The Modern Heroine: I Am Malala

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Joseph Campbell describes the hero’s journey as a quest where the “hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” (Campbell 7). The heroine’s quest, according to Valerie Estelle Frankel includes “battling through pain and intolerance, through the thorns of adversity, through death and beyond to rescue loved ones” (Frankel 11). Contrary to the hero’s journey, the heroine’s journey focuses on the “culture on the idealization of the masculine” while the hero’s journey focuses on the adventures. In the inspiring autobiography, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai represents a heroine because she goes through the stages of the heroine’s journey as she refuses to be silenced and risks death to confront the Taliban on behalf of the young Pakistani girls that are deprived of education. The stages of the journey include the ordinary world, the call to adventure, the supernatural aid, the crossing of the first threshold, the road of trials, the ordeal, death and rebirth, and the return with the elixir.
Malala’s journey begins in the ordinary world. This is where the heroine is in “a special world, a world that is new and alien to [her]” (Campbell 54). “The hero[ine], uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma. The hero[ine] is shown against a background of environment, heredity, and personal history” (Volger). Malala notices that she is born in a society where the males are glorified while the ...

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...tani Right to Education Bill.

Works Cited

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1968. Print.
Davis, Mary. "Maureen Murdock Interviewed by Mary Davis." Jungatlanta.com. N.p., Summer 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
DeMyers, Sandra. "Intro to the Hero's Journey." Loyno.edu. Northshore High School, 21 June 2000. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
Frankel, Valerie Estelle. From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine's Journey through Myth and Legend. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 2010. Print.
Murdock, Maureen. The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest for Wholeness. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1990. Print.
Yousafzai, Malala, and Christina Lamb. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. New York: Little, Brown and, 2013. Print.
Volger, Christian. "The Hero's Journey." Thewritersjourney.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

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