There have been analysis and searches for patterns between ancient myths and epics of various religions and cultures since at least the late 1800s, but in 1949, Joseph Campbell published his worked of comparative mythology called "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". He was inspired by Carl Jung's work and many others that preceded him, but Campbell is the one who popularized the concept and distilled the stages he believed in. The original book listed 17 stages, but 12 is the most common number seen since 2007 due to the book published by Christopher Vogler. It is heavily criticized for its methodology, sources, reasoning, and conclusions. But it does outline a decently compelling narrative structure with adequate abstraction that many authors (and screenwriters in particular) have used it as a crutch innumerable times in the decades since. > In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed. - [Hero's journey](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hero's_journey) article via Wikipedia # Campbell's 17 Stages (1949) - **Departure** - The Call to Adventure - Refusal of the Call - Supernatural Aid - The Crossing of the First Threshold - Belly of the Whale - **Initiation** - The Road of Trials - The Meeting of the Goddess - Woman as the Temptress - Atonement with the Father/Abyss - The Ultimate Boon - **Return** - Refusal of the Return - The Magic Flight - Rescue from Without - The Crossing of the Return Threshold - Master of the Two Worlds - Freedom to Live # Christopher Vogler's 12 Stages (2007) - **Departure** - Ordinary world - Call to adventure - Refusal of the call - Meeting with the mentor - Crossing the first threshold - **Initiation** - Tests, allies, and enemies - Approach to the inmost cave - The ordeal - Reward - **Return** - The road back - The resurrection - Return with the elixir # Dan Harmon's Story Circle of 8 Stages Developed by Dan Harmon in an attempt to condense down the Hero's Journey into something that could be reused in a cycle when writing television shows. > "A feature film's job is to send you out of the theatre on a high in 90 minutes. Television's job is to keep you glued to the television for your entire life. This doesn't entail making stories any less circular (TV circles are so circular they're sometimes irritatingly predictable). It just means that the focus of step 8 is less riling-things-up and more getting-things-back-to-where-they-started." \- 1. A character is in a zone of comfort or familiarity. 2. They desire something. 3. They enter an unfamiliar situation. 4. They adapt to that situation. 5. They get that which they wanted. 6. They pay a heavy price for it. 7. They return to their familiar situation. 8. They have changed as a result of the journey. # Wikipedia Excerpts ## History > Earlier figures had proposed similar concepts, including psychoanalyst Otto Rank and amateur anthropologist Lord Raglan. Eventually, hero myth pattern studies were popularized by Joseph Campbell, who was influenced by Carl Jung's analytical psychology. Campbell used the monomyth to analyze and compare religions. In his famous book *The Hero with a Thousand Faces* (1949), he describes the narrative pattern as follows: > A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. ## Criticism See also: [[Criticism of The Hero's Journey]] > Campbell's theories regarding the concept of a "monomyth" have been the subject of criticism from scholars, particularly folklorists (scholars active in folklore studies), who have dismissed the concept as a non-scholarly approach suffering from source-selection bias, among other criticisms. More recently, the hero's journey has been analyzed as an example of the sympathetic plot, a universal narrative structure in which a goal-directed protagonist confronts obstacles, overcomes them, and eventually reaps rewards. > Science-fiction author David Brin in a 1999 Salon article criticized the monomyth template as supportive of "despotism and tyranny", indicating that he thinks modern popular fiction should strive to depart from it to support more progressive values. > By offering valuable insights into this revered storytelling tradition, Joseph Campbell did indeed shed light on common spiritual traits that seem shared by all human beings. And I'll be the first to admit it's a superb formula — one that I've used at times in my own stories and novels. > ... > It is essential to understand the radical departure taken by genuine science fiction, which comes from a diametrically opposite literary tradition—a new kind of storytelling that often rebels against those very same archetypes Campbell venerated. An upstart belief in progress, egalitarianism, positive-sum games—and the slim but real possibility of decent human institutions. \- David Brin via an [article he wrote for Salon](https://www.salon.com/1999/06/15/brin_main/) # Campbell's 17 Stages in Depth ... # Vogler's 12 Stages in Depth The book stems from a seven-page studio memo passed around Disney, entitled "[[A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces]]". Having skimmed (a version of) the original memo I have to say: holy shit what a mess. The logic is heavily circular and cherry picking. - All the Star Wars references are ridiculous, because Lucas specifically used the Hero's Journey - yet even the examples given are often a stretch - Referencing scripts instead of released movies shows that even this rigid formula does not necessarily survive the studio process - There's literally thousands of films which do not fit this structure, many of them considered classics And despite saying how perfect and fundamental the Hero's Journey is to the human psyche - Vogler makes drastic changes to the formula! - Most notably, changing the number from 17 to 12 - Starting at a notably different - and completely new - stage as well - The stage titles and meaning therein changed as well This makes it exceedingly clear that this is not one all-encompassing structure. It is a loose set of potentially useful tropes. A possible starting point before actually writing a story. These types of frameworks can certainly be powerful, but