Writing Wednesdays
The Hero’s Journey in Myth
By Steven Pressfield
Published: May 16, 2012
“The hero’s journey” sounds a bit melodramatic, I admit. But hey, it’s real. If the phrase rings mythic, it’s because its origins (at least in expression) lie in myth.
Quetzalcoatl. Believe it or not, we've all got a lot in common with this dude.
What are myths? They’re the ancient, collective legends of the human race. The Odyssey, the epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf; the sagas of the Buddha or Prometheus or Quetzalcoatl.
The hero’s journey, as Joseph Campbell famously observed, appears again and again in these myths. The specifics vary, but the overall contours remain remarkably consistent.
1. The hero starts as “stuck” and unconscious.
Like Luke Skywalker toiling on Uncle Owen and Aunt Varoo’s evaporator farm, he’s a slug. A peon. And he knows it.
LUKE SKYWALKER
If there’s a bright center to the universe,
you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.
2. The hero receives “the call”—which he often resists.
When the messenger Palamedes came to summon Odysseus to join the Greeks in the war against Troy, Odysseus pretended to be insane so he wouldn’t have to go. He sowed his fields with salt. Palamedes cleverly placed the hero’s infant son Telemachus in the path of the plow. When Odysseus turned the blade aside, his ruse was revealed. He was drafted into the journey.
3. The hero wanders far from home—often for a long, long time.
Odysseus was gone ten years. The children of Israel wandered for forty. The hero’s journey lasts for such a length of time that the hero fears that it will never end.
Though the hero may strive on his journey to achieve a specific goal (reach the Spice Islands, find and capture the Golden Fleece), his primary object is simply to get back home.
4. The hero endures trials.
The hero encounters obstacles. He faces ordeals; he experiences adventures. He suffers, he is lost; he despairs.
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Steven Pressfield is the author of the most important book you've never read: The War of Art. It will help you understand why you're stuck, it will kick you in the pants, and it will get you moving. You should, no, you must buy a copy as soon as you finish reading this.
In this manifesto, Steve gets practical, direct, and personal. Read it fast; then read it again and take notes. Then buy a copy for everyone else who's stuck and push them to get to work as well.
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Do The Work isn't so much a follow-up to The War of Art as it is an action guide that gets down and dirty in the trenches. Say you've got a book, a screenplay or a startup in your head but you're stuck or scared or just don't know how to begin, how to break through or how to finish. Do The Work takes you step-by-step from the project's inception to its ship date, hitting each predictable 'Resistance point' along the way and giving techniques and drills for overcoming each obstacle. There's even a section called 'Belly of the Beast' that goes into detail about dealing with the inevitable moment in any artistic or entrepreneurial venture when you hit the wall and just want to cry 'HELP!'
