The Hero's Journey NOTE: I strongly suggest you PRINT OUT these instructions because you will not remember all the details. THE BASIC ASSIGNMENT The "hero's journey" is a pattern of human life, common to all people, not just "heroic" people such as legendary warriors or the heroes of movies or video games.  Some complete this journey successfully; some do not.  Life itself can be considered a heroic journey for any human being, but within the heroic journey from life to death are many smaller, more limited journeys.  This pattern has been studied by many, notably by the scholar Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth and other works.  In his study, Campbell began with the heroic journeys of mythical heroes like Hercules and Odysseus, but Campbell contended that the hero's journey is not only something that was done in ancient times, or that is done only by a few; Campbell contended that every one of us is faced with struggles and challenges, and each of these is a heroic journey--one at which we can succeed, or at which we can fail. What you will do for this assignment is to become familiar with the concept of the hero's journey, along with its stages.  Then you will write an essay applying it either to some major challenge in your own life, or to a similarly great challenge in the life of someone very close to you. A word of advice:  I anticipate that some students will have difficulty in thinking of events in their lives which seem adequate to focus this assignment on.  I can think of two reasons for this difficulty.  One is simply the absence of any "life-changing" events, especially in the lives of younger students.  Another is that many people in our culture do not often slow down long enough to reflect on themselves very much at all, let alone in this fairly complex way.  My answer to the second difficulty, that it is hard to reflect on oneself, is this:  You're correct.  It is hard.  Yet this skill, once learned, is in itself a life-changing skill, and it is a skill worth stretching towards.  To encourage you to stretch in this way is in fact a primary purpose of this assignment.  As for the first objection, a lack of life experience, the thing to realize is that we all go through many events and challenges which, in themselves, may not be life-threatening or life-changing, but which are nevertheless significant passages in our lives, and which do show the stages of the hero's journey.  To help you identify these, I have included a section where I review some events in the lives of myself and my family. To do this assignment, follow these steps: Read about the concept of the heroic journey.  Begin with the description you will find below. Learn more about it by visiting two separate Web sources.  One is a video found on YouTube called "The Selfish Giant."  I will give the link to that below.  The other is the website of Professor Donna Smith, in which can be found a Powerpoint presentation of the stages of the heroic journey, along with other brief segments of well-known films which portray characters in such journeys.  That link is also provided below.  The point of all this "homework" is to help you see how the stages can work, so that you will be able to write about them.  These resources may also remind you of events or challenges in your own lives, and so help you in choosing your writing topic. Choose some past challenge in your own life, or some challenge in the life of someone you know very well.  Whatever you choose, you must know the full details of the struggle, in order to write about it adequately.   This choice is your essay topic, which you will analyze in terms of the stages of the hero's journey. Then you will submit an intro paragraph, which I will give feedback on before you proceed with the rest of the essay.

 

THE FOUR STAGES OF THE HERO'S JOURNEY Here is a brief description of the pattern of the heroic journey.  I have seen it divided into as many as twelve stages, but for the sake of simplicity, I myself have divided it into four stages: Stage One:  Threshold; the Call to Adventure This is the beginning of the journey, the challenge.  Sometimes we consciously accept a challenge and begin the journey; other times, we have no choice, but find ourselves plunged in whether willing or not.  It is important to realize that in our world, the challenge or adventure or journey is usually not a physical battle or literal journey (though it can be); usually, it is a challenge in our everyday lives:  having to do with family, friends, job, school, and so forth. Stage Two:  The Innermost Cave A true heroic journey is never a challenge we can easily conquer; it is never a challenge we can meet without growing in some way.  So at some point in the journey, we find ourselves in the psychological or spiritual equivalent of a deep, dark cave.  (Think of the Biblical story of Jonah in the belly of the whale.)  The Innermost Cave is the place of greatest danger.  It is the place of potential failure.  If we do not grow, change for the better, learn new skills or wisdom, we can very possibly be trapped in the Cave.  This is not merely a figure of speech.  I myself have known elderly persons whose spirits seemed to have burnt out years before.  They seemed dead inside before their bodies knew it; they were like zombies.  