The Nibelung Hero's Journey

Do you ever wonder if your favorite movie follows the hero's journey? You might ask yourself what even is the hero’s journey. Well the Hero’s journey was made by Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell was born March 26 1904 and died October 30 1987. There’s 12 stages for the hero’s journey,which does not mean that all movies follow them,but most do. For example, one movie that follows the hero’s journey is Maleficent. In the movie maleficent, Maleficent displays the hero’s journey when Stefan cuts her wings, then later on she meets Diaval, and a few years later she gets to know Aurora and got to see her more than a monster.

A Hero And His Journey To Victory Heroes are born by following a journey that leads them to greatness. They are people that can persevere through their struggles and make it out even stronger. Perseus from the story Perseus and Medusa followed his own path into becoming a hero. This young boy makes a plan to capture Medusa’s head to show his strength and give a gift to the king Polydectes. Through his journey, Perseus mirrors Joseph Campbell’s monomyth by following his own hero quest.

The hero’s journey is an ongoing concept used in many tales which involves a hero who goes on an adventure, wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed. In the society that we live in, the hero becomes a hero by attaining in what they believe in for the good of others. Among the numerous tales which the hero’s journey is utilized there are some that stand out more compared to others. Star Wars which is an extremely popular film known by many which clearly demonstrates the hero’s journey. The hero in this film is known as Luke Skywalker whom goes through all the ordeals and comes out as a hero.

The Hero’s Journey is a situational archetype of every story made, whether it’s a poem, narrative or film they all tell this Journey.

In the late 1940’s a man named Joseph Campbell shared his Mythic principal with the world. He explains that there is a three-stage formula that he calls a Hero Journey which is the structure of every story. Though most stories are completely different on the outside, the stories are almost structured around these three stages. Stage 1 is the hero leaves the everyday world and enters another world. While Stage 2 the hero is challenged by opposing forces and must pass a series a test throughout the movie. That will then determine who will be victorious, either the hero or the opposing forces. Stage 3 is tied into Stage 2 because if the hero is victorious, they will return to the ordinary world with a gift for the world.

“The Hero’s Journey” is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development. It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization. The hero’s journey is divided into three sections departure, initiation, and return. The three sections are then divided into subsections that give a little more in detail journey that the so-called “hero” takes in the storyline. Hamlet and Simba are the main characters in the two storylines that take on the role of the hero.

The night air was heavy with silence. Clouds drifted across a calm sky, and a full moon shone in the distance. In a small hut on the outskirts of the valley, an old man lay in bed, awake in the peaceful slumber of the village. His breaths came in rattling gasps, his forehead burned, and his joints felt stiff with pain. He shifted on the blankets, his withered hands clenched in fists as he tried to suppress the wave of bitter memories coming to him. His life had been nothing more than work, loss, tragedy. He remembered all of his hope, his ambition, in his youth, and he smiled bitterly. No one would remember him as the man that he had once hoped he would become. Now, as his breathing became heavier and he felt himself fading on the brink of

What is a hero and a hero’s journey? A hero is an individual who has the courage of conviction to perform feats that benefit the general populace, acts as a soldier of virtue, and has an altruistic spirit that urges him or her to act against evil and defend the greater good at all costs, even sacrificing his own well-being or life (Harris 2). Vogler reduced Joseph Campbell’s The Hero Journey to 12 Stages of The Hero’s Journey. The following are Vogler’s Stages of The Hero’s Journey:

In “The Hero’s Journey Defined”, an article by Anthony Ubelhor, he talks about what the hero’s journey really means and what Joseph Campbell meant when he when he defines it. He also goes into depth of the characteristics of a hero and defines each of the stages of the hero’s journey. One of the essential ideas from the article is when Ubelhor states that “The hero’s journey is about growth and passage.” (Doc. 1). This demonstrates that when someone undergoes a hero’s journey, they sometimes come out from that journey changed and a completely different person than before. This portrays to the reader that the bigger picture of a hero’s journey is finding who someone really is and discovering who they really are. Another big idea from the article

The hero’s journey is a type of archetype shown in many stories that shows the steps of how a hero becomes a hero: mostly every protagonist goes through this journey. In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael goes on a hero’s journey. He was separated from his normal happy childhood when war hit his country. He then had to fight in the war but UNICEF (The United Nations Children's Fund) took him from the war, rehabilitated him, and he eventually ended up in the U.S where he was safe. In The Hobbit, Bilbo also went on the hero’s journey when he was separated from his non-adventurous life in his hobbit hole and went on an adventure with the dwarves. On that adventure he came across many struggles like saving the dwarves lives and escaping death many times.

The Hero’s Journey is the route that a character must go through to become a hero. “The hero's journey is a narrative structure identified by Joseph Campbell as an archetypal map of the human spiritual quest. Drawn from the realm of myth and religion, the hero's journey was first presented in Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1956). The concept reached mass audiences through Bill Moyers's interviews with Joseph Campbell in the 1988 PBS series The Power of Myth” (Holmes). According to Campbell, there are twelve steps for the hero to accomplish his or her journey :1. The ordinary world, 2. The call to adventure, 3. Refusal of the call, 4. Meeting with the mentor, 5. Crossing the threshold, 6. Tests, aliens and enemies, 7. Approach, 8. The ordeal, 9. The Reward, 10. The road back,11. The resurrection ,12. Return with the elixir. Contrasting the heroes in Beowulf and Judith journeys, the first and foremost difference is that they have different genders protagonists, however the traits that leads them to their journeys proves that they have the same values and qualities in which heroes from that period should have, such as glory, confidence, courage, and practicality. Additionally, they trust on the Christian God’s help to guide and to protect their people despite the unknown fate, they believe that the good will win the evil.

“The Hero’s Adventure,” an explanation of a literary hero written by Joseph Campbell, discusses the qualifications and experiences of a legitimate hero in literature. The hero must complete a cycle consisting of a departure, initiation, and return. Lindo, one of the mothers in The Joy Luck Club, completes her course through the hero’s journey through acts of courage, psychological transformation, and giving of strength to her daughter, Waverly. As defined by Campbell, a hero is a character who performs a courageous deed and experiences beyond-ordinary events; the hero must complete a journey in which something valuable taken from them is recovered or a life-giving elixir is found. Lindo’s hero cycle spans across her entire life, departing for the journey in her childhood and returning in her

There are many myths and epics that involve a hero’s journey in them. Two readings are “The Labors and Death of Heracles” and “Beowulf”. Heracles story involves him accidentally killing his children, and to try to redeem himself he has to complete ten tasks by himself for those tasks to count. The gods offered him immortality upon completion of those labors. Beowulf was about a strong man from the Geats named Beowulf. He heard stories about the ferocious monster named Grendel that was terrorizing the Danes. So he set out with 20 of his men to take on the monster.

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:

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