Narrative is rife with traditional literary tropes. If you’ve read such tales as swashbuckling wandering knights facing magic dragons and other such impossible odds, then you have an idea of what this genre is about. The tradition dates back to the epic, and can be seen in early mythological tales such as the Illiad, or the Odyssey, and early English stories like Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or the Arthurian tales. They include adventure and fantastical elements; heroes battle villains to determine if good can triumph over evil.

The archetype of the Hero’s Journey holds a prevalent pattern in the works of “Initiation” by Sylvia Plath, “A & P” by John Updike, and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker. These works all follow the 17 stages of Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth which are separated in three stages; separation, initiation, and return. The main characters have different characterizations; however, they all follow the basic structure of the Hero’s journey archetype. There are many similarities and differences between the stages that are shown through many context clues and literary devices in each work. The Hero’s Journey archetype expressed in these literary works follow a similar and direct narrative pattern.

Joseph Campbell’s term monomyth can be described as a hero’s journey. Many heroic characters follow the monomyth, no matter the time period or culture the literature was created in. The poem Beowulf is known to follow the adventure of the hero described in Campbell’s monomyth . The hero’s journey consists of three rites of passages: separation, initiation, and return. Beowulf endures each of these stages throughout the epic poem, so his journey does follow Campbell’s monomyth.

During the course of this World Literature class, several stories have been covered that accurately describe Joseph Campbell's mono-myth, or basic pattern found in narratives from every corner of the world. The Hero's Journey in it's entirety has seventeen stages or steps, but if boiled down can be described in three; the departure, the initiation, and the return (Monomyth Cycle). Each stage has several steps, but the cycle describes the hero starting in his initial state, encountering something to change him, and this his return as a changed person. To further explain this concept, there are a few stories covered in this class that can be used.

But to fully grasp an audience, with twelve to fifteen steps is a lot to explain. Joseph Campbell gisted the essential components of the mononmyth as a whole, “The standard path of the mythological hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rights of a passage: separation—initiation—return” (23). In these simple steps Campbell identified the foundation of all monomyths. In separation, the hero ventures astray from their later “prosaic” life into a region of supernatural wonder (23).Initiation, overzealous figures/forces are encountered and a decisive victory is won (23).Lastly,the now master of the narrative returns from the surreptitious journey with bestowed power

The first stage of the monomyth is the departure. In this stage, the hero first receives “call to adventure,” either directly or sometimes unwittingly. In a real life example, this would be taking on a task, one that is assigned by someone else or one that is chosen by oneself. This could be an assignment at a job, or it could be the desire to pursue a new hobby. Campbell mentions the “refusal of the call,” or the turning away from the journey. In life, when taking on a task, it can seem too difficult or frightening, and the natural desire may be to turn away. Campbell warns that this “converts the adventure into its negative… [and] the subject loses the power of affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved” (59). Though an adventure may be difficult, the hero will usually gain the assist of a supernatural aid. Many

In short words, Wall-E is the story of a robot who was designed to clean up an extremely polluted Planet Earth. This animated movie has a much larger meaning than expected – it explains what can happen to our planet if we keep consuming the way we do. As indicated by the movie, big corporations and greedy consumers destroyed our ecosystem. A planet that was full of nature, water, fuels, animals and vegetation along with many other things simply vanished because of a society that consumed too much. It is a pretty scary thought to watch this movie and think about how we are on a process of doing the exact same thing. With a huge market of major retailers in the world consuming more than necessary is easier and easier each day.

Upon analysis of Kurt Vonnegut's, "Harrison Bergeron", evidence suggests that the story imitates the basic structure of the monomyth. However, unlike the sequence and obvious events presented in a monomyth Vonnegut cleverly applies his own unique play on the iconic structure. What is to be noted first is the definition of amonomyth. Joseph Campbell defines the term, "monomyth", as the standard cycle of events that occur to which the hero endures during the progression of the story (kfjakhfakjf). This is a common format for various works of literature (hfakhfke). Important phases of the monomyth are as follows: 1)separation 2)initiation 3)return, all of which have countless endeavors within the main before the hero can venture on to the next facet (kjazkjfkajk). Thought there are multiple stages one can focus on, the one to consider meticulously is the last stage of the monomythic hero's journey: return.

There is one archetype, the hero, which recurs so frequently in stores, that a certain basic pattern has developed and been used for many centuries. American scholar Joseph Campbell described this pattern as twelve stages telling the story of the hero, and he gave it the term “monomyth.” The movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou” follows this pattern. Despite some variations on the archetypal hero, Ulysses Everett McGill is still a dynamic hero in his own right, following Campbell’s stages.

In 1949, Joseph Campbell popularized his version of the monomyth, or the hero’s journey. In this version, there were seventeen stages which were split into three distinct categories including the Departure, the Initiation, and finally, the Return. Over the course of several years, there have been numerous versions of the hero’s journey; most of them derived from Joseph Campbell’s initial version. After watching “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, I was able to categorize the events in the movie into Christopher Vogler’s version of the hero’s journey which consists of twelve stages. The twelve stages are 1. The ordinary world, 2. The call to adventure, 3. Refusal of the call, 4. Meeting the master, 5. Crossing the threshold, 6. Tests, allies, and enemies, 7. Approaching the dragon’s den, 8. The ordeal, 9. Seizing the treasure, 10. The road back, 11. Resurrection, and finally, 12. Return with the treasure. However, modern film tends to stray from the typical hero’s journey more than the usual traditional epic poem.

Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth has several steps, Call to adventure; Dorians call to adventure happens at the beginning when Lord Henry tells him to be himself and to not let anyone else convince him otherwise. Winston receives his call when he buys a journal from the black market, Chris gets his call the moment he graduates from college where he then suddenly disappears without a trace.

The Hero’s journey, or in its more correct terminology the Monomyth is an object from the area of comparative mythology. Its definition in the most basic of forms, it is a pattern or outline that is used in storytelling, usually the myth. This pattern is found in many famous pieces from all around the world. In the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces from 1949 by author Joseph Campbell, this pattern is described in detail. Campbell describes that numerous myths from different times and areas of the world seem to share an identical structure in their storytelling. He summarized this with a well-known quote found at the intro of his book:

WALL-E is a robot who was left on Earth when it was too polluted for even people to live on it. Only one was left, and his everyday job is to go around and get trash off the ground to build these towards that look like buildings. His reason for doing this is to clean up the Earth, hopefully making it safe for humans to emigrate back to Earth. One day, WALL-E is out and about just doing his job, and he sees a red dot. Of course, he goes and follows it. It ends up leading him to a ship that came down from space, and Eve pops out. Eve, a robot sent from Earth to see if there is any plant life still on Earth. WALL-E and Eve end up becoming great friends, so great of friends that they fall in love. WALL-E is a very caring robot.

Set on a futuristic earth, now completely desolate and transformed into a deserted wasteland, the movie tells the story of a 700-year-old automaton and waste disposing machine, WALL-E, who meets EVE — a vegetation and life searching robot.

In his renowned work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell defined the essential stages of the Heroic Journey, using examples from a wide range of myths and stories. His objective was not only to establish the framework for hero tales, but also to convey why these elements of the monomyth prevail in so many different works. Campbell’s view states that “the hero myth is really written about every human being: we are all heroes struggling to accomplish our adventure” (Whomsley, 185). From this perspective, it seems justified that these patterns continue to appear in so many stories adventure and heroism; we all want our