Essay On Hero's Journey Or Monomyth

Throughout history, humans have crafted countless stories of heroes, from the ancient journeys of Beowulf and Odysseus, to the modern ones of Harry Potter and Meredith Grey. At first glance, these stories are diverse in the extreme, coming from all different cultures and about all manner of heroes. One might think such different tales have nothing in common, but upon a closer examination, one notices a single plot template that is featured in almost every good story ever written. This idea, that heroic stories usually follow the same sequence of action, was realized by a mythologist named Joseph Campbell. Campbell calls this template the ‘Hero’s Journey’ or ‘Monomyth’, which has three major parts: separation, initiation, and return. There is a never-ending list of pieces of literature, movies, and tv shows that follow this monomyth, as it is reflected in nearly all good stories. One modern example of the Hero’s Journey is the book The Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games is set in the futuristic, dystopian District 12, where the main character Katniss Everdeen is shown in her normal routine. She spends her time hunting to support her family, and is comfortable in the woods and with her place in the world. These first few chapters make up the first stage of the monomyth, The Ordinary World. Katniss is comfortable in both the woods and District 12, but she is aware of the unease of the population, and feels hatred

The hero, Katniss, follows the stages of the monomyth almost exactly, showing how Campbell’s concept is so accurate when applied to a real story. Katniss’s adventure follows the monomyth template almost exactly, because The Hunger Games is a story about a hero’s character growing and changing in a powerful way. Clearly, Campbell’s conