The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) is the seminal work of comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. In this text Campbell discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies and religions.
Since publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell's theory has been consciously applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. The best known is perhaps George Lucas, who has acknowledged a debt to Campbell regarding the stories of the Star Wars films.
Summary
Campbell's insight was that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years, all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth.
This fundamental structure contains a number of stages, which include (1) a call to adventure, which the hero has to accept or decline, (2) a road of trials, regarding which the hero succeeds or fails, (3) achieving the goal or "boon," which often results in important self-knowledge, (4) a return to the ordinary world, again as to which the hero can succeed or fail, and finally, (5) application of the boon in which what the hero has gained can be used to improve the world.
In a well-known quote from the introduction to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell wrote:
The classic examples of the monomyth relied upon by Campbell and other scholars include the Buddha, Moses, and Christ stories, although Campbell cites many other classic myths from many cultures which rely upon this basic structure.
While Campbell offers a discussion of the hero's journey by using the Freudian concepts popular in the 1940s and 1950s, the monomythic structure is not tied to these concepts. Similarly, Campbell uses a mixture of Jungian archetypes, unconscious forces, and Arnold van Gennep's structuring of rites of passage rituals to provide some illumination.[1] However, this pattern of the hero's journey influences artists and intellectuals worldwide, suggesting a basic usefulness for Campbell's insights not tied to academic categories and mid-20th century forms of analysis.
Fundamental structure of the monomyth
In the monomyth, the hero starts in the ordinary world, and receives a call to enter an unusual world of strange powers and events. If the hero accepts the call to enter this strange world, the hero must face tasks and trials, and may have to face these trials alone, or may have assistance. At its most intense, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help earned along the journey. If the hero survives, the hero may achieve a great gift or "boon." The hero must then decide whether to return to the ordinary world with this boon. If the hero does decide to return, the hero often faces challenges on the return journey. If the hero is successful in returning, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world. The stories of Osiris, Prometheus, Moses, Buddha, and Christ, for example, follow this structure very closely.
Campbell describes a number of stages or steps along this journey. Very few myths contain all of these stages — some myths contain many of the stages, while others contain only a few; some myths may have as a focus only one of the stages, while other myths may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order. These stages may be organized in a number of ways, including division into three sections: Departure (sometimes called Separation), Initiation and Return. "Departure" deals with the hero venturing forth on the quest; "Initiation" deals with the hero's various adventures along the way; and "Return" deals with the hero's return home with knowledge and powers acquired on the journey.
Contents
Prologue: The Monomyth
- 1. Myth and Dream
- 2. Tragedy and Comedy
- 3. The Hero and the God
- 4. The World Navel
PART ONE: The Adventure of the Hero
Chapter I: Departure
- 1. The Call to Adventure
The adventure begins with the hero receiving a call to action, such as a threat to the peace of the community, or the hero simply falls into or blunders into it. The call is often announced to the hero by another character who acts as a "herald". The herald, often represented as dark or terrifying and judged evil by the world, may call the character to adventure simply by the crisis of his appearance.
- 2. Refusal of the Call
In some stories, the hero initially refuses the call to adventure. When this happens, the hero may suffer somehow, and may eventually choose to answer, or may continue to decline the call.
- 3. Supernatural Aid
After the hero has accepted the call, he encounters a protective figure (often elderly) who provides special tools and advice for the adventure ahead, such as an amulet or a weapon.
- 4. The Crossing of the First Threshold
The hero must cross the threshold between the world he is familiar with and that which he is not. Often this involves facing a "threshold guardian", an entity that works to keep all within the protective confines of the world but must be encountered in order to enter the new zone of experience.
- 5. The Belly of the Whale
The hero, rather than passing a threshold, passes into the new zone by means of rebirth. Appearing to have died by being swallowed or having their flesh scattered, the hero is transformed and becomes ready for the adventure ahead.
Chapter II: Initiation
- 1. The Road of Trials
Once past the threshold, the hero encounters a dream landscape of ambiguous and fluid forms. The hero is challenged to survive a succession of obstacles and, in so doing, amplifies his consciousness. The hero is helped covertly by the supernatural helper or may discover a benign power supporting him in his passage.
