The Hero with a Thousand Faces summary PDF

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THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES SUMMARY Joseph Campbell launches into a lengthy blueprint for storytelling, commonly known as the Hero's Journey. Does that sound dry? Maybe a little. But think of it as the literary equivalent of being handed a skeleton key…because this book unlocks the plot of basically every movie (and most books) ever made. The Journey consists of a series of specific steps, laid out by Campbell one by one. He sums it all up after he talks about each step—about two-thirds of the way through the book in the chapter helpfully labeled "The Keys"—but we're gonna include an outline right here just to give you a little road map to figuring it all out. 1. The Call to Adventure 2. Refusal of the Call 3. Meeting the Mentor 4. Crossing the Threshold 5. Tests 6. Approaching the Innermost Cave 7. Ordeal 8. Reward/Bliss 9. The Road Back 10. Resurrection 11. Master of Two Worlds With that in your back pocket, let's talk about how Campbell breaks it all down (and down, and down). He starts out by discussing the notion of the Monomyth…which sounds like the villain from an Avengers movie but is actually the fact that all stories from all cultures are essentially the same, since they try to convey the universal truths of life and the way our living experiences are reflected as part of the larger universe. Whoa. That's deep. From there, it's straight into the Hero's Journey, which he divides into three parts: going away, being initiated, and coming back. First, there's a call to adventure, in which the normal world is threatened and a hero rises who must go on a quest to stop it. Sometimes he or she refuses the call and bad things happen. (Remember Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru? Yeah. Don't stay on that farm, guys.) Assuming the hero is down with the plan, he or she receives supernatural aid, most notably from the nearest convenient wizard-type. The hero eventually arrives at the first threshold: the place where the world he's known gives way to the unknown. (Dark forests and scary music are usually involved.)

As he passes it, he's swallowed up or descends into "the belly of the whale," which is the symbolic center of the universe. From there, he encounters all kinds of tests and challenges on "The Road of Trials," which kicks off the second part of the Hero's Journey. This climaxes (literally in some cases—bow chicka bow bow) with the meeting of the mother-goddess, who holds the entire universe inside her. (Sometimes things go pear-shaped, and that loving figure becomes a wicked temptress, but not always.) The hero must atone with his father, or convenient father figure in most cases, which involves claiming the father's place in the world. With the completion of the quest comes the realization that the hero is a part of a larger universe, and understanding that everything within it—good and evil alike—are all part of the same cosmic system. Again: whoa, that's deep. The revelation is like a bolt of lightning and he suddenly Gets It on a universe-sharing level. That gives him or her the Ultimate Boon: the thing he or she has been looking for the whole time, and which now he or she understands has been a part of him or her the whole time. Sometimes, the hero doesn't want to go back home but instead remain with all the snazzy power and enlightenment and possibly epic sex and whatnot. Other times, however, he heads home with all his newfound goodies: either instantly or being pursued by various demons and evil creatures. Sometimes he needs an outside force to rescue him…but in any case the road back is a lot faster than the road there. Once he returns he exits as a master of two worlds, able to move freely between the mundane and the transcendent, and has the freedom to live in a state of enlightened grace. Having formally spelled out the Hero's Journey, Campbell finishes his little opus with a discussion of the Cosmogonic Cycle: the creation and destruction of the universe. We'll say it until we're blue in the face: whoa, that's deep. It starts out one meaningless empty blob before a god or creative force endows it with shape. It's unified and perfect, but as it's populated with people, the one divides into many, which creates chaos and disorder. Eventually, that leads to a doom or end-of-the-world scenario, which brings the many back into the one and the whole cycle repeats itself. Campbell closes with a breakdown of several types of successful hero—the tyrant, the lover, the world redeemer, the warrior, and the saint—before discussing the ultimate departure of the hero, and a little bit of hand-wringing that modern society just isn't set up for the kind of meditation that the Hero's Journey is supposed to make easy. Yeah. Now that you've uploaded all that knowledge into your brainpan, go try applying it to various movies/books/rock operas. This bad boy works pretty much every time. The Monomyth 

Campbell jumps right in, discussing recent anthropological studies that have benefited from a mythic approach.

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Psychology, too, he says, is down with those mythic vibes, in part because they help people – even modern people – understand what drives them.

