A Hero’s Journey – Part 1: The Journey

“Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” — Dante Alighieri (Divine Comedy)

“Summoned or not, the god will come.” — Motto over the door of Carl Jung’s house

According to Christopher Vogler (author of The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers) “all stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams, and movies. They are known collectively as The Hero’s Journey.”

The Hero’s Journey is essentially the three-act structure of the ancient Greek play, handed down to us thousands of years ago and consisting of Beginning, Middle, and End (also known as Opening, Development, Conclusion or “the decision to act”, “the action”, and “the consequences of the action”).

Dating from before history, the Hero’s Journey duplicates the steps of the “Rite of Passage” and is a process of self-discovery and self-integration. The Hero’s Journey is a concept drawn from the depth psychology of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and the scholar and mythologist Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Jung proposed that symbols appear to us when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt. Jung discovered reoccurring symbols among differing peoples and cultures, unaffected by time and space. He described these shared symbols as archetypes which are irrepressible, unconscious, pre-existing forms of the inherited structure of the psyche and manifested themselves spontaneously anywhere, anytime. Campbell suggested that these mythic images lay at the depth of the unconscious where humans are no longer distinct individuals, where our minds widen and merge into the mind of humankind. Where we are all the same.

Campbell articulated the life principles embedded in the structure of stories. He recognized that myths weren’t just abstract theories or quaint ancient beliefs but practical models for understanding how to live. Ultimately, the hero’s journey is the soul’s search for home. It is a long and tortuous journey of the soul seeking enlightenment-redemption-salvation only to find it by returning “home” (though, often not the home they’d previously envisioned). It is a journey we all take, in some form.

Heroes are agents of change. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell defines the hero as “the champion not of things to become but of things becoming; the dragon to be slain by him is precisely the monster of the status quo.” The hero’s task has always been to bring new life to an ailing culture, says Carol S. Pearson, author of The Hero Within. Julia Cameron reiterates this in her book, The Artist’s Way, when she describes the concept of art as a healing journey (not just for the individual but for a culture). This is because the writer/artist changes society by changing themselves.

In The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Christopher Vogler tells writers that we are “storytellers.” He says that “the best of them have utilized the principles of myth to create masterful stories that are dramatic, entertaining, and psychologically true.” Vogler goes on to say that “the Hero’s Journey is not an invention, but an observation. Vogler suggests “that the Hero’s Journey is nothing less than a handbook for life, a complete instruction manual in the art of being human.” This is why the Hero’s Journey model for writing is so relevant; because it appeals to all readers. We are all on a journey.

In some versions of the Holy Grail story, relates Pearson, the hero reaches a huge chasm with no apparent way to get across to the Grail castle. The space is too great for him to jump across. Then he remembers the Grail teaching that instructs him to step out in faith. As he puts one foot out into the abyss, a bridge magically appears and he is saved.

Anyone who has left a job, school, or a relationship has stepped out into that abyss, separating them from the familiar world they’ve known.

Just as “the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table set off to seek the Holy Grail,” says Mary Henderson, author of Star Wars: The Magic of Myth, “the great figures of every major religion have each gone on a ‘vision quest’, from Moses’ journey to the mountain, to Jesus’ time in the desert, Muhammad’s mediations in the mountain cave, and Buddha’s search for enlightenment that ended under the Bodhi tree.”

The journey, and the abyss, is often not a physical adventure, adds Henderson, but a spiritual one, “as the hero moves from ignorance and innocence to experience and enlightenment.”

This article is an excerpt from Nina Munteanu’s The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! (Starfire World Syndicate)