- 2. The Meeting with the Goddess
The ultimate trial is often represented as a marriage between the hero and a queenlike, or mother-like figure. This represents the hero's mastery of life (represented by the feminine) as well as the totality of what can be known. When the hero is female, this becomes a male figure.
- 3. Woman as the Temptress
His awareness expanded, the hero may fixate on the disunity between truth and his subjective outlook, inherently tainted by the flesh. This is often represented with revulsion or rejection of a female figure.
- 4. Atonement with the Father
The hero reconciles the tyrant and merciful aspects of the father-like authority figure to understand himself as well as this figure.
- 5. Apotheosis
The hero's ego is disintegrated in a breakthrough expansion of consciousness. Quite frequently the hero's idea of reality is changed; the hero may find an ability to do new things or to see a larger point of view, allowing the hero to sacrifice himself.
- 6. The Ultimate Boon
The hero is now ready to obtain that which he has set out, an item or new awareness that, once he returns, will benefit the society that he has left.
Chapter III: Return
- 1. Refusal of the Return
Having found bliss and enlightenment in the other world, the hero may not want to return to the ordinary world to bestow the boon onto his fellow man.
- 2. The Magic Flight
When the boon's acquirement (or the hero's return to the world) comes against opposition, a chase or pursuit may ensue before the hero returns.
- 3. Rescue from Without
The hero may need to be rescued by forces from the ordinary world. This may be because the hero has refused to return or because he is successfully blocked from returning with the boon. The hero loses his ego.
- 4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
The hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real.
- 5. Master of the Two Worlds
Because of the boon or due to his experience, the hero may now perceive both the divine and human worlds.
- 6. Freedom to Live
The hero bestows the boon to his fellow man.
Chapter IV: The Keys
PART TWO: The Cosmogonic Cycle
Chapter I: Emanations
- 1. From Psychology to Metaphysics
- 2. The Universal Round
- 3. Out of the Void -Space
- 4. Within Space -Life
- 5. The Breaking of the One into the Manifold
- 6. Folk Stories of Creation
Chapter II: The Virgin Birth
- 1. Mother Universe
- 2. Matrix of Destiny
- 3. Womb of Redemption
- 4. Folk Stories of Virgin Motherhood
Chapter III: Transformations of the Hero
- 1. The Primordial Hero and the Human
- 2. Childhood of the Human Hero
- 3. The Hero as Warrior
- 4. The Hero as Lover
- 5. The Hero as Emperor and as Tyrant
- 6. The Hero as World Redeemer
- 7. The Hero as Saint
- 8. Departure of the Hero
Chapter IV: Dissolutions
- 1. End of the Microcosm
- 2. End of the Macrocosm
Epilogue: Myth and Society
- 1. The Shapeshifter
- 2. The Function of Myth, Cult, and Meditation
- 3. The Hero Today
Artists influenced by work
The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced a number of artists, musicians, poets, and filmmakers, including Bob Dylan and George Lucas. Mickey Hart, Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead had long noted Campbell's influence and agreed to participate in a seminar with him in 1986 entitled From Ritual to Rapture.[1]
George Lucas' deliberate use of Campbell's theory of the monomyth in the making of the Star Wars movies is well-documented. In addition to the extensive discussion between Campbell and Bill Moyers, broadcast in 1988 on PBS as The Power of Myth (filmed at "Skywalker Ranch"), on Campbell's influence on the Star Wars films, Lucas gave an extensive interview for the biography Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind (Larsen and Larsen, 2002, pages 541-543) on this topic.
Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood film producer and writer, wrote the book The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, which became the basis for a number of successful Hollywood films and is believed to have been used in the development of the Matrix series.
Background
Campbell used the work of early 20th century theorists to develop his model of the hero (see also structuralism), including Freud (particularly the Oedipus complex), Carl Jung (archetypal figures and the collective unconscious), and Arnold Van Gennep (The three stages of The Rites of Passage, translated by Campbell into Departure, Separation, and Return). Campbell also looked to the work of ethnographers James Frazer and Franz Boas and psychologist Otto Rank.
