The Hero In Joseph Campbell's Monomyth

This paper explores the novel Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong by David Walsh, who published the novel at the end of 2012. This novel is about Walsh’s journey as he follows Lance Armstrong and his life as a cyclist for 13 years as Lance deals with critics and skepticisms about his correlation with doping. Lance Armstrong was a glorified athlete who won many Tour de France titles after conquering testicular cancer. He was widely appreciated for cycling, but many people were questioning how he was able to make such a comeback after his cancer diagnosis. This book explores what happens from David Walsh’s point of view and the struggles he had to face as a Tour de France sports journalist: whether he should just celebrate Armstrong’s victories or question his usage of drugs. The purpose of this paper is to give a brief summary of the novel, and to reflect on the novel while still linking it to the issues and concepts of drugs and cheating in sports.

The movie “Lone Survivor” is an excellent example of Joseph Campbell’s idea of the “monomyth”, or more widely known as the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey outlines the steps a hero will likely take on their path to become and develop as a hero. It has three main parts; The Departure, The Initiation, and The Return, with all of them consisting of smaller parts of the journey. “Lone Survivor”, the movie, follows these steps very closely, almost mirroring the Hero’s Journey as Campbell wrote it. It is a very good example of the Hero’s Journey.

The Hero’s Journey is a list of steps comprised by Joseph Campbell that describes the steps a hero must take on his adventure. The works of “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” by the Coen brothers and “The Odyssey” of Homer, embody and resemble the threshold of adventure in “The Hero’s Journey” where a hero crosses into an unknown world and carries out a challenging adventure in order to live freely by carrying out steps such as The Supreme Ordeal, The Road Back, and Returning with the Elixir.

The common hero myth format that we see in films such as The Wonderful Wizards Of Oz, Stars Wars, and The Hobbit. The hero, also known as the protagonist, is in a world that they feel out of place. When they escape this world they venture into a new world that is odd. They must leave their parents, friends, family and home in the process. Once the task is complete the hero returns home, but things at home doesn’t remain the same. Joseph Campbell, the American mythological researcher, calls this process a monomyth in his article called “The Hero’s Journey.” Carl Jung referred to these hero myths as archetypical patterns. He says that “infantile attachments must die and a more mature and productive life” is born in place. It is the evolution of consciousness that babies start to experiences around five months of differentiation. Both Campbell and Jung believe that mythology is a symbolic utterance of patterns of development of our consciousness as human beings. This doesn’t mean that our lives are myths. It just means that myths are the emergence of truths and that it is based on experience. We all go through monomyth in our lives and that we can relate to heros displayed on big screens. Similar to the main function of hero myths, we all have a story and it involves discovering yourself and developing your individual

Joseph Campbell’s lengthy twenty five step journey taken by all epic heroes such as Homer’s valiant king Odysseus from his classics The Iliad and The Odyssey, J. R. R. Tolkien's vigorous king Aragorn from the well know series, The Lord of the Rings, even George Lucas’s robust young Jedi Luke Skywalker from the dramatic Star Wars, shows the importance of perseverance in acquiring the status of epic hero, ultimately determining the path they followed. Although only heroes of myth and legend, the same principles that apply to their journey, apply to one’s everyday life. Even as infants we begin to learn the reward of perseverance. Standing up, taking a step, falling back down, then getting right back up and trying it again, it is only human nature

In this project, our group of four was tasked to create a story following the Hero’s Journey monomyth in the format of a comic. The project we were assigned had these following requirements: ten steps of the journey, four archetypes, a five minute presentation, and a digital format of the project. The comic itself had to be divided into two pages per person with four panels per page. The story took a sci-fi setting with the monomyth pattern and was focused around the big ideas and themes we discussed in class regarding the steps of the journey.

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.

Life is a precious gift, as you only get one chance to become your best self. In life everyone has hopes and dreams to find their calling to potentially make a difference in the world. In literature we are presented with an abundance of epic hero stories, referring to fictional or non-fictional characters that have made a difference in their world. These characters grant the reader with entertaining stories pertaining to historical or fictional events that reflect the hero’s journey to making a triumphant change. Joseph Campbell’s theory that every hero has a similar journey to becoming their best self commences with a call to an adventure. The call to adventure is the first and most important step in Joseph Campbell’s hero monomyth, “A hero with a Thousand Faces.”

