In narratology and comparative mythology, the monomyth, or the hero's journey, is the common template of a broad category of tales and lore that involves a hero who goes on an adventure, and in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed.
Various scholars have introduced theories on hero myth narratives, including Edward Burnett Tylor, Otto Rank, and Lord Raglan. Eventually hero myth pattern studies were popularized by Joseph Campbell, who was influenced by Carl Jung's view of myth.
In his 1949 work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell described the basic 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.
Otto Rank and Lord Raglan describe hero narrative patterns in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis and ritualistic senses. Campbell deconstructs and compares religions in terms of the monomyth.
Campbell borrowed the word monomyth from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939). Campbell was a notable scholar of Joyce's work and in A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944) co-authored the seminal analysis of Joyce's final novel. Campbell's singular the monomyth implies that the "hero's journey" is the ultimate narrative archetype, but the term monomyth has occasionally been used more generally, as a term for a mythological archetype or a supposed mytheme that re-occurs throughout the world's cultures. Omry Ronen referred to Vyacheslav Ivanov's treatment of Dionysus as an "avatar of Christ" (1904) as "Ivanov's monomyth".
The phrase "the hero's journey", used in reference to Campbell's monomyth, first entered into popular discourse through two documentaries. The first, released in 1987, The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell, was accompanied by a 1990 companion book, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (with Phil Cousineau and Stuart Brown, eds.). The second was Bill Moyers's series of seminal interviews with Campbell, released in 1988 as the documentary (and companion book) The Power of Myth. Cousineau in the introduction to the revised edition of The Hero's Journey wrote "the monomyth is in effect a metamyth, a philosophical reading of the unity of mankind's spiritual history, the Story behind the story".
Campbell describes 17 stages of the monomyth.
Not all monomyths necessarily contain all 17 stages explicitly; some myths may focus on only one of the stages, while others may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order. In the terminology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the stages are the individual mythemes which are "bundled" or assembled into the structure of the monomyth.
The 17 stages may be organized in a number of ways, including division into three "acts" or sections:
- Departure (also Separation),
- Initiation (sometimes subdivided into IIA. Descent and IIB. Initiation) and
- Return.
In the departure part of the narrative, the hero or protagonist lives in the ordinary world and receives a call to go on an adventure. The hero is reluctant to follow the call, but is helped by a mentor figure.
The initiation section begins with the hero then traversing the threshold to an unknown or "special world", where he faces tasks or trials, either alone or with the assistance of helpers.
The hero eventually reaches "the innermost cave" or the central crisis of his adventure, where he must undergo "the ordeal" where he overcomes the main obstacle or enemy, undergoing "apotheosis" and gaining his reward (a treasure or "elixir").
The hero must then return to the ordinary world with his reward. He may be pursued by the guardians of the special world, or he may be reluctant to return, and may be rescued or forced to return by intervention from the outside.
In the return section, the hero again traverses the threshold between the worlds, returning to the ordinary world with the treasure or elixir he gained, which he may now use for the benefit of his fellow man. The hero himself is transformed by the adventure and gains wisdom or spiritual power over both worlds.
Campbell's approach has been very widely received in narratology, mythography and psychotherapy, especially since the 1980s, and a number of variant summaries of the basic structure have been published. The general structure of Campbell's exposition has been noted before and described in similar terms in comparative mythology of the 19th and early 20th century, notably by Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp who divided the structure of Russian folk tales into 31 "functions".
The belly of the whale
Can be viewed as a symbolic death and rebirth in Jungian analysis.
In The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo and Princess Leia take shelter in a cave which turns out to be the belly of a giant space slug. While there, they begin to exhibit their repressed romantic feelings; this is cross-cut with Darth Vader emerging from a clamshell-like mediation chamber and subsequently being depicted for the first time as a slave to the Emperor rather than the Empire's master.
The Road of Trials
The road of trials is a series of tests that the hero must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the hero fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes. Eventually the hero will overcome these trials and move on to the next step. Campbell explains that once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage.
The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed—again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unsustainable ecstasies and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land.
In The Empire Strikes Back, the heroes are imperiled by ice monsters, Imperial forces, and an asteroid field before their journeys progress.
The Meeting with the Goddess
This is where the hero gains items given to him that will help him in the future. Campbell proposes that
The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have been overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the World. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart.
The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity.
And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed—whether she will or not. And if she has shunned him, the scales fall from her eyes; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace.
In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo meets the royal Galadriel, who shows him a vision of the future.
Woman as the Temptress
In this step, the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him to abandon or stray from his quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey. Campbell relates that the crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our conscious views of what life ought to be seldom correspond to what life really is. Generally we refuse to admit within ourselves, or within our friends, the fullness of that pushing, self-protective, malodorous, carnivorous, lecherous fever which is the very nature of the organic cell. Rather, we tend to perfume, whitewash, and reinterpret; meanwhile imagining that all the flies in the ointment, all the hairs in the soup, are the faults of some unpleasant someone else. But when it suddenly dawns on us, or is forced to our attention that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with the odor of the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organs of life, woman in particular as the great symbol of life, become intolerable to the pure, the pure, pure soul. The seeker of the life beyond life must press beyond [the woman], surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond.
