The Hero's Journey [Campbell]

Campbell’s Hero’s Journey

Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is a pattern said to be present in most stories, whether it is obvious or not. It involves particular stages that the hero, or protagonist, must go through to complete the story. These stages are known as ‘Separation’, ‘Initiation’, and ‘Return’. These stages themselves then hold much smaller stages, adding up to 17 altogether. Stories can often remove or rearrange certain stages and still be effective, as long as they have enough elements of the original Hero’s Journey ideal remaining and the story may imply these stages or elements in some other way instead.

In The Hero’s Journey, the Hero usually starts off the story in their ordinary world (no matter how extraordinary it may seem to us). The Hero is then ‘called to adventure’, as one of the theory’s stages states, and begins to face different foes and challenges along the way, often including some element of death/rebirth and ending with a reward and becoming the ‘master or two worlds’.

This structure is used throughout many popular stories today with some being a lot more obvious than others - for example, Star Wars. Some say that this structure is mandatory to make an effective story, but there is a lot of discussion about whether or not this is actually the case - different genres for example, may think differently about how they tell stories. There is also discussion about whether or not this then makes a story predictable, and the characters flat since they all follow the same formula. The rearranging of the formula can prevent this, in some case, but recurring key elements can make something seem much less original to the audience. Other arguments include the idea that if these stages are not met, the story can’t reach a satisfying conclusion, and the hero can not complete their character arc, but conversely a character arc could involve some of these stages and then branching off - instead of the rebirth which could symbolise a character having to rethink their choices, their opinions and growing/developing, a character could instead reinforce their beliefs, choices, and only have to experiences a questioning of their worldview before acceptance and moving onto the next stage.

Archetypes also play a very important role in the Hero’s Journey; Campbell talks about recurring archetypes present within a hero’s journey, and the roles that they play. This is heavily influenced by Jung’s archetypes that are “universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious”.

There are a few different definitions of ‘Hero’, involving simply the protagonist of a story, and a man who does deeds beneficial to others. Certain attributes are often associated with a ‘Hero’; courage, nobilities, superior strength and the ability to do things that ‘ordinary’ people can not. Campbell describes them as “is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms” (The Hero With 1000 Faces, page 19) and “The composite hero of the monomyth is a personage of exceptional gifts. Frequently he is honored by his society, frequently unrecognised or disdained. He and/or the world in which he finds himself suffers from a symbolical deficiency” (Page 37). Many protagonists, or heroes in modern day media do not conform to all or a lot of these qualities, and stories now are not always as fantastic as the earlier myths that Campbell may have based his theories around.

“– it’s unfitting for any other type of protagonist – the antihero, the villain, the observer, the victim, the desperate, the mentally unstable, etc. etc.“ http://www.veronicasicoe.com/blog/2013/03/the-heros-journey-my-pros-and-cons/