Comparing Hero's Journey In Hamlet And The Lion King

There are a variety of ways to define a hero, but it is the path they go on that proves them to be such. It is possible to compare two largely different pieces of fiction and see the similarities in the way they portray their hero due to what makes a character one. Hamlet is a play by William Shakespeare in which the main character, Hamlet, talks to the ghost of the previous king, who is also his father, and figures out his death was Hamlets’ uncle’s doing. Hamlet goes through a moral battle where he must figure out whether or not he should get revenge like his father desires, and if murder is truly the best method. The story has a multitude of surprising similarities to the Disney movie The Lion King as Simba, the main lion of the film, attempts

Hamlet and Simba follow this proposed journey, both proving them as the heroes of their individual stories as well as illustrating the similarities and differences between the two characters. A ‘call to adventure’ is Campbell’s first stage of seventeen in the journey, and the second of Christopher Vogler’s most modern twelve stage version. In Hamlet it is seen when Hamlet speaks to his father’s ghost at the beginning of the play, learning of his uncle's crime. He is told by

The next stage is ‘refusal of the call,’ demonstrated by Shakespeare as Hamlet has to buy time by feigning madness. The fourth and fifth stages cover Hamlet fully beginning his act, ‘meeting with a mentor’ and ‘crossing the threshold.’ The mentor can almost be described as Hamlet himself, revealed with his telling soliloquies and asides, and he finally crosses the threshold as he fools everyone. The sixth stage are ‘trials,’ notable when Hamlet attempts to expose his uncle by putting on the play parodying his fathers murder, but also when he considers sparing his uncle after watching him pray. Hamlet’s main climax is under the seventh and eighth stages in which Hamlet gets an opportunity to end Claudius’s life at last, and his mother, Laertes, himself, and Claudius all die in ‘the ordeal.’ Horatio, the last man alive in the room, remains alive, and fulfills ‘the reward’ by choosing not to end his own life so as to be able to explain Hamlet’s previous madness and Claudius’s