they are not mystically powerful or universal. ### The archetypes The first part of the book describes eight major character archetypes in detail. Those are: 1. **Hero**: someone who is willing to sacrifice his own needs on behalf of others 2. **Mentor**: all the characters who teach and protect heroes and give them gifts 3. **Threshold Guardian**: a menacing face to the hero, but if understood, they can be overcome 4. **Herald**: a force that brings a new challenge to the hero 5. **Shapeshifter**: characters who change constantly from the hero's point of view 6. **Shadow**: character who represents the energy of the dark side 7. **Ally**: someone who travels with the hero through the journey, serving variety of functions 8. **Trickster**: embodies the energies of mischief and desire for change ### Stages of the Journey 1. **The Ordinary World**: the hero is seen in their everyday life 2. **The Call to Adventure**: the initiating incident of the story 3. **Refusal of the Call**: the hero experiences some hesitation to answer the call 4. **Meeting with the Mentor**: the hero gains the supplies, knowledge, and confidence needed to commence the adventure 5. **Crossing the First Threshold**: the hero commits wholeheartedly to the adventure 6. **Tests, Allies, and Enemies**: the hero explores the special world, faces trial, and makes friends and enemies 7. **Approach to the Innermost Cave**: the hero nears the center of the story and the special world 8. **The Ordeal**: the hero faces the greatest challenge yet and experiences death and rebirth 9. **Reward**: the hero experiences the consequences of surviving death 10. **The Road Back**: the hero returns to the ordinary world or continues to an ultimate destination 11. **The Resurrection**: the hero experiences a final moment of death and rebirth so they are pure when they reenter the ordinary world 12. **Return with the Elixir**: the hero returns with something to improve the ordinary world # Impact ## Star Wars > George Lucas' deliberate use of Campbell's theory of the monomyth in the making of the Star Wars movies is well documented. I recently watched [[Criticism of The Hero's Journey#References|a video]] doing a beat-by-beat and theme-by-theme comparison of [[Knights of the Old Republic]] 1 & 2 against [[Hero with a Thousand Faces]] and my frustrations with the Star Wars franchise finally made sense. Nearly everything is a direct literal interpretation of Campbell's book. ## Disney > Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood film producer and writer, wrote a memo for Disney Studios on the use of The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a guide for scriptwriters; this memo influenced the creation of such films as Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994). Vogler later expanded the memo and published it as the book The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, which became the inspiration for a number of successful Hollywood films and is believed to have been used in the development of the Matrix series. ## Neil Gaiman > Author Neil Gaiman, whose work is frequently seen as exemplifying the monomyth structure, says that he started The Hero with a Thousand Faces but refused to finish it ## On Immorality in Hollywood Films The Hero with a Thousand Faces includes a quote from the Tao Te Ching that seems incredibly influential on the Jedi outlook. It goes, quote: > All things are in process. Rising and returning. Plants come to blossom but only to return to the root. Returning the the root is like seeking tranquility. Seeking tranquility is like moving towards destiny. To move towards destiny is like eternity. To know eternity is enlightenment. And not to recognize eternity brings disorder and evil. Knowing eternity makes one comprehensive. Comprehension makes one broad-minded. Breadth of vision brings nobility. Nobility is like heaven. The heavenly is like Tao. Tao is the eternal. The decay of the body is not to be feared." Or as Cambell puts it in the prologue: > Only birth can conquer death. This directive has created a situation where writers assume they need to insert something about how immortality is bad actually. And it crops up even when it doesn't make sense for the characters or setting or is just a completely nonsensical statement when there are other more salient points to address. # See Also - [[The Three-Act Structure]] (which is often combined with this) - [[The Heroine's journey]] ## See also - [Mythology portal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Mythology "Portal:Mythology") - _[The Golden Bough](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough "The Golden Bough")_ by [James George Frazer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_George_Frazer "James George Frazer") - _[The Iron Dream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream "The Iron Dream")_ by [Norman Spinrad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Spinrad "Norman Spinrad") - _[The Seven Basic Plots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots "The Seven Basic Plots")_ by [Christopher Booker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Booker "Christopher Booker") - [Vladimir Propp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp "Vladimir Propp") - [Aarne–Thompson classification systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_systems "Aarne–Thompson classification systems") - [Bildungsroman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman "Bildungsroman") - _[The Myth of the Birth of the Hero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Birth_of_the_Hero "The Myth of the Birth of the Hero")_ by [Otto Rank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Rank "Otto Rank") - [Kishu ryūritan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishu_ry%C5%ABritan "Kishu ryūritan") # References ```cardlink url: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hero's_journey title: "Hero's journey - Wikipedia" host: en.wikipedia.org favicon: /static/favicon/wikipedia.ico image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Heroesjourney.svg/1200px-Heroesjourney.svg.png ```