Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind Hero's Journey Analysis

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How closely does the main character's journey in 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' follow that of the hero's journey, and to what extent can an anti-hero follow this narrative structure?

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) is a romantic science fiction film which follows main character Joel's relationship with his ex-girlfriend Clementine in reverse; As Joel goes through a memory removal process in order to move on from the hardships of their break up, he realises why he loved Clementine and desperately trys to hold on to the memories of their relationship as they’re being deleted from his mind. I have chosen this film as a template for analysis of Joseph Campbells theory of the ‘monomyth’ or ‘hero’s journey’, I will explore a number of stages of this theory and compare them to the central character’s journey whilst displaying the fundamental differences between the hero and the anti-hero.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell, 1949) presents the idea of monomyth; A theory that links many ancient myths under one unified narrative structure. This theory of narrative structure has a number of stages the ‘hero’ must go through on his journey in the story, and has since been linked strongly not only with myths but with many fictional stories of the modern day, in particular, Hollywood films. These 17 stages fall into three basic catagories: Departure; The hero leaves his ordinary world and enters a world of the unknown. Initiation; the hero must face a series of trials and completes the goal of his quest. Return; The hero returns to the ordinary world with the power to change it. In his book Campbell summarized the monomyth: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of ...

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...fers from the typical hero’s journey most is the role of the anti-hero as the central character. In discovering the conflicting ideologies and qualities of heroes versus anti-heroes, it is interesting to see that an anti-hero can follow the narrative structure of a hero’s journey to some extent. The skeletal structure of the journey stays much the same, however, the motivations of the anti-hero are drastically different to those of the hero and therefore produce a drastically different outcome in the journey itself. The fact that many of these motivations and outcomes are complete opposites to me also shows their similarities. It is my belief that the anti-hero must follow the narrative structure of the hero’s journey for them to be considered an anti-hero at all. If the structure is ignored completely the character is no longer an anti-hero but a villain.

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