In Star Wars, Luke is beguiled by Leia despite her being his sister.
In the Odyssey, Calypso tempts Odysseus to stay on the island rather than continuing his journey.
Atonement with the Father/Abyss
In this step the hero must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving into this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power. Per Campbell, Atonement consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster—the dragon thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed id). But this requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself, and that is what is difficult. One must have a faith that the father is merciful, and then a reliance on that mercy. Therewith, the center of belief is transferred outside of the bedeviling god's tight scaly ring, and the dreadful ogres dissolve. It is in this ordeal that the hero may derive hope and assurance from the helpful female figure, by whose magic (pollen charms or power of intercession) he is protected through all the frightening experiences of the father's ego-shattering initiation. For if it is impossible to trust the terrifying father-face, then one's faith must be centered elsewhere (Spider Woman, Blessed Mother); and with that reliance for support, one endures the crisis—only to find, in the end, that the father and mother reflect each other, and are in essence the same.
Campbell later expounds:
The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands—and the two are atoned.
In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke discovers that Darth Vader is his father and subsequently escapes by falling into a chute beneath him.
Apotheosis
This is the point of realization in which a greater understanding is achieved. Armed with this new knowledge and perception, the hero is resolved and ready for the more difficult part of the adventure. Campbell discloses that those who know, not only that the Everlasting lies in them, but that what they, and all things, really are is the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish-fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord.
In The Two Towers, Gandalf dies after fighting the Balrog and Saruman, and is subsequently resurrected in a new form.
Sherlock Holmes has an 'aha' moment whenever he has unraveled a particular criminal case.
The Ultimate Boon
The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the hero went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the hero for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the holy grail. Campbell confers that the gods and goddesses then are to be understood as embodiments and custodians of the elixir of Imperishable Being but not themselves the Ultimate in its primary state.
What the hero seeks through his intercourse with them is therefore not finally themselves, but their grace, i.e., the power of their sustaining substance. This miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the Imperishable; the names and forms of the deities who everywhere embody, dispense, and represent it come and go. This is the miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus, Yahweh, and the Supreme Buddha, the fertility of the rain of Viracocha, the virtue announced by the bell rung in the Mass at the consecration, and the light of the ultimate illumination of the saint and sage. Its guardians dare release it only to the duly proven.
This stage is represented by the One Ring being destroyed in The Return of the King and the Death Star being destroyed in Star Wars.
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the eponymous hero and his father find and drink holy water from the Holy Grail, which grants everlasting life.
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. Campbell continues:
When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal personification, the adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds. But the responsibility has been frequently refused.
Even Gautama Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have died while in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are the heroes fabled to have taken up residence forever in the blessed isle of the unaging Goddess of Immortal Being.
After destroying the ring, Frodo is so exhausted he wants to give up and die rather than make the return journey.
Sherlock Holmes tends to overstay his welcome at the scene of the crime.
The Magic Flight
Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it. Campbell reveals that if the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or the god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero's wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the mythological round becomes a lively, often comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and evasion.
Frodo and his companion are rescued by giant eagles.
Sherlock Holmes is immediately returned by the author to 221B Baker Street after solving the crime, with the intermediate journey typically going unmentioned.
Rescue from Without
Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often he must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience. Campbell elucidates:
The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural adventure by assistance from without. That is to say, the world may have to come and get him. For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state. "Who having cast off the world," we read [in the Upanishads], "would desire to return again? He would be only there." And yet, in so far as one is alive, life will call. Society is jealous of those who remain away from it, and will come knocking at the door. If the hero—like Muchukunda—is unwilling, the disturber suffers an ugly shock; but on the other hand, if the summoned one is only delayed—sealed in by the beatitude of the state of perfect being (which resembles death)—an apparent rescue is effected, and the adventurer returns.
When Frodo is tempted to keep the One Ring rather than destroy it at Mount Doom, Gollum takes it from him, unwittingly ensuring its destruction.
At the end of the original Star Wars film, Han Solo returns in the Millennium Falcon to defend Luke so he can destroy the Death Star.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold
Campbell says in The Hero with a Thousand Faces that "The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world." The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world. Earlier in the book, Campbell says:
Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life.
Why re-enter such a world?
Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss?
As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided.
In the penultimate chapter of The Lord of the Rings, the hobbits confront and must defeat Saruman in the Shire before things can return to normal.
Master of the Two Worlds
For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds. Campbell demonstrates that Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back—not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other—is the talent of the master.
