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Hero's Journey Research Paper

Decent Essays

Aurora Leach, Emily Kearns, Hali Luo

The “Hero’s Journey” as founded by Joseph Campbell, can be detected in numerous works of literature including Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and even in lives of the authors themselves. Ultimately, everyone’s lives are hero’s journeys, including Hemingway himself. Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” is a way to categorize similar concepts in literature to help classify parts of the story. There are six main phases of the “Hero’s Journey”: the call to action, the answering of the call, the threshold guardians, the crossing of the threshold, the dragon battle and the master of two worlds. The call to action is the invitation the protagonist receives from someone or something to venture into the unknown. The protagonist likely …show more content…

Once the protagonist has found themselves across the threshold, past the point of no return, they wonder upon the dragon battle. The dragon battle is where the protagonist fights his/her enemy which could be a second party or themselves. In The Old Man and The Sea, Santiago’s dragon battle is waged between himself and the giant marlin that he has caught. The great size of the marlin prevents Santiago from being able to drag the fish into the boat, forcing him to kill the marlin and haul his burden through the water. Sharks eventually eat the marlin, leaving only the skeletal essence of their prey. Santiago heads back to shore, understanding that it was beyond his control, but that he was lucky to have fought such a great beast as the marlin. This aspect of the story is known as the ultimate boon in the “Hero’s Journey.” Santiago is left with a key piece of information on his way back to shore, where he will head over the threshold. Hemingway’s dragon battle can be found when he is made aware of the fact that his parents returned his collection short of stories, to which Hemingway responded by writing his dad a letter, justifying and explaining his inclusion of

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