The Novel ' The Monomyth '

It is easy for a person to put away a dream as a mere fantasy that cannot be achieved in life. For this reason, people never take the opportunity to evaluate the true facts behind that dream. In the documentary “Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream” by Director Alex Gibney, an analysis of the true facts behind the ‘American dream’ is presented (Lee). Similarly, the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen speaks about the true facts of a war that people foolishly dream to go to for honor (Owen). The two are distinct in the sense of their nature. The first piece by Gibney is a documentary film while the second one by Owen is a poem. For this reason, they apply different strategies to put across their themes to their audiences. Despite the clear distinction between the two, there exist clear similarities in trying to analyze the true facts behind a dream.

In her short story “Happy Endings”, Margaret Atwood uses different literary techniques that can alter the interpretation of the story’s theme. The story starts off with a generic “fairy tale” ending in which a husband and a wife live a happy life together and eventually die. However, as the story progresses, Atwood’s style and tone makes the alternate scenarios of John and Mary give off a sense of uncertainty of what main ideas she is trying to convey. Good opening and thesis.

The theme of this book is that the human capacity to adapt to and find happiness in the most difficult circumstances. Each character in the novel shows this in their way. For instance, their family is randomly taken from their home and forced to

One of the things that is so fascinating about poetry is that it allows readers to discover and sometimes challenge and channel their emotions as well as their understanding. A poem’s words as well as its structure can reveal many things to its intended audience. In “Myth” by Natasha Trethewey, the poems form is just as important as the words she writes, becoming a map for the journey Trethewey takes, using transitions to take us from one place to another. The nature of the poem therefor becomes multifaceted, as it encourages the reader to think about the speaker’s words and use of form and structure she uses to craft this epic story. Using form as a tool, Trethewey is able to use structure as a way to guide us as readers and the speaker across the conscious and unconscious thoughts and dreams the speaker faces in this story.

This is seen in the sentence, “The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering- a world full of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons” (p. 75). This imagery engages the reader’s visual sense by helping him visualize the envisioned society of the Party. Through the uses of adjectives such as monstrous and terrifying, the vision of a fearful tone towards the Party is conveyed. This gives the reader insight into the power of the Party and their motives to control the public. Thus, the use of diction and imagery contribute to the sensory appeal to vision and allow the reader to gain perspective into the world of Oceania.

Countless cultures and religions gather around campfires and even hold ceremonies to hear a good hero story. But little do they know that these traditional stories that they are oh so eager to listen to, are all alike someway, somehow. All heroes in all cultures, dating from the earliest hero-story written, miraculously follow a sequence of events called a mononmyth/heroes Journey. The ineffable spectacle of the mononmyth is that despite the thousands of miles between ancient civilizations it was subconsciously present in the psychology of all the hero-writers. Joseph Campbell, an established psychologist stated his identification of the monomyth in his book, A Hero with a Thousand Faces. But, Campbell not only explained the monomyth in great detail, but he also elaborated into the psychology of humans. He did this by elucidating the exact steps in every hero’s journey, and providing factual proof. The initial belief is that no matter what the circumstance is, No matter past or present, man or woman, the heroes all have the same initiation. Here Campbell states that, “Whether hero ridiculous or sublime, Greek

“What if contemporary people are less interested in seeing depictions of their unconscious fears and more attracted to allegories of how their day-to-day existence feels?” (Klosterman 1).

There are a number of many different archetypes found in works of fiction and nonfiction that bestow upon the hero his true role in a work of literature. In the Middle English, chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain’s role as the hero emboldens as the story describes more and more archetypes of the quest. The monomyth can be described as the three step process that the hero takes in completing the quest motif. The basic template is supported by “separation, initiation, and return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth” (Campbell 28). Each of these three categories contain other subcategories, which help understand the different archetypical situation within the work itself. An understanding of three key archetypes -the magic weapon, the boon, and the unhealable wound- reveal the essence of Gawain’s role within the archetypal quest motif.

Through various pieces of literature, including F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the words of Eugene O’Neil are undeniably and vividly illustrated valid on innumerable occasions. The American Dream, dissected to its bare skin and bones, is all about prosperity and the relentless pursuit of happiness through material possessions. However, what does the dream evolve into once the ideals and goals have been fulfilled? The protagonist of

What insights into the American Dream are offered through the novella Of Mice and Men and the film American Beauty? In your essay you must consider the influences of context and the importance of techniques in shaping meaning.

In Denis Tedlocks, Popol Vuh, the specific features of heroism expressed in the story are Knowledge, and intellect, which prove to be significantly more important than gaining glory through physical courage and strength. The two main characters, Xbalanque and Hunaphu are the children of One and Seven Hunaphu who end up dying through their defeat by the lords of Xibalba named One and Seven Death. Xbalanque and Hunaphu then use deceitful actions in order to attain their ideal goal of defeating One and Seven Death. Xbalanque and Hunaphu are the protagonists who use their intellect in the internal battle which enable them to achieve what they are striving for. This format of the hero’s journey portrayed by Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s

When developing the different points to analyze I found that the way I was setting this paper up was truly showcasing my abilities to analyze a passage from a well know author. While going through the text, I found a vast amount of imagery,” When considering the imagery in the folktale one of the first

During the book, McKnight seeks to show the reader as to how involved God is in their lives, whether they are aware of it or not. What this means is every single individual person that has ever lived or will ever live, will have a dream. This dream can be a range of things, but each dream has a similar goal, one that we are unaware of. The main goal of every person’s dream is to reach their dream; the meaning behind this is that their dream is what God has planned for them to do. If a person devotes their one life to their dream, everything else in life falls into place. [1]

The term ‘imagination’, in turn, is used originally used by Mills (1959) (rather than ‘perspective’), because the concept also fits with cultural and literary understanding. It seeks to combine some of the qualities of art that it prizes (capturing and expressing the needs of the individual), and some qualities already in literature (presenting the social norms that shape individuals), with a “social and historical reality”, a “big picture in which... [individuals] can understand themselves” (Mills, 1959: 20). In this way it hopes to blend “the scientific and the humanistic” (Mills, 1959: 16) to form a comprehensive basis for the study of the social sciences.

Stuart Hall has posited that the concepts of individual dream states can be brought on a macroscopic scale to media text. In particular, "nightmares" of individuals, can be related to the semiological analysis of a given media text in relation to dominant ideology and culture in general. His main points in this are twofold, first is to point out that the more horrible and "nightmarish" a media scenario (i.e. story) is, the more difficult it is to de-construct the ideological markers that serve as the basis for the text. The second, and perhaps more important, is that the ideological representation in the nightmare represents a repressed wish of society and has increased threat to the dominant class, or the bourgeois.