The Hero’s Cycle and Traditional Journey Narratives

Archetypes ► Universal symbol ► Ideal example ► Carl Jung – early 20 th Century ► Joseph Campbell The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Joseph Campbell’s Hero Cycle

Separation The key steps here are:  a ‘Call to Adventure’  the ‘Refusal of the Call’  and ‘Crossing the First Threshold’

Initiation During this phase, the hero endures:  ‘The Road of Trials’  ‘Meeting with the Goddess’ or ‘Meeting the Temptress’  ‘Atonement with the Father/Mentor’ – again potential for a good or evil version.  ‘The Ultimate Boon’ – ‘Apotheosis’

Return The Return begins with:  ‘Refusal of the Return’  ‘The Magical Flight’  or the ‘Rescue from Without’ Then the narrative brings the hero full cycle by ‘Crossing the Return Threshold’. The results of the journey and return are:  ‘Master of Two Worlds’  ‘Freedom to Live’

Qualities of the Hero and the Anti- Hero

► OXuYw (Mad Max) OXuYw OXuYw

Mad Max: an anti-hero ► Mad Max is a great example of an anti-hero.  He walks away from being a cop to wage a war of vengeance, and as the world falls apart,  he re-appears, always thinking about himself first, and willing to help survivors only if they had something to offer him.  By the third movie he’s just a shell, who refuses to go with people who would care for him, love him, because he goes alone. He only helps others when he has something to lose by not doing so, making Mad Max one of the most beloved anti-heroes of all time.

Examples of Anti-Heroes

Various Types of Journey Narratives ► Exploration and Escape ► Home-seeking ► Return ► Heroic Quest (Campbell’s Hero Cycle) ► Wandering ► Shipwreck

The Battle Over Narrative Structure First described in ancient times by Indian and Greek (Aristotle and Plato) philosophers. Then, in the mid- to late- twentieth century, the structuralist literary theorists (Roland Barthes, Vladimir Propp, Joseph Campbell, and Northrup Frye) argued that all human narratives have certain universal, structural elements in common. Now, this argument tends to be considered out of fashion under the influence of the poststructuralists (Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida). The poststructuralists argue that universality of structure is logically impossible.