These people were trapped in the Innermost Cave.  It is the lowest, deepest, most terrifying part of the hero's journey.  Spiritual death is a very real possibility.  If we see the heroic journey as a circular one, then this is the very bottom of the circle, the bottommost stage. Stage Three:  The Seizing of the Sword      The Sword, in our world, will not usually be some tangible weapon, because as mentioned, our heroic journeys are usually not literal journeys or physical battles as in the ancient world.  The Sword, for us, may be the aid of another person.  Or, even more often, the Sword will be some inner quality, some hidden strength in ourselves which we did not know we possessed and have never, until that time of great need, tapped into.  Ironically, the Sword--our great new strength--is found in the Cave--the place of our greatest weakness.  But when you consider this irony, it makes sense:  In a person's time of greatest need, greatest challenge, how many times have men or women or even children "stepped up to the plate," risen to the occasion, done things they "knew" they could not do?  The truth is that great strengths are hard to access or learn, and can't be touched at will, or only in response to mere everyday problems.  We can find them in ourselves only at a time of great need.   In the great circle of the heroic journey, once we have "seized the sword," we have begun our ascent.  We have been in deep water, but we are swimming now toward the light at the surface.  Or to put it differently, we use the Sword (some newfound inner strength) to kill the monster in the Cave (our problem at work, or with our friend or lover, or our struggle with substance abuse, or whatever). Stage Four:  The Rebirth The fourth and last stage of the hero's journey is the re-emergence, the triumph of having conquered the challenge before us.  The Sword we seized has enabled this.  But the key thing about this last stage is that the successful warrior does not merely return to the point of his or her beginning; instead, there has been a spiritual or psychological growth.   The warrior hero returns to a higher point than he or she began. There has been some valuable lesson learned, some moral lesson which will make it easier for us to meet life's further challenges (which always come!).  This moral lesson is sometimes called the elixir.  An "elixir" is a magical potion.  The moral lesson learned from the struggle, then, is like a magical potion which the hero has brought back to the surface, and which he or she can use in future need.  The Elixir is related to the Sword.  It can be understood as the same strength as that of the Sword, but able to be applied more broadly. EXAMPLES OF HEROIC JOURNEYS "The Selfish Giant," a complete video.  This video is found on YouTube.  I give you the link to it below.  This story is a cartoon.  It is one of those many "children's stories" which has a lesson for anyone, not just a child.  So bear with me!  In brief, the main character--a mythical giant--returns to his castle after a long absence, to find his garden and grounds overrun by local children.  Angry, he chases them away and builds a wall to keep them out.  But he discovers that his wall is so well built that he keeps out Spring itself, so that his only companions are the Snow, the Frost, and their friends the North Wind and the Hail.  He now lives in everlasting winter.--both outwardly and inwardly.  Yet there is a turning point:  One day, the children return, through a chink in the wall.  The giant, terribly lonely due to his own selfish ways, is attracted to the sound of their play.  Through his high window, he sees one child, the smallest, crying because he cannot reach high enough to climb into one of the trees.  Humbled by his own experience, the giant helps the child.  Through this act, he becomes the children's mentor and playmate, and in his old age, is again visited by the smallest child, who returns the favor the giant had done for him. Once you have watched this video, think of it in terms of the four stages of the heroic journey.  Here is one interpretation of it in that light: The Threshold:  when the giant returns home and discovers the children--what to do?  They are trespassing.  He makes the "common sense" decision to evict them.  The journey is begun.  He did not intend it; he is thrust into it. The Innermost Cave:  with his decision to wall himself in, he enters a deep cave--a cave of selfishness, loneliness, isolation, and decay.  He has shut out companionship, renewal, growth, and joy.  Note how the weather stands for his inner spiritual state.  He seems trapped here in this barren place--a dark, barren cave of his own making. Seizing the Sword:  in this story, the chance to seize the Sword is provided by luck, perhaps--the chink in the wall--but humbled, the giant seizes it.  What is the Sword?  For him, it is the quality of generosity, which is the opposite of the selfish quality that led him to build his wall.  His simple gesture of generosity in helping the small child into the tree makes friends of all the children, and this changes his entire life. Rebirth:  the giant is rewarded with a renewal of spirit, with growth--in both his garden and within himself--with joy, and with companionship.  The Elixir is the lesson that one often gets what one gives:  selfishness begets being left alone, while generosity begets the same in return, in many different ways.  It is a lesson which the story shows him applying all the days of his life. Here is the link to the above video.  Note that it is on YouTube in three parts.  I think you will find that links to Part 2 and Part 3 will appear at the end of Part 1.  Also note the Full Screen button in the lower right corner of the video player.  That should let you watch the video using your entire monitor screen.   Be sure to turn your computer speakers on.   Note:  If the video stalls in loading (as it did once for me), try clicking on Refresh. The link:  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6635372659425983154&vt=lf&hl=en   Professor Donna Smith's website.  The link below will start a Powerpoint slideshow which describes the same four general stages as I have described here.  In the last slide you should find a number of links to segments of movies.  These too are found on YouTube.  Unlike the "Selfish Giant" video, these are not complete stories, just brief segments.   You will certainly know at least several of these movies.  However, one of the least well known, the segment from a movie called Wild at Heart starring Nick Cage and Laura Dern, is one of my own favorites.  Below you will find my own interpretation of the four stages of the character Sailor's heroic journey (as played by Cage).  Obviously, this will not make sense until you first watch the segment.  But here is my analysis of that segment: Threshold:  Sailor has just been released after six years in a federal prison.  After six years he is reuniting with his lover, Laura Dern's character, Lula; he is also meeting, for the very first time, his son by her.  Lula begins to cry.  Perhaps mistaking the reason for her tears, Sailor backs out.  He takes his suitcase, says goodbye, and begins walking.  The journey has begun.  Innermost Cave:  Paying no attention to his surroundings, he looks up to find himself surrounded by a gang of thugs.  His entry into the Cave happens here on two levels:  one, on a literal and physical level, he has unwittingly entered a "bad neighborhood;" he is surrounded by the thugs and beaten severely.  But two, on an inward, emotional or spiritual level, his Cave is his rejection of his lover and son, because he thinks is not worthy; he is too "wild at heart."  It is a Cave of loneliness and sadness, like the Selfish Giant's, but for the opposite reason--not selfishness, but low self-respect. Seizing the Sword:  In one of the most bizarre scenes I have ever seen in a movie, Sailor is lying flat on his back, knocked woozy by a punch that has broken his nose.  In that state, suddenly he has what can only be described as a mystical experience.  Against the very realistic, grimy, scary background of the trashy neighborhood and the teenage thugs, suddenly Sailor is experiencing a vision of Glynda, the Good Witch of the North--that's right, from The Wizard of Oz!  The Good Witch asks Sailor why he has left Lula and his son; he responds that he is not worthy of them, because he is too "wild at heart."  With her reply, his vision of The Good Witch gives him the Sword:  In her singsong, lilting voice, she replies "Sailor, if you are truly wild at heart, you'll follow your dream!"  (Of course, this can easily be interpreted as an inner part of himself, the better part, "calling him out," so to speak.)  Thunderstruck, Sailor jumps to his feet, thanks the totally bewildered thugs for teaching him a great lesson in life, abandons all his belongings and goes sprinting back the way he came (out of the Cave!) hollering LULA! at the top of his lungs.  What is the Sword?  It is the realization that what he saw as his weakness is actually his strength:  the "wild at heart" willingness to go against the expectations of everyday society, to respect his passion--to follow his dream. Rebirth:  Sailor both literally and spiritually reverses tracks.  Sprinting back to the highway where he left Lula and his son, he finds her in a "jam"--a traffic jam literally, but of course she is also in an emotional jam, since the man she still loves and has waited six years for had just walked away.  Sprinting headlong, Sailor comes upon the traffic jam and without even pausing, he vaults onto the trunk of the nearest car and begins sprinting across trunks, roofs, and hoods of cars and trucks, everyone shouting and cursing at him the whole way, until he comes to Lula's convertible.  It is Lula's turn to be thunderstruck as she turns at the commotion and sees Sailor literally vaulting onto the trunk of her car.  She herself climbs onto the car's trunk, they embrace, and so with his newfound self-knowledge that he must not undervalue himself--the Elixir!--he has completed this journey, and is ready for the next--building a life together. Remember, this segment is just one link of several found at the end of the Powerpoint in Dr. Smith's website.  The following link should take you to the link containing the Powerpoint slideshow.  Use your Page Down key to advance to other slides.  The last slide shows about six or seven movie segments; the Wild at Heart segment is the one in the upper right hand corner, the image of Nick Cage and Laura Dern embracing.  Click on that one or any of the others to view the segments.  You should consider "trying your hand" at spotting the four stages of the hero's journey in several of the other segments.  That might help you spot those same segments in the story about yourself or a person close to you, the story you will use in your essay. The link:   http://www.odessa.edu/dept/english/dsmith/britlithome.htm  (then click on "Powerpoint Slideshow for the Hero's Journey")

