A Look at The Matrix Through The Hero’s Journey
For centuries, stories of brave heroes who overcome great evils have captured the hearts of many. Numerous stories can be found to possess parallel structures to each other. The 12 Stages of The Hero’s Journey is a structure commonly found in Romance Narratives and was introduced in Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell shows that many tales follow a similar structure. The hero starts in a known world but is called to adventure and enters an unknown world where he faces challenges, acquires friends and mentors, and ultimately overcomes a central ordeal. His journey transforms him by forever changing a key aspect of his personal growth. He returns to his original environment
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as a new person. Campbell’s sequence can be identified in The Matrix, a compelling science fiction action movie of computer programmer “Neo” who learns the truth about his existence in a dystopian future and joins forces with allies to fight against the machines. In the first four steps of the Hero’s Journey, the hero begins in an ordinary world, is called to adventure, refuses the call, but then ends up accepting it, which allows him to meet his mentor.
These stages can easily be found in The Matrix. For example, Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer, leads a double life as a hacker known as “Neo”. He repeatedly encounters the cryptic phrase “the Matrix” through his online work and becomes inquisitive. Next, he receives his call to adventure when his computer instructs him to “follow the white rabbit” and meets Trinity, an infamous hacker, who tells him that a man named Morpheus can explain its meaning. His attempt to meet Morpheus, however, is interrupted by the Agents, who are powerful programs meant to eliminate threats to the Matrix program. Then, Neo’s refusal to the call occurs when he is reluctant to trust Trinity and considers leaving the car during their escape. Nonetheless, he ultimately decides to follow her, which leads him to meet his mentor, Morpheus. This is crucial, as the mentor essentially acts as the hero’s gateway into the unknown world, where the next four steps of the hero’s journey …show more content…
unfolds. These four steps are the hero’s crossing into threshold, facing initial smaller challenges where he meets allies and enemies, and an approach occurs that then leads him to his final ordeal.
As mentioned before, the mentor allows the hero into the unknown world. The same is seen in the The Matrix, where Morpheus presents to Neo the option of the red or blue pill. By choosing to discover the truth by taking the red pill, Neo finally emerges into the extraordinary world, or the world behind the Matrix. There he learns the truth of humankind’s existence and undergoes special training. During his exercises, he overcomes interactions with the Agents while acquiring friends and learning the abilities of his enemies. Then the approach happens, where their team member, Cypher, betrays them and Morpheus is captured. This abduction lures Neo into the final ordeal: rescuing Morpheus as the real test of his character and ability. After an action-packed confrontation, Neo is able to successfully defeat the Agents, something no other human has ever been able to
do. Finally, the last four steps begins with a reward, followed by the journey home, the resurrection of the hero and the return with the “elixir”, which brings closure to the story and restores balance to the world. In The Matrix, Neo’s reward is realized when he unlocks the full potential of his abilities after rescuing Morpheus. He has gained newfound confidence, power, and is now “the One”, a man prophesied to end the war between man and machine. He is still in the Matrix, however, while their ship in real life is nearly completely destroyed by “sentinel” machines. The ship’s electromagnetic pulse weapon activates and destroys the remaining sentinels, allowing the ship to return to safety, symbolizing the journey home. The resurrection, which happens quite literally in The Matrix, actually precedes the journey home. Before he was able to leave the Matrix, Neo was ambushed and killed by Agent Smith. Yet, with Trinity’s kiss, he is revived with new powers to perceive and control the Matrix, signifying the hero’s transformation. Finally, the final step of the hero's journey occurs when Neo, a changed man with mastery of remarkable abilities, makes the phone call in the Matrix to the machines, threatening their reign. This restores balance to the world, as there is a future promise of humankind’s freedom from the machines. The story of Neo in The Matrix is one that is easily paralleled to Campbell’s Hero’s Journey as explained in The Hero with a Thousand Faces . There is a clear outline to the plot that follows each step almost precisely, and ends with Neo finally realizing his destiny and becoming much more wise and powerful than he began. This proves the utility of Campbell’s archetypal chronology; it’s not hard to equate Neo to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, or Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy. Like Campbell said, they are really all the same hero with a thousand faces.
The first major step is a call to adventure. In this step, there’s something in the hero’s life that requires them to do something or go somewhere and take some type of action. Second, the hero must enter the unknown. This step sends the hero into a new world, entering something unfamiliar to the hero. By entering unfamiliar territory, whether it’s a place, an event never experiences, there are challenges and temptations the hero must face. With every new world comes new challenges. Dealing with new people or being alone.
...ell. Campbell describes this as the freedom for the hero to pass between both worlds which Allan is able to do.
Watching a film, one can easily recognize plot, theme, characterization, etc., but not many realize what basic principle lies behind nearly every story conceived: the hero’s journey. This concept allows for a comprehensive, logical flow throughout a movie. Once the hero’s journey is thoroughly understood, anyone can pick out the elements in nearly every piece. The hero’s journey follows a simple outline. First the hero in question must have a disadvantaged childhood. Next the hero will find a mentor who wisely lays out his/her prophecy. Third the hero will go on a journey, either literal or figurative, to find him/herself. On this journey the hero will be discouraged and nearly quit his/her quest. Finally, the hero will fulfill the prophecy and find his/herself, realizing his/her full potential. This rubric may be easy to spot in epic action films, but if upon close inspection is found in a wide array of genres, some of which are fully surprising.
