Joseph Campbell

We always expect the hero in a story to be the main character-it makes sense. Most books, TV shows and movies follow this formula, although there’s an important exception. This exception is a book written 5,000 years ago, The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by Stephen Mitchell. The two main characters in this story are half-god half-humans: Gilgamesh and Enkidu. In the book, the king of Uruk is Gilgamesh, and he rules and terrorizes the many people who are under his rule. The overbearing gods and…

In any poem with a hero you can always bet that there will be a call to adventure. The hero will be called to task and he will have to go forth and save the day. Whether he has to save the town, save the girl, or prove his knighthood he will have to go through trials. The hero will have three challenges, mental, physical, and spiritual. In Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, written by The Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain is called to task by The Green Knight At the start of the poem, King Arthur is eating…

Throughout history, there are people who stand as beacons to motivate, enlighten, and enrich others’ lives. Malcolm X was one of those guiding people, and his frank autobiography reveals his metamorphosis into his “own divine path.” As an articulate revolutionary Malcolm X’s book outlines his hero's journey. THE WORLD OF THE COMMON DAY is the background context of a hero, and Malcolm’s struggle starts before he was born. First of all, his West Indian grandmother was raped by a white man which…

Sherlock: The Series that Cures Societies Troubles There’s is arguably nothing worse in life than boredom. If given a chance to alleviate the mundanity of our everyday lives we would all gladly take it. Well, luckily there is or has been a remedy for boredom. Some people (the fans) have argued that the cure for our insufferable and bland lives has been on screen since 2010. And it’s name is Sherlock. The tv show brought to us by the BBC has become a cult phenomenon since it hit our screens in…

Introduction According to J Z Smith, the reason that these facets of culture were given the term religion is to give scholars a way to categorize these facets for academic purposes. There was never a consensus reached for a universal definition of religion. As a result, the definition of religion is incredibly ambiguous. This ambiguity leads to many scholars giving their own interpretation of what constitutes as religion, as well as what actions would be considered as religious. The…

During the beginning of the movie The Hunger Games Katniss Everdeen commences her "Hero's Journey". In the beginning of the film Katniss' ordinary life is shown to the audience, including her poverty-stricken district, her small-knit family, and her friendship with a boy named Gale. The first step in the Hero's Journey is "The Ordinary World", in which the hero's normal life is examined before they go on their actual journey. On the day of the infamous reaping, in which two tributes (a girl…

I’ve read a lot of books with heroes in them, but in The Outsiders, almost every character is a hero. This story is about a gang called the greasers. All the greasers could be considered a hero. My definition of a hero is a dependable, caring, and unselfish person. One character in this book fits my definition of a hero perfectly. Darrel Curtis fits my definition of hero perfectly. In the beginning of the book it shows how Darry wants the best for Ponyboy. Ponyboy is walking home at 2:00a.m.…

A myth is a story that holds some kind of significance in a culture, a story that addresses fundamental and difficult questions that we as human beings ask: who or what am I, where did I come from, why am I here, how should I live, what is the right thing to do, what is the universe, how did it all begin? Myths are stories that are told about great men and great women; about the forces of good and evil; about large and small animals; about natural thing as well creatures like giants, gods and…

Imagine being abandoned by your father at birth, because your father wanted a son. This was Atalanta. She was a woman hero liked by many, but some people didn’t like that she was a female hero, the neglect that she gave people after she was married, and others thought that her and her husband insulted Zeus and Aphrodite. Though all of these can be overlooked with many positives, because her positives outweigh negatives. One reason that Atalanta wasn’t liked was because she was a female hero…

“Today I don’t want to think, I just want to run.” (Injustice Year One: 13) Being born in a postmodern era where myths are known to be fiction, most of the knowledge we grew up learning about Greek mythology was based on the stories we read and from the television shows we watched. Interestingly, one could argue that superheroes were created from ideas that are sourced from these stories, heroes such as Wonder Woman and Superman. In this essay particularly, I will explore the similarities that…