Heroism In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness” (Campbell 1). These words by the scholar Joseph Campbell illustrates his philosophy of the hero’s journey, which contains the three criteria of a hero. From these three criteria, he describes a hero’s journey beginning with a departure, fulfillment, and a return which encompasses the hero’s sacrifice for the good of others. As a result, from Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the characters could be applied to Campbell’s theory of heroism due to their life experiences. For example, the character Rose does not undergo a heroic journey. From Campbell’s theory of heroism, Rose contains the departure and the fulfillment of a hero; however, she lacks a concrete return Campbell describes as the moral objective to sacrifice for another person or idea.

To start with, Campbell explains that departure is the first stage in which the character traverses to enter the unknown. To demonstrate, Joseph Campbell elaborates on how the departure begins when he says, “There are both kinds of heroes, some that choose to undertake the journey and some that don’t” (Campbell 3). In Rose’s case, she voluntarily ventures

into the unknown and strayed from the ordinary. For example, at the time of her meeting and eventual marriage with Ted, she explains that “what I initially found attractive in Ted were precisely the things that made him different from my brothers and the Chinese boys I had dated… the fact that his parents immigrated from Tarrytown, New York, not Tientsin, China” (Tan 117). Rose’s comment on Ted shows that she married him because of how different he was from her Chinese ethnicity. Therefore, her willingness to marry a foreigner has brought her into a life where certainty has ended, which is where she will eventually face her vulnerability caused by her silence.
As a requirement to becoming a hero, Rose undergoes the fulfillment stage, which would test her potential of becoming a hero and give her a transformation of consciousness. For instance, when Rose and Ted are having a divorce, Rose would ponder her relationship with Ted and try to reach an understanding with herself. As stated, she would ask herself, “What did I want from divorce - when I never knew what I had wanted from marriage? The next morning I was still thinking about my marriage: fifteen years of living in Ted’s shadow” (Tan 193). In other words, Rose is always seen to comply with what Ted decides and this led up to her inevitable divorce. Consequently, she is brooding over her thoughts when she seeks to find a conclusion on her desires. Simply put, Rose is on the verge of having a transformation of her consciousness; giving her a new insight. With this insight, she would find a resolution to her divorce and her vulnerability.
Leading to the return, Rose demonstrates her ability to decide what she desires and uncovers the side of her that voices out her determination. As a result of the fulfillment stage, she takes action and says, “I say I’m staying, and my lawyer will too, once we serve you the paper… You can’t just pull me out of your life and throw me away” (Tan 196). Consequently, she was able to keep the house and reach a clarity of mind; and yet, she went through the obstacles to only benefit herself since nobody else was affected by her exploits. Since she never accomplished the morals of a hero, Rose was lacking the objective to save another person or idea, although she gained courage and decisiveness to overcome her situation.
In brief, based on Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of heroism, Rose has not completed the hero’s journey.

By going through her relationship with Ted, an event which Rose struggled through, her journey would have been complete if she sought to save someone as told by Campbell. Regardless, she has traveled through a departure and a fulfillment stage when she met Ted and had a divorce; however, it is apparent that she is missing the paramount moral of heroism when she only sought to benefit herself by acquiring the house. All things considered, Rose still had a change in consciousness when she was deep in thought about how to face her divorce and accordingly, she acted upon what she desired. Hence, she only fulfilled part of the

return.