To fully appreciate the significance of the plot one must fully understand the heroic journey. Joseph Campbell identified the stages of the heroic journey and explains how the movie adheres meticulously to these steps. For example, the first stage of the hero’s journey is the ordinary world (Campbell). At the beginning, the structure dictates that the author should portray the protagonist in their ordinary world, surrounded by ordinary things and doing ordinary tasks so that the author might introduce the reasons that the hero needs the journey in order to develop his or her character or improve his or her life (Vogler 35). The point of this portrayal is to show the audience what the protagonist’s life is currently like and to show what areas of his or her life are conflicted or incomplete. When the call to adventure occurs, the protagonist is swept away into another world, one that is full of adventure, danger, and opportunities to learn what needs to be learned. T...
Joseph Campbell made himself one of the chief authorities on how mythology works when he published his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In this book, Campbell describes what he believes to be the monomyth, known as “The Hero’s Journey.” Campbell wrote that this monomyth, the basic structure of all heroic myth, has three basic stages, which in turn have subcategories themselves. The heroic story of Katniss Everdeen, told in the movie Hunger Games, follows Campbell’s monomyth outline quite well.
The Hero’s Journey is an ancient archetype that we find throughout our modern life and also, in the world of literature.Whether metaphorical or real, the journey that a character goes on shows not only the incredible transformation of the hero but it also gives them their life meaning. It is the ultimate human experience and it reflects on every aspect of life. Take Logan, also known as Wolverine, from the X-Men movie as an example. His adventure starts with “The Call,” which is the first step of the Hero’s Journey. This step happens due to the realization of imbalance and injustice that the character has in their life. Logan steps into the first stage of the pattern but is hesitant to start his adventure because he does not know what and
The hero’s journey is a useful tool in analyzing narratives of all kinds, from myths to movies to everyday life. One of the most iconic stages in the Hero’s Journey is the ordeal, otherwise known as the belly of the whale or the cave, in which the protagonist has reached their darkest and most hopeless point – things cannot get worse. Once the hero gets through the main ordeal, their journey home is much more sedated. This can be paralleled to the encompassing plot structure, in which there is a climax, and then the intensity of the story winds down again. This stage is one of the most universal in the hero’s journey, because without conflict and climax, there is no drive or reward within the story. Popular movies such as The Hunger Games,
“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”.
This is the process, which Seger believes makes a true mythic hero, The Matrix very closely parallels this concept and creates the mythical, and larger than life hero, Neo.
While fulfilling their journey, a hero must undergo a psychological change that involves experiencing a transformation from immaturity into independence and sophistication. Campbell states that these events are what ultimately guides a hero into completing their journey by, “leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer more mature condition” (Moyers 1). She first enters her journey when she learns about invisible strength from her mother, “I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games”(Tan 89).
The stages of a hero’s journey consist of many different structural elements. They all are stages a hero has to overcome. Some stages might be repeated, avoided, or moved around throughout the story. All the elements are the call to adventure, the ordinary world, refusal to call, meeting the mentor, crossing the threshold, test-allies-enemies, approaching to the inmost cave, the ordeal, reward, the road back, the resurrection, and return with elixir.
Joseph Campbell was a well known mythology teacher who spent his whole life trying to understand the different types of stories that are told. To Campbell “all humans are involved in a struggle to accomplish the adventure of the hero in their own lives.” He made a list of stages that every hero goes through, and sums it up to three sections: separation (the departure), the initiation, and the return.
The Hero’s Journey is a pattern of narrative that appears in novels, storytelling, myth, and religious ritual. It was first identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell in his book A Hero with Thousand Faces. Campbell also discussed this pattern in his interview to Bill Moyers which was later published as a book The Power of Myths. This pattern describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds. Campbell detailed many stages in the Hero’s Journey, but he also summarized the pattern in three fundamental phases: Separation, Ordeal, and Return that all heroes, in spite of their sex, age, culture, or religion, have to overcome in order to reach the goal. Alice in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll, provides a good example of the Hero's Journey. This story describes the adventures of Alice, a young English girl, in Wonderland. Although she lacks some of the stages identified by Campbell, she still possesses many of them that are necessary for a Hero to be considered a Hero.
Neo’s hero's journey started with his call to adventure. The call to adventure is when the hero is presented with his or her quest. The hero will often refuse this call because they don’t think they could actually be a hero. Neo worked at a software company and was at his desk working when the agents came looking for him in order to get to Morpheus. Morpheus called him and tried to lead him out of the building to escape, but to do that Neo would have had to jump out of a window.
One well-known example of “The Hero’s Journey” from popular culture is the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling. In the novel, Harry Potter, the main character, is the chosen one and “The Hero’s Journey” applies to his life from the moment he is attacked by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as a baby. Joseph Campbell calls the initial phase of a hero’s development the “Call to Adventure.” The call is the in... ...