Campbell called this journey of the hero, the monomyth.[2] Campbell was a noted scholar of James Joyce (in 1944 he had authored A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake with Henry Morton Robinson), and Campbell borrowed the term Monomyth from Joyce's Finnegans Wake. In addition, Joyce's Ulysses was also highly influential in the structuring of The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
The Princeton University Press published all editions of this text. Originally issued in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces has been reprinted a number of times. Reprints issued after the release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in 1977 used the image of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker on the cover.[3] The 2004 Commemorative Edition has both a new introduction by Clarissa Pinkola Estés and a new cover.
Quotes
Preface:
- "There are of course differences between the numerous mythologies and religions of mankind, but this is a book about similarities; and once they are understood the differences will be found to be much less great than is popularly (and politically) supposed. My hope is that a comparative elucidation may contribute to the perhaps not-quite desperate cause of those forces that are working in the present world for unification, not in the name of some ecclesiastical or political empire, but in the sense of human mutual understanding" (Third edition, page VIII).
- "As we are told in the Vedas: 'Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names,' " (Third edition, page VII).
Criticism
- Clyde W. Ford (2000) was initially distressed by the opening lines of the prologue to The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He eventually returned to the text, in order to synthesize what was of value to him: "Several months passed before I mustered the courage to challenge Campbell again...I was rewarded for my persistence. Campbell's shortsightedness about Africa could not obliterate his immense contributions to mythology, and his omission gave me an opportunity to explore African mythology in a novel and meaningful way," (p. 12).
- Marc Manganaro (1992), argues that Campbell's theories violate the expectations of poststructuralism: "Campbell's reading of mythology as text hardly aligns with post-structuralist notions of "world as text," as a realm of constantly shifting signifiers having no provable reference to a ground of signified meaning...on the contrary Campbell's trope of 'text'...functions as a shell that covers the true interior of the myth" (p. 159).
- Pearson and Pope (1981), claim that Campbell's model discounts the possibility of female heroes: "The great works on the hero--such as Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces...all begin with the assumption that the hero is male" (p. vii).
- Novelist David Brin has been openly critical of his theories.
- Novelist David Foster Wallace in the short story Another Pioneer (part of the collection, Oblivion, 2004) critiques Campbell's journey of the hero.
- American novelist Kurt Vonnegut satirized Campbell's views on the monomyth as being excessively complicated by offering his interpretation, called the 'In The Hole' theory; loosely defined as "The hero gets into trouble. The hero gets out of trouble.'
- American philosopher John Shelton Lawrence and American religious scholar Robert Jewett have discussed an "American Monomyth" in many of their books, The American Monomyth, The Myth of the American Superhero, and Captain American and the Crusade of Zealous Nationalism.
References
- The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. Edited and with an Introduction by Phil Cousineau. Forward by Stuart L. Brown, Executive Editor. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.
- Campbell, Joseph and Henry Morton Robinson. A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, 1944.
- Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949.
- Ford, Clyde W. The Hero with an African Face. New York: Bantam, 2000.
- Henderson, Mary. Star Wars: The Magic of Myth. Companion volume to the exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. New York: Bantam, 1997.
- Larsen, Stephen and Robin Larsen. Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2002.
- Manganaro, Marc. Myth, Rhetoric, and the Voice of Authority: A Critique of Frazer, Eliot, Frye, and Campbell. New Haven: Yale, 1992.
- Moyers, Bill and Joseph Campbell. The Power of Myth. Anchor: Reissue edition, 1991. ISBN 0-385-41886-8
- Pearson, Carol and Katherine Pope. The Female Hero in American and British Literature. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1981.
- Vogler, Christopher. The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 1998.
See also
External links
Citations
- [1] Since the late 1960s, with the introduction of post-structuralism, theories such as the monomyth (to the extent they are based in structuralism) have lost ground in the academy.
- [2] Source of term ''monomyth''.