Heros Journey

A Hero's Journey

What defines a journey? Is it determined by the distance traveled, or by how long it takes to complete it? Many stories today follow an individual who embarks on a journey to overcome a challenge. Joseph Campbell believed many stories over time have a journey that follows the outline he called the hero's journey. Stories today and stories from many years ago like ¨Theseus¨, Big Fish, and The Jungle Book are all similar due to how they manipulate the hero's journey into them.

In Edward Bloom's story of Big Fish, the hero's journey can be picked out of the story as long as you look deeper into the story. Edward Bloom's Refusal Of The Call occurred when the mayor of Ashton told Edward that Karl the giant, could easily crush him. Edward knew Karl had no intention of crushing him, making the mayor's words meaningless to him. In this story, Meeting With The Mentor happened when Edward encountered the witch, she showed him exactly how he would die. This helped Edward become fearless on his journeys because he knew that he would be able to overcome all the obstacles thrown at him since he knew he wouldn't die. Like all heroes, there is always a Reward; Edward's Reward was getting Sandra to marry him even though she was engaged to another man. This is his reward because after seeing her in the circus for just a brief moment, it became his life's purpose to get her to marry him. Finally at the end of the story Edward finally experiences his Return With The Elixir when he finally dies the death the witch had shown him many years ago. This led to his son believing in what the power of storytelling can do. The hero's journey in Big Fish Was a bit harder to pick out since it didn't follow Campbell's outline word for word. Where as ¨Theseus¨ is much easier to pick out since it's more of an older fashioned hero story.

In the short story of ¨Theseus¨, Theseus must go on a journey to meet his father, but like many stories it isn’t just a walk in the park. He must deal with The Refusal Of The Call, in which his mother and all the people in the town doubts that he can pull the sword from the stone, some are even laughing at him for even trying. When he successfully pulls the sword from the stone the crowd is in shock and doesn’t say anything to him. Earlier as he was lying on the beach, he thought he started daydreaming when a seagull started to talk to him. This seagull was sent by his real father Poseidon, to give him advice for overcoming bigger enemies. The seagull told Theseus that he needed to use the bigger opponents own weapons against themselves. The seagull is Theseus’ Meeting With The Mentor. After going to Athens then being sent to Crete and killing the minotaur; Theseus got his Reward when king Minos’ daughters decided to leave Crete and come to Athens with him, the other part of the Reward