The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another. It is possible to speak from only one point at a time, but that does not invalidate the insights of the rest. The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him; he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity.
By the time of Return of the Jedi, Luke has become a Jedi knight. Former Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker sheds his alter ego as the Sith lord Darth Vader when he throws down the Emperor, and, moreover, returns as a Force spirit after his death.
Freedom to Live
In this step, mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past. Campbell declares:
The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is. "Before Abraham was, I AM." He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment (or of the "other thing"), as destroying the permanent with its change. Quoting Ovid's Metamorphoses:
"Nothing retains its own form; but Nature, the greater renewer, ever makes up forms from forms. Be sure that nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form."
Thus the next moment is permitted to come to pass.
In The Return of the King, the peaceful resolution is illustrated by the hobbits prospering in their homeland, while Gandalf and Frodo sail to the Undying Lands—the latter because his wound from the Nazgûl will never heal naturally.
According to Inverse, the end of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker sees Rey "bury the past" and reject "any power her grandfather held over her".
O monomito (às vezes chamado de "Jornada do Herói") é um conceito de jornada cíclica presente em mitos, de acordo com o antropólogo Joseph Campbell.
Campbell e outros académicos, tais como Erich Neumann, descrevem as narrativas de Gautama Buddha, Moisés e Cristo em termos do monomito e Campbell afirma que mitos clássicos de muitas culturas seguem esse padrão básico.
A ideia de monomito em Campbell explica sua ubiquidade por meio de uma mescla entre o conceito junguiano de arquétipos, forças inconscientes da concepção freudiana, e a estruturação dos ritos de passagem por Arnold van Gennep.
Este padrão da "jornada do herói" ainda é influente entre artistas e intelectuais mundo afora, o que pode indicar a utilidade contínua e a influência ubíqua dos trabalhos de Campbell (e assim como evidência sobre a importância e validade dos modelos psicológicos freudiano e especialmente junguiano).
Está dividido em três seções:
Partida (às vezes chamada Separação),
Iniciação e
Retorno.
A Partida lida com o herói aspirando à sua jornada;
a Iniciação contém as várias aventuras do herói ao longo de seu caminho;
e o Retorno é o momento em que o herói volta a casa com o conhecimento e os poderes que adquiriu ao longo da jornada.
Isto foi estabelecido por Joseph Campbell na primeira parte de O Herói de Mil Faces, intitulada "A Aventura do Herói". A tese do autor é de que todos os mitos seguem essa estrutura em algum grau. Para citar vários exemplos, as histórias de Prometeu, Osíris, Buda e Jesus Cristo todas seguem este paradigma quase exatamente, enquanto a Odisseia apresenta repetições frequentes da Iniciação, o conto da Gata Borralheira (Cinderela) segue esta estrutura um tanto mais livremente.
Os 12 Estágios da Jornada do Herói - "The Writer's Journey" (Christopher Vogler):
- Mundo Comum - O mundo normal do herói antes da história começar.
- O Chamado da Aventura - Um problema se apresenta ao herói: um desafio ou a aventura.
- Reticência do Herói ou Recusa do Chamado - O herói recusa ou demora a aceitar o desafio ou aventura, geralmente porque tem medo.
- Encontro com o mentor ou Ajuda Sobrenatural - O herói encontra um mentor que o faz aceitar o chamado e o informa e treina para a sua aventura.
- Cruzamento do Primeiro Portal - O herói abandona o mundo comum para entrar no mundo especial ou mágico.
- Provações, aliados e inimigos ou A Barriga da Baleia - O herói enfrenta testes, encontra aliados e enfrenta inimigos, de forma que aprende as regras do mundo especial.
- Aproximação - O herói tem êxitos durante as provações
- Provação difícil ou traumática - A maior crise da aventura, de vida ou morte.
- Recompensa - O herói enfrentou a morte, se sobrepõe ao seu medo e agora ganha uma recompensa (o elixir).
- O Caminho de Volta - O herói deve voltar para o mundo comum.
- Ressurreição do Herói - Outro teste no qual o herói enfrenta a morte, e deve usar tudo o que foi aprendido.
- Regresso com o Elixir - O herói volta para casa com o "elixir", e o usa para ajudar todos no mundo comum.
Os Estágios da Aventura do Herói - "O Herói de Mil Faces" (Joseph Campbell)
- Partida, separação
- Chamado à aventura
- Recusa do Chamado
- Ajuda Sobrenatural
- Travessia do Primeiro Limiar
- Barriga da baleia
- Descida, Iniciação, Penetração
- Estrada de Provas
- Encontro com a Deusa
- A Mulher como Tentação
- Sintonia com o Pai
- Apoteose
- A Grande Conquista
- Retorno
- Recusa do Retorno
- Voo Mágico
- Resgate Interior
- Travessia do Limiar
- Senhor de Dois Mundos
- Liberdade para Viver
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