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Leaving the comfort of home and entering another world calls for a hero ready to commit to the unknown.
Part I: Separation
Joseph Campbell returned home from his studies in Europe soon after his twenty-fifth birthday. Inspired by the brilliant tapestry of thought he encountered there, he planned to combine modern art, medieval literature and Sanskrit into a single doctoral thesis.
Predictably, his advisors didn’t support the idea.
This prompted Campbell to abandon doctoral work completely, leaving him without a clear direction in his studies or his life. Two weeks after his decision, the Wall Street Crash of October 29th, 1929 left millions of Americans suddenly destitute.
Yet Campbell was about to embark on a quest – one which would endure throughout the Great Depression to generate a remarkable new vision.
Committing himself to an arduous program of private study, he buried himself in books for twelve hours a day, supporting himself in the evening by playing sax in a jazz combo. After five years of rigorous self-education, he emerged a formidable authority in comparative mythology and religion, fusing philosophy, psychology and anthropology with – sure enough – art, literature and Eastern studies.
The Role of Myth in Everyday Life
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One of Campbell’s great talents was to connect seemingly unrelated ideas into harmonious design. His most influential work came from linking archetypes, or fundamental human themes, to myths from around the world.
Campbell believed myths were more than just fanciful stories – they were guides to dealing with the mysteries of existence.
What is the best way to live? How do we explain the natural forces all around us? Where do we fit in the grand scheme of life? Myths provide grounding beliefs for these questions.
Though many of the ancient tales seem absurd to modern sensibilities, we still invent our own myths to function in a world of unknowns. And, because these problems are inherently human, we confront them in ways which follow similar patterns.
The Hero’s Path
Campbell discovered that no matter where they originate, hero myths follow a consistent outline he called the Hero Monomyth – a template that applies not only to mythic tales but to our own lives.
In essence, this means any journey or life-altering event can be seen as a heroic quest. The Hero Monomyth offers points of reference to help orient the traveler with a meaningful experience of life. Depending on the level of involvement, journeys can be deeply transformative.
According to Campbell, a hero’s journey follows three stages:
- Separation (or Departure) – the hero leaves home to follow a defining mission.
- Initiation – the hero enters the Dream World, a place where normal rules are suspended.
- Return – the hero claims a transcendent prize and returns home to share it.
Leaving The Common World
Separation has five substages, each of which addresses an element of crisis in leaving home for the “undiscovered country”. It should be noted that not every theme will appear. Every journey is unique, as well as the lessons they teach.
The Call to Adventure
The hero receives a “call” to action, a prompt to leave the comfort of home for something more. Whether literal or figurative, the call may come in as many forms. The hero may be lured by curiosity to a strange new place, awaken to a new situation, have no other choice but to adventure, take a “wrong turn”, or suffer a significant loss.
The call carries with it a sense of destiny. Sometimes it is announced by a symbolic herald, or perhaps the “invitation” is misunderstood at first. Regardless, transformation begins at the hero’s discovery of need – something which may cause great distress or confusion.
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Refusal of the Call
In many cases, heroes are reluctant to face impending destiny – instead of answering the call, the hero hits the snooze bar.
The longer a hero denies fate, the more they or their loved ones suffer. This “converts the adventure into its negative,” and the hero becomes a victim to be rescued. Often, heroes are unaware of qualities that mark them for the quest. To join the adventure, heroes must escape the paralysis of doubt, or act in spite of it.
Supernatural Aid
After accepting the overture of destiny, a hero may encounter a helper with unique insight. Their purpose is to aid the journey with protective knowledge and tools. The patron appears mythically as a little man of the woods, a good fairy, a kindly crone, a blessed virgin, a respected wizard, or an innocent bystander. With luck, the hero will recognize an aide’s form when it arrives.
The Crossing of the First Threshold
The hero crosses the barrier separating the ordinary from the fantastic, a symbolic commitment to face the unknown. The crossing is seen as a subtle but meaning-laden “coincidence of opposites”, an intersection of normal and exotic, comfortable and alien. Defending the boundary may be a “threshold guardian” that chases off casual or unprepared travelers. Part of the test ahead is to respect the nature of the guardian – secretly, an embodiment of the hero’s fear.
The Belly of the Whale
Once past the barrier of extremes, the hero enters the Outlands: a dreamlike, hyperreal place where rules no longer apply and nothing can be assumed. This stage of “passing beyond” is key to a discovery of purpose; from outside, it resembles a kind of annihilation or death.
The new world reveals a fullness and dimensionality of life to the hero.
A hero’s task is to integrate the personal and cultural ghosts.
But the “betweenness” isn’t entered into lightly; the foolhardy or overconfident are soon undone. A hero’s task is to integrate the personal and cultural ghosts projected in this realm: some cannot, defensively blocking out the full experience.
Without honoring their commitment, there’s little to save the hero from defeat. But for others, their potential awaits.
What do you think of Joseph Campbell’s Hero Monomyth as it pertains to travel? Share your thoughts below.
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13 Comments... join the discussion!
