The Hero's Journey In The Falling Girl By Dino Buzzati

“The Falling Girl” is an intriguing story written by Dino Buzzati. With an eloquent style, Buzzati writes of a girl who fell off a of skyscraper. This girl is dubbed Marta. Marta exchanged her youth and beauty for the poisoned chalice that societies offers. The story counties throughout the span of the rest of her existence; from the moment she jumped, to the moment she died. “The Falling Girl” grabs the readers attention from the very first paragraphs to the very last words. However, the story isn’t as cut and dry as it seems; through careful examination one can find the metaphors placed by the writer to indicate what is actually going on. With the use of the Hero’s Journey, an outline in which Joseph Campbell devised of every story written

As described in the class booklet, the call is when the hero is persuaded to embark on the journey/quest (“The Hero’s Journey”). “The Falling Girl” begins with Marta looking over the rooftop of a building. “Seeing these things, Marta hopelessly leaned out over the railing and let herself go. She felt as if she were hovering in the air, but she was falling” ( “The Falling Girl”.) By “letting herself go”, Marta succumbs to the pressures and the misleading antics of society. Her focus is misguided, she is only concerned with the perceived happiness she will receive in the future. As Marta falls she is blind to the dangerous consequences of her choice. Nonetheless, Marta still pays her attention to the wealthy people enjoying their lives on the higher floors of the skyscraper. As the story progresses, it counties to describe the pressures Marta has fallen in to, “Flights of that kind (mostly by girls, in fact) were not rare in the skyscraper and they constituted an interesting diversion for the tenants; this was also the reason why the price of those apartments was very high.” Many women before her have made the same choice as she

Now the hero finds him or herself understanding of the world changing (“The Hero’s Journey”). As the sun sets in the sky, Martas mood changes considerably. She now reaches the levels in which the people aren’t so wealthy. These people are now hard workers well on their way to achieve their goals. “Now Marta no longer saw just groups of carefree people inside the apartments; at times there were even some businesses where the employees, in black or blue aprons, were sitting at desks in long rows. Several of them were young people as old as or older then she, and weary of the day by now, every once in a while they raised their eyes from their duties and from typewriters” (“The Falling Girl” 2). Her beauty and graces is fleeing. As she ages, more people are focused on the day to day work. For the very first time the writer gives us a true sense of what Marta is after, “They were obviously giving a large party, exactly the kind that Marta dreamed of ever since she was a child. Heaven help her if she missed it. Down there opportunity was waiting for her, fate, romance, the true inauguration of her life” (“The Falling Girl 3). The girl is in such a hurry to her goal she is not appreciating the journey. At this point in the journey, other girls begin to fall and Marta realizes she is not alone. This shows that in society many other girls are wasting their lives