An Analysis Of A Hero's Journey In A Hero With A Thousand Faces By Joseph Campbell

Most hero stories are very similar. Joseph Campbell believes that all monomyths follow the same chronological order of a hero's journey. A series of steps which are inevitable. He proves this by discussing how many stories follow a series of steps or actions that the hero follows. For example, Beowolf follows these steps. A more modern story revolves around the steps Campbell discusses, The Hobbit. Campbell created a list of steps that model most hero and mythological stories. In A Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell presents the monomythic stage of Entering the Belly of the Whale, which the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, clearly displays when Beowolf enters Grendel’s lair. In A Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell discusses the “Crossing

Crossing the Threshold, is when the hero enters a magical place to face certain death. Campbell states that, “the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihalation”(Campbell 77). In Beowolf, only he can enter Grendel’s lair because he is the hero and if any normal person attempted this, they would die. Beowolf knowns the risk involved with going to fight Grendel’s mother, but it does not phase him. Because he is the hero, Beowolf is unaffected by the entrance of Grendel’s lair, “Then he realized, suddenly, that she’s brought him into someone’s battle-hall, and there the water’s heat could not hurt him. Nor anything in the lake attack him”(Beowolf 485-7). Only a hero can enter the Threshold. According to Campbell, “The hero instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the un-known, and would appear to have died”(Campbell 74). In Beowlf, when he enters Grendel’s lair, Beowolf is in the lair for hours battling Grendel’s