The Hero's Journey

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The Hero’s Journey

“The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, and the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find.” (Phil Cousineau) The Hero's Journey has been engaged in stories for an immemorial amount of time. These stories target typical connections that help us relate to ourselves as well as the “real world”.

Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, is best known for the work he has done in mythology and religion. His work is massive, covering a variety of characteristics of the human experience. An important work that he has developed is the path of the “Hero’s Journey”. This is a buildings roman story that helps the character find themselves throughout their given experience. In the novel “Song of Solomon” by Tori Morrison, Morrison explains with great detail the Hero’s Journey that Macon encounters. Through his journey, he encounters life changing experiences that shaped him into the person he grew up to be.

Joseph Campbell describes the hero's journey as taking place in a cycle that consists of three most important phases, which are the following: Departure, which is where the hero leaves his/her comfortable and familiar world and endeavors into the unknown; Initiation, where the hero is tried with a series of tests, which he/she must prove their character; and Return, where the hero brings the benefit of his quest bac...

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...dentity. He is scared to acknowledge the truth because he does not like having to face the truth on his own. He is therefore refusing to return to his “ordinary world”, reality.

Milkman was sent on a journey for himself to find himself. He did not want to grow up and be the man his father has become to be. Through many hardships and difficulties along the way, with the help of Guitar and Pilate, he was able to become independent as well as become one person in himself.

Works Cited

Campbell, Joseph, Phil Cousineau, and Stuart L. Brown. The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990. Print.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Knopf, 1977. Print.

"Phil Cousineau Quotes." Phil Cousineau Quotes (Author of The Art of Pilgrimage). N.p., Aug. 2012. Web. 16 May 2014.

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