A Hero With A Thousand Faces By Joseph Campbell

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.

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.

Intro: “It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may very well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid.”-Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces represents the idea that myths are people’s way of showing truths related to the way humans do things. They contain similarities from one culture to the next culture but they are all connected within the monomyth. Every myth in every culture follows the format of the monomyth. “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” has broken down the primary structure of human mythology

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

The monomyth of Joseph Campbell associates with Sylvia Plath’s Mirror, T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Love and Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits. The monomyth states 17-stages that the hero/heroines must undergo in order to fulfill their journey. All three of these literary devices challenge Campbell’s monomyth by failing or not completing the sojourney. Failure of their chosen or predestined fate results in the characters reaching a “wasteland”, a depressing, unbearable state of living in a dead place. The goal is for them to reach the “holy grail” or celestial heaven where there is illuminating reflection, enlightenment. The characters seek this either physically or spiritually or both. Campbell explains the spiritual

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.

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.

Does every story truly follow the common stages of monomyth? Joseph Campbell first describes the monomyth in his book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” written in 1949. In William Faulkner’s story “Barn Burning” one can look close enough and see the stages of monomyth. In “Barn Burning” the loyalty to family versus loyalty to the law is tested. The basic structure of a hero’s journey, in this case Sarty, is shown through the three stages Campbell explains. Campbell’s monomyth starts with a departure, initiation, and return. Sarty is faced with all three.

A key to understanding his writing, says author Tom Robbins, is a knowledge of Greek myth. A particular influence on him is the life and work of Joseph Campbell, author of several books on mythology (Hoyser and Stookey 9). Campbell, in turn, owes influence to the insights of analytic psychologist Carl Jung. Jung recognized the patterns within myths --- throughout the world and across all cultures -- of characters, situations, and events, and identified these recurring images as archetypes (Harris and Platzner 40). Campbell

There are three stages in the Monomyth; Separation, Struggle or Initiation, then Return and Reintegration. The narrator of the essay, Paul D’Angelo, went through all three stages.

Monomyths all share a fundamental structure that can be divided into three stages and seventeen steps, however very few monomyths contain all seventeen steps. Departure, the first stage, begins when the hero acknowledges a world outside of his or her own, followed by receiving a quest from a guide, although the quest is often refused. However, the hero will eventually be forced to leave through some event or supernatural power. The second stage, initiation, tests the hero through numerous challenges in order to make the character more self-reliant and confident in their own abilities. Eventually, an authority figure will help the hero to better understand himself and ultimately the hero becomes a selfless person who has a better understanding of life. Return, the final stage, occurs after the quest is completed. To return home and complete the journey, the hero must re-cross the threshold and upon reaching home, the hero will understand the difference between his or her home and the new world (Campbell: 1968).

The universal monomyth contains four elements: romance and anti-romance, tragedy and comedy.10 These categories are evident in Old Testament stories: “In classical literature, and in the literature of the Old Testament itself, the existence of pregeneric [monomyth] plot structure is not only evident, but is intrinsically necessary to the development of that literature.”11Ruth, as a romance, displays the fulfillment of desire and, as a comedy, the upward movement from the unideal to the ideal. The book displays typical virtuous, beautiful ideals, villains that threaten the heroine’s ascent and final achievement of “the victory of fertility over the wasteland” of a comedy-romance.12 The final society reached at the end is the one that the “audience has recognized all along to be the proper and desirable state of

hero's journey is not solely “applicable to fiction but also to the journeys that everyone goes

In the twentieth century, Joseph Campbell started noticing something similar in all myth or legendary stories. He noticed that most of the hero stories have a very similar journey. He lays out monomyth in his book named the hero with a thousand faces, he found that every myth and legendary stories follow the same mode. The idea of monomyth have three sections such as separation, initiation and reward. In the movie X-Men, the hero has to go on a journey, he has to learn something and change. Wolverine has no desire to be a hero at the beginning, but he changed after the journey he has been through. This is similar to many legend stories, there have a lot of challenges which requires a death and restoration which is the basic needs for

The film Spirited Away was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, produced in anime by Studio Ghibli in Tokyo, Japan, and released in 2001 (Sparknotes Editors). The film Spirited Away was very popular around the world and received the Best Animated Feature Film at the 75th Annual Academy Awards becoming the first anime film to win an Oscar (“Credits and Awards”). One of the reasons for its success is that it accurately represents the idea of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth or hero’s journey. The film has all of the elements of the monomyth: the call to adventure, a supernatural aid, a threshold into another world, mentor characters, the road of trials, an abyss and a revelation, a transformation, atonement, a crossing back over the threshold to the regular world, and apotheosis.