Building Religions 19: Joseph Campbell

The long break between posts happened because I wanted to reread Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces before writing anything. It had been about twenty years since I opened it, and realized that I couldn't remember a thing about its contents. The impressions that I had of Campbell's work were intermingled with memories of his interviews with Bill Moyers, his televised lectures on myth, and references to his influence on George Lucas, so I went back to the source.

My friend Larissa recommended I look at Campbell for this installment of Building Religions because he remains influential in some circles. There's Christopher Vogler's popular adaptation of The Hero with a Thousand Faces for use by screenwriters, The Writer's Journey, which allowed authors to transform Campbell's interpretation of myth into a structure for creating stories. I've seen the stages of the heroic journey mapped out in writing guides for fantasy authors and in roleplaying games, but every time, it seems they're working from Vogler's version rather than Campbell's. (Understandably, since you can get the gist of Vogler's from his original short memo on the subject and not have to read all of The Hero.)

There are some important differences, differences worth keeping in mind if you're going to turn to Campbell as your inspiration for myth. There are assumptions about human psychology, especially, that act as the foundation for his interpretation; if you don't agree with those, then his entire system becomes less plausible. There are also nuances to the way that he describes the heroic journey that get lost if you treat it as a flowchart for stories. These are the things that I'd like to discuss here.

Let's start near the end. Here's Campbell's full summary of the heroic journey:

The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or again—if the powers have remained unfriendly to him—his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).

Vogler tidies this up into a 12-step outline:

1. The hero is introduced in the ordinary world.
2. The call to adventure.
3. The hero is reluctant at first.
4. The hero is encouraged by the wise old man or woman.
5. The hero passes the first threshold.
6. The hero encounters tests and helpers.
7. The hero reaches the innermost cave.
8. The hero endures the supreme ordeal.
9. The hero seizes the sword.
10. The road back.
11. Resurrection.
12. Return with the elixir.

(Keeping this outline in mind, I should mention, might change the way that you watch movies. You start to spot the signs that the screenwriter has read Vogler or Campbell, and wait for each new step to appear. It gets painful when it's clumsily done.)

The difference between the two versions isn't just that one is more concise. Vogler distills the both the journey and one of Campbell's assumptions down to their purest form: namely that the ideal myth or story includes all of these stages. That's the first problem. In all of the examples that he brings out to support his idea that a single archetypal story, the monomyth, acts as the basis of all the world's myths and folktales, there isn't one that follows the pattern from start to finish.

Campbell half-acknowledges this in his book when he points out that some stories stop at the moment of reluctance or when the hero is tested. Some stories, in other words, are about failed heroes. But he undermines that acknowledgement completely when, later, he argues that these stories are incomplete, "corrupted" versions of the monomyth. The same goes for stories that skip stages, duplicate them, rearrange them, or have them in forms that are only recognizable if you approach the story looking for the pattern he describes.

At a certain point, you have to admit that you're not discovering the myth's structure anymore; you're imposing it. This is the main issue that I have with Campbell's approach, and especially Vogler's use of it: that it ceases to be a good interpretive tool as soon as you're required to overlook the very real differences that make stories unique. When you begin with the assumption that there once existed some perfect, uncorrupted version of a myth that supports your interpretation, you lose so many opportunities to explore the range of creative expression in human storytelling.

The same could be said for over-adherence to any interpretive framework, of course. It's partly Campbell's popularity that makes this particular one worth commenting upon more emphatically than I have in the past. It's also the position that he takes regarding why the monomyth exists:

[T]o grasp the full value of the mythological figures that have come down to us, we must understand that they are not only symptoms of the unconscious (as indeed are all human thoughts and acts) but also controlled and intended statements of certain spiritual principles, which have remained as constant throughout the course of human history as the form and nervous structure of the human physique itself. Briefly formulated, the universal doctrine teaches that all the visible structures of the world—all things and beings—are the effects of a ubiquitous power out of which they rise, which supports and fills them during the period of their manifestation, and back into which they must ultimately dissolve.

There are two parts to this: first, that myths are "symptoms of the unconscious;" second, that they express a universal spiritual principle. If you read The Hero, it's easy to see Campbell's dip into myth as the representation of psychological forces. He intersperses his examples from historical mythologies with ones from the dreams, treating each as equally demonstrative of his thesis. He interprets stages of the heroic journey in psychological terms, whether it's reunion with the mother after the trauma of an infant's separation from the breast, confrontation and reconciliation with the threatening father, or the symbolic meaning of beings and images along the way. Everything—no matter what culture, what religion, what historical period—is reduced to an element in a psychodrama shaped by the works of Freud or Jung.

If you agree with him that those authors hold the key not only to the psychology of the modern western European mind, but to all humans, then this isn't a problem. If you don't, however, then much of the theoretical foundation of Campbell's work crumbles. Likewise, if you don't believe that there is a universal doctrine of which all religions are imperfect expressions, but take the view instead that different religions can have entirely different messages or purposes, then the second part of his conclusion becomes meaningless.

Usually, I end these posts by suggesting ways that you can put a particular thinker's ideas into practice in your own creative work. In the case of Campbell, I'll make an exception and instead say, "Approach with caution." If you're going to take on the task of adapting the heroic journey, read The Hero with a Thousand Faces from start to finish and decide for yourself whether you find his argument persuasive. There's a lot in there that can be helpful in sparking your own creativity, and a lot that can help you rethink what you've already written, but if you're going to treat it as a roadmap to the perfect story, you may be taking on more than you intended.