The Hero With A Thousand Faces Chapter Summary

The Heroic Journey of Jacob

Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, instituted the concept of the “monomyth,” the basic story pattern that can be applied to seemingly all literary works, which similarity shown as each of the text has a main character that goes on a journey. In the same way, the hero’s journey can be divided into three main sections: separation, initiation, and return. Into the three main sections, here are the several stages as the call to adventure, road of trail and magic flight, which all of these stages were shown in a lifelike way in the novel named Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar children.

The hero’s call to adventure is always the main character’s first step of the journey and never leaves the character throughout the story. In the novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, the Jacob’s first steps in his journey, which was begun with his grandpa Portman’s last words. In novel, Jacob’s grandpa Portman notes, “ Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man’s grave.

September, 1940”(Riggs 37), shows while Jacob’s grandpa Portman was impending of death, he told Jacob the what’s next he should do “find the bird”. Particularly, Jacob’s grandpa Portman gave him the exactly the place “the loop” to follow. In the same way, he also gave him several clues that help him on the way to find the loop, which here is one very typical range of call to adventure.

The noble quality of the main character was shown the stage at the road of trail, which is the main characters, will overcome a series of obstacle, and then impresses us deeply. In Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Jacob states, “What stood before me now was no refuge from monsters but a monster itself, staring down from its perch on the hill with vacant hunger. Trees burst forth from broken window and skins of scabrous vine gnawed at the walls like antibodies attacking a virus”(Riggs 83), here shows Jacob has already found the house. However, the house gave Jacob a very intense feeling of fear, hindered Jacob enters the house to find more clues about the loop. Therefore, here is part of story can be seen as the difficulty for the main character. Then here comes Jacob to overcome these impediments. In novel Jacob notes, “ Dozens of them. I got excited-and then just as quickly went cold, because something dreadful occurred to me. I have to go down there”(Riggs 112), which there shows Jacob overcame the fear for the house, and went down the house. In the finish, Jacob overcoming these obstacles showed the impression of the road of the trial in a lifelike way to us.

The apex of the story comes where the stage named the magic flight, which is known as a very violent and intense flight between the main character and his adversary.

In Miss Peregrine’s for Peculiar Children, the magic flight is between Jacob the protagonist and his adversary Dr. Golan. In novel, Riggs notes, “ he comes with a gun,” Hugh said, studying the dirt… he touched the back of his ear and his finger s came away spotted with blood”(Riggs 309), shows Dr. Golan is ready for the fight, and has the relief to subdue everyone else. Same way for Jacob, he states in novel, “ I had, just for a moment, a clear shot. Tried to empty my mind and focus on steadying my arm, creating an imaginary line that extended fro my shoulder through the sight to my target... Now Squeeze”(Riggs 327), shows that Jacob is one hundred present focus on the fighting now. And in the finish, Jacob killed Dr. Golan, then their relationship concluded

here.

In conclusion, the call of adventure, the road of trail and the magic flight are shown in a lifelike way in the novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. These small but essential stages support the whole story in an interesting and amazing way.