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He tells the story of a young American man who dreamed that he accidentally killed his father by dropping a hammer off the roof.

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His mother comforts him in the dream, and Campbell points out how Freudian this all is.

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He explains how the father represents danger, the mother safety, and how killing the father to enjoy the attentions of the mother was pretty much what Freud was all about.

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You can find this idea in ancient stories such as Oedipus, whose famous complex was based on killing his father and marrying his mother.

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Campbell talks about another dream, this one from a woman afraid of a big white horse following her.

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The horse is sent to a barbershop and comes out as a man.

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Campbell talks about how the dream represents the way we face our fears: leaping into the unknown where there's great danger…but also rewards and treasures too.

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He discusses psychoanalysis, the science of reading dreams, and says that ancient cultures had their own rituals for reading dreams too.

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Dreams, and the stories that come from them, speak to the painful transitions we experience in life: growing up, finding a spouse, working hard for the things we want, saying goodbye to family members who die, and so on.

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Mythology provides symbols to help us understand these transitions in life, and how our triumphs and heartbreaks can be reflected in those symbols.

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In short, if we want to know how to be brave in the face of trouble, to enjoy the good things life sends our way, and to understand why life works the way it does, we look to our myths.

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In the modern world, we try to halt the progress of life: we want to stay young, stay strong, never grow old, and never die.

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In Campbell's opinion, this isn't a healthy way to live.

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Men dream of childhood heroes while being doctors and lawyers and such.

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Women look for love while men are away.

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According to Freud, the first half of life focuses on the rising sun: the goals and dreams we want to achieve when we head out into the world.

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The second half of life involves an inversion of that, dealing with the eventual return to the grave.

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He tells the Greek myth of King Minos, who was busy with being king and ignored his wife.

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His wife fell in love with a bull and gave birth to a monster, the Minotaur, which was caged in an elaborate maze beneath King Minos's palace

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Campbell explains that Minos, not the queen, is to blame for this because he's seduced by the material things of this world…which creates monsters.

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Heroes are created to deal with monsters, and the rewards heroes reap aren't just for them – like Minos and his selfish pursuit of gain – but for everyone.

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When monsters are created, they're a sign of spiritual death.

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When heroes crush those monsters, they signal a spiritual rebirth.

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That's the essence of the Hero's Journey.

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The hero (or heroine) can survive adversity, brave dark paths, and fight through all their own weaknesses and self-doubts.

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In the process, they can save the people of their community who choose a less adventurous life.

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Campbell finishes the story of the Minotaur with the arrival of Theseus.

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Minos's daughter Ariadne falls in love with Theseus and turns to him for help in solving the labyrinth: just as we normal people turn to the hero for help in unraveling the labyrinth of our fears and problems.

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Campbell breaks his chapters into individual sections, and because those sections contain specific steps in the Hero's Journey, we're not about to leave them out here.

Comedy and Tragedy 

Modern literature, Campbell claims, is focused on failures, flaws and the shortcomings of human existence; in short, it's often tragic.

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Comedy serves as satire, but not as any logical expression of happiness or joy.

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Fairy tales and myths fill in that gap, providing triumph, success and fulfillment in a dramatic context, and redeeming us.

The Hero and the God 

The arc of a mythic tale can be summed up in three words: separation, initiation, return.

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The hero leaves the mundane world, faces challenges, gains skills and becomes an adult, only to return to his place of origin and share the bounty of what he has earned.

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Examples follow (oh man, Campbell loves his examples): Jason and the Golden Fleece, Prometheus, the story of the Buddha, Moses, and others.

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Campbell then lays out the basic pattern of this story, and the steps it encompasses (we're not gonna list it because each step has its own chapter).

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He stresses the importance of the hero returning from his or her adventure to share the rewards with the whole community.

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That's what separates a hero from a selfish person like Minos.

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The powers the hero brings are powers that have been in him or her all the time, and only need to be brought out with the trials of his or her adventure.

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The hero and the god are thus one and the same: mirror images of each other that the hero's journey has brought out.

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This theme recurs in stories told throughout the world.

The World Navel

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The purpose of the Hero's Journey is to release the power of the divine into the world: to reconnect us with the primal forces of the universe.

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The divine energy is surrounded by the universe: The World Navel.

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The World Navel brings both good and evil, linked together just like everything else in the universe....