TIPS FOR PICKING SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT First of all, don't think that if you are not some sort of war hero or sports hero, then you have nothing to write about.  This assignment tries to help you understand that we all struggle, we all face challenges, and that when we overcome these challenges, we have indeed done the work of the heroic journey.  We have traveled its four stages. So to write an essay for this assignment, you need to think of some event or period in your life which meets just two criteria: Some challenge which you met successfully, and Which entailed enough time and effort so that, practically speaking, you have enough to say about it.  (Here, note that the effort of breaking your experience into the four stages of the heroic journey will help give you plenty to say about it. Very few students will genuinely be so young and inexperienced that literally nothing has ever happened in their lives.  For example, having raised two daughters, I know very well all the drama that occurs, from kindergarten on!  However, if conceivably you absolutely cannot think of anything in your own life to write about, then here is your "safety hatch":  You may choose to write about some challenge not in your life, but in the life of someone you are very close to.  The key here is to know enough detail about that other person's life so that you have enough to say. As one further aid to you, I will list some challenging events in both my life and those of my immediate family.  Each of these items could be developed into my entire essay, if I were in your place: I could write about my marriage.  Yes, in my relationship with my wife I have experienced both the darkness of the Innermost Cave and the energy of grasping the Sword, in a sense. I could write about my struggle to care for my mother, as she sickened and died with Alzheimer's disease. I could write about my desire to have something more than a distant acquaintance with my father, as he too drifted into Alzheimer's. I could write about losing my older sister to sudden asphyxiation when I was six. I could write about my struggle to find a career that meant something to me, and yet lets me pay the bills. If I could not bring myself to write about any of these things, I could certainly write something about my wife; I could tell about her struggle to care for her mother, dying of cancer, and how she gave up an idyllic life in Austin to return to Odessa and give that care. I could write about her reaction to the disenchantment of being treated reprehensibly by her employer. I could write about one daughter's struggle as an athlete to succeed despite the disadvantages of poor coaching and encounters with cold, unethical athletic officials. I could write about either daughter's struggles to learn how to make a romantic relationship work. And most recently in my own family's life, I could write about one daughter's brush with death in a high-speed rollover on I-35, and how she is dealing with the fact that she now has no car, and the drastic lifestyle changes that has caused. Hopefully, one or more of these potential essay topics in my own life will help you with your own choice of a topic. HOW THIS ESSAY FITS THE THREE-PART FORMAT This essay will still follow the same Three-Part Format, which is very versatile.  Remember reading briefly about the Modes for the first quiz of the semester?  This essay will follow a mode called Process Analysis.  That is nothing complicated; it simply means that the writer will discuss, one by one, the various stages within some particular process.  In this case, the process is the heroic journey as taken by you at the point of some challenge in your life.  The four stages you will discuss will be the same four explained above:  Threshold, Innermost Cave, Seizing the Sword, and Rebirth.  These four stages will become four body paragraphs; in the main body of your essay, you will discuss your challenge (heroic journey) by writing one body paragraph for each stage, four in all.  Of course you will first begin with an Intro paragraph and end with a Concluding paragraph.  So for this essay, you will be writing six paragraphs, not five.  This will probably mean that a well-done essay will be about 1200 words long. To help you, below is an outline in which the Three-Part Format is modified to fit this assignment. I.  Introduction (the part you will submit first) A.  Background Information:  Here you must briefly explain the concept of the hero's journey.  Write as if I am not your only reader; write for someone who does not already know what this journey is.  Then after the several sentences of explanation, identify what event or challenge in your life you plan on analyzing in this way.  Here, if you wish, you can briefly tell the story of your challenge.  