Joseph Campbell was born March 26, 1904, in New York, to a middle class, Roman Catholic family. Since a young age he was terribly fascinated by the Native yank cultures and mythologies. Growing up Joseph educated himself with the culture and story distended to incorporate the myths of the many cultures worldwide. Joseph Campbell believed that this was universal, and as a result it sprang from the common imagination of the collective unconscious. He went to date on enumerate the actual themes and options that different myths shared, and theorized, within the case of those heroic myths the quality plot that he referred to as the monomyth. Joseph takes the North American country through the understanding of how the Hero’s journey and the

The monomyth is one of the most recognizable stories as it, in its most basic form, is about a hero who must face an obstacle and is changed by doing so. Its popularity stems from the fact that all have experienced it. With each person having experienced several variations of the monomyth, the archetype existed before the establishment of writing. Each person presented his or her story in the form of song. By structuring stories through stanzas with rhythm and rhyme, the stories told would be remembered better and thus would be passed down more often. Ultimately, these songs became a staple of society as they had the ability to create a sense of community; giant masses will gather to hear or to sing other’s or their own songs. As years passed

Ever since the beginning of humanity, stories from all corners of the world all follow the hero’s journey, a system coined by Joseph Campbell. Elements of the hero’s journey can be found in every single story, from Harry Potter to Paradise Lost. The hero’s journey is in every story, and especially in the epic poem Beowulf. Beowulf has all the trappings of a memorable story. There are beasts, and a shining hero, as well as honor and loyalty. Beowulf also follows the Hero’s journey, if not distinctly. The epic poem Beowulf holds many similarities to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, three of these similarities including the call to adventure, tests, and the resurrection.

A monomyth according to Joseph Campbell (2011) is a story where a “hero ventures from a world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder and comes back from the adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (Page 51).When people think of monomyth examples their instinct is to go to classics such as Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings or modern day movies like Hunger Games and Harry Potter. All of these movies follow a specific story telling structure thus classifying them as monomyths. To be classified as a monomyth the plot must be broken down into three phases the departure, initiation, and the return (Stein, 2011, p.52). A monomyth also has common features such as the hero has a remote childhood, there is a call to adventure,

What is a hero? What do you think is the definition, to everyone it is different. The dictionary definition is “a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.” In the movie Hercules a child named Hercules was born to two immortal gods, Zeus and Athena. The child Hercules was snatched by Hades’s two minions, the minions gave the child a potion to turn him mortal. Hercules didn’t drink the whole potion leaving him with enormous strength. The rest of the story talks about his trials as a mortal with super strength and how he becomes a hero to many. This essay will explain the three different elements of Joseph Campbell’s Hero Journey Outline and how they relate to the popular movie Hercules.

Throughout the history of fictional writing, cultural values of certain time periods have been expressed and implemented through the depiction of the heroes’ experiences on their journeys and the knowledge they gain by the quest’s end. For example, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a chivalric romance written in the Late Middle Ages, Gawain epitomizes a knight with the characteristics that knights from the Late Middle Ages were expected to possess according to the requirements outlined in the rules of chivalry, such as honor and valor. Likewise, Beowulf, the hero of the folk epic Beowulf, embodies the qualities of an exemplary hero as well as king. Therefore, in both stories, the reader encounters a heroic character that is presented with traits that Anglo-Saxons and the Middle English valued in their culture through their stories’ monomyths, a concept of similar and structural sequences that can be applied to many stories, created by Joseph Campbell. Some of these values are carried from the Early to Late Middle Ages and can be seen through the works of both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf.

“There are no heroes… in life, only the monsters win”. To John Richardson this quote could not be anymore true. In Richardson’s article, The Afterlife, he writes about Lance Armstrong’s miraculous recovery from testicular cancer to winning the Tour de France seven consecutive years in a row, and becoming a hero to cancer patients around the world, to then becoming the greatest cheater of all time. No man has ever been looked up to so much by so many people and then despised by everyone until Lance Armstrong. By analyzing Richardson's use of interviews, perfect heroes, and Armstrong’s blood, we can clarify his argument: that Armstrong became the greatest cheater of all time, and he does not apologize for it.