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Nice synopsis of the subject, looking forward to the rest. I feel in some way we are all somewhere on the ‘heroes journey’
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It’s pretty hard to put Campbell’s research into a few articles. I can’t wait to see how you do it. Looking forward to it.
Thank you.
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Thanks for your comments! I know Campbell can be pretty heavy-duty, but it fits in so well with BNT and what they’re trying to promote… I’ve been a fan of Mr. C since I saw him on PBS in the early 90s, and have been reading his books ever since. It’s truly worthwhile stuff, and I only hope to do it justice. If it seems a bit heavy, bear with it – it’ll make sense if you’re patient!
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I discovered him on the PBS series too, when I was an adolescent. I love his books, but man, doesn’t he tell a good story in person? Such a great speaker. (Anyone who is finding him a bit heavy, take a look at the video. It helps you realize just how accessible he is.)
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Hello Daniel,
very nice read and I am also looking forward to the rest!
I really believe in inner journey and inner travel myself and liked your insights about hitting the snooze bar when resisting the call. Sometimes we are so used to the routine that we are afraid to enter the unknown.↵ -
Since my parents were profs of Literature, and incorporated the study of myth (often with the same Jungian influence which was so pervasive in Campbell’s work), it was my pleasure to meet and dine with him at our house on numerous occasions as a teenager along with other famous intellectuals who were often speaking over my head.
I went on to analyze literature, particularly the personal mythologies of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Blake as well using both his works as a guide as well as that of the comparative religion guru Mircea Eliade. Jung’s seminal works (he was a religious himself) always remained at the core of my analysis, but existential philosophers describe the ethical dimensions of living and traveling through the “profane” world in a far more profound manner, in my view.
I only mention this because I have always viewed travel as following many of the archetypal modes which Campbell outlines–and anyone who has read extensively world mythologies and fairy tales as a child can intuitively the see parallels amongst them. The critique of Jungian theory is that it is often somewhat based on random notions of the archetypes, but I would counter that at best it is based on the empirical evidence gathered by those who are widely read. It is speculative thought at its best and most closely mirrors the way great artists think and express themselves as opposed to rationalistic approaches which fall short when it comes to explaining great art and the epiphanies experienced via art or travel.
That is why I consider reading Homer’s Odyssey as much an act of imaginative travel as the actual visits to the sites he references–though the actual visits to Greece and Turkey certainly brought them to life in other dimensions.
Individuation and movement in stages from the profane to the sacred worlds and back seem to be one of the essential values of travel, and certainly incorporate current descriptors for types of travel such as “Independent Travel, ” “Responsible Travel,” “Spiritual Travel, “Educational Travel,” etc.
I, for one, do not see an absolute distinction in imaginative and physical travel, as many of these very stages are part of one’s daily experience and psychological makeup. Just ask a teenager trying to cope with growing up in New York City…
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Daniel….very brave to take on Campbell. I’ll wait with anticipation for the next installment
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Interesting stuff. I think that for most travellers they are a hero in their own minds (as I was to myself when I set off!), as they are off doing something quite adventurous and brave and so emulating the hero travellers they’ve read about or seen growing up, but they are just another traveller to people they meet on the way.
Funnily enough, I saw today that Robbie Williams’ new album is called Reality Killed the Video Star with an album cover that I think has him playing the Steve McQueen character from the Great Escape film.
Read before how that described in this article is the accepted structure of fantasy tales. For example: http://herbertholeman.com/writer/myth.php
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What a very groovy idea, thanks for this! For me travelling fits precisely with the monomyth. At least for those travellers who see a relationship between a journey in the physical world and their own inner lives. I can look at all the stages on the hero’s journey and see how I have lived them in my own travelling life-and often NON travelling life as I have refused the call from time to time!
You have laid out a very succint and useful summary of the Hero’s Journey… well so far! Can’t wait for the next installment!↵ -
If you folks would like more insight into Campbell’s work, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is here: http://www.jcf.org/
The have very good discussions about the man and his work, and the impact of myth in general. They also organize roundtables around the world for people to get together and talk about ideas that mean a lot to them.
@Ekat – The snooze bar is our friend, but also our enemy. =)
@Gregory – I would have loved the chance to meet Mr. Campbell, and I’m envious. I am in complete agreement with your statement about imaginative and literal travel as parallel – it’s the topic of my research! As you say, JC’s work is the best of speculative thought: while our approach and examination of meaning can be performed using rational tools, the subjectivity of meaning itself is not wholly rational.
@Christine – I’m not afraid of nothin’. =)
Thanks for all the feedback, folks!
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These are exceptional articles calling me to revisit Campbell, whom I read in college and loved. Really explains a lot about the travel experience and why people are drawn to it. I have so many times in my own life been called from the comfort of familiarity to move to a new place either temporarily to return home or permanently to establish a new destiny. I really clearly see that without these travels away and returns, my life would have remained in the mundane. Bravo and please write on.
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Excellent writing, this. A friend introduced me to the monomyth idea in relation to some stuff he was doing with his own life, and it strikes me as an eminently relevant concept to traveling. Thank you for this.
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