“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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