For a model of how to do this, you can use my summary of the "Selfish Giant" video--the part before I broke it down into the four stages. B.  Thesis Sentence:  Your thesis is the lesson you learned from meeting this challenge.  It is what I have referred to as  the "elixir" in the terminology of the heroic journey.  C.  Preview of Supports:  Your supports are the four stages.  All you need to do here is list them.  You might say something like this:  "In meeting the challenge which taught me the above lesson, I went through all four stages of the hero's journey:  Threshold, Innermost Cave, Seizing the Sword, and Rebirth."  However, please use your own words.  Don't copy mine exactly. II.  Main Body A.  Stage One:  Threshold 1.  TS:  In your topic sentence, your transition wording will probably say something like "The first stage..." and of course, you must actually name the stage in each body paragraph. 2.  GE:  In your GE, don't start talking about yourself yet.  Here, you should describe what this stage is, in general.  To help, re-read my own description.  However, here too, please use your own words, not mine.  Caution:  If you are unconsciously writing only for me as audience, you will leave this part out, because I clearly know it already.  But I need to know that you understand it.  It will help if you imagine yourself teaching this to a reader who does not already know it. 3.  SE:  Here you must delve into your own story.  For the first stage, the Threshold, basically you are explaining what got you into this predicament, this challenge. 4.  CS:  This should be a one-sentence summary of your own person Threshold stage. B.  Stage Two:  Innermost Cave 1.  TS:  similar to the first body paragraph, except now you are dealing with the second stage. 2.  GE:  also similar to the first body paragraph; here, give a general (not personal) description of what the Innermost Cave is; define it. 3.  SE:  here you will describe the part of your challenge when you seemed closest to failure.  Describe it in detail!  Describe your feelings as well as external events!  This should be the longest and most interesting part of the paragraph. 4.  CS:  here, sum up what your condition was at this point. C.  Stage Three:  Seizing the Sword 1.  TS:  same routine, third stage.  Use transition wording; name the stage. 2.  GE:  describe what it means to Seize the Sword, generally speaking. 3.  SE:  here too, should be the longest part of the paragraph.  Be sure to tell the reader the exact nature of the Sword, in your case.  It will probably be some quality inside you--but what is it?  Give it a name.  Tell how you discovered and grasped it. 4.  CS:  sum up.  It might work well to contrast your inner, emotional state at this point with how you felt at the lowest point, in the Cave. D.  Stage Four:  The Rebirth 1.  TS:  same routine, last stage.  It is important here to note that this is not your general concluding paragraph.  Understand that.  It is your description of the outcome of your story, not a broader, more general summing up of the paper.  So once again, use transition wording and name the stage. 2.  GE:  here too, describe this stage, in general, much as I did. 3.  SE:  here you will tell the aftermath of your challenge/journey.  Try to name the elixir, the moral lesson you learned. 4.  CS:  again, sum up.  Also here too, it might work well to describe your emotional state. III.  Conclusion A.  Summar y of Stages:  here you will list all four stages again.  In essence, you are summing up your entire heroic journey.  Cover the most important points again, especially the nature of the Sword--the quality of strength or wisdom you found in yourself. B.  Restatement of Thesis:  probably your last sentence.  Here you simply tell once again the moral lesson you learned through your experience.  It should be something you feel you can apply in other circumstances as you live your life. DUE DATES As with your previous essay, I want to see your introductory paragraph before you move on with the essay.   Your introductory paragraphs will be due by midnight, Friday, October 17th.  Send it to me in Rich Text as D3 plus your initials. The final drafts will be due to me by midnight, Monday, October 27th.  My web students are to submit their final drafts in the usual way, as Rich Text file attachments.  Please use the filename E3 plus yourinitials.  Note to web students:  Please do not omit your heading and title at the beginning of the essay; understand that this requirement is separate from the filename.  There will be points lost for ignoring this instruction.  My campus section students will submit their essays in the normal manner for them, printed out as hardcopy. As a last reminder, BE SURE AND FOLLOW THE 3-PART FORMAT STEPS in writing your essay. Your essay will be graded on four criteria: On focus on the assignment and on your chosen option; On organization according to the full three-part essay format; On development regarding the GE and SE parts of body paragraphs, especially. These parts are where your length should be, mainly; And on effective proofreading for errors.

mjordan@odessa.edu work: 432.335.6549 home: 432.332.5847 fax: 432.335.6559 surface mail c/o Odessa College, 201 W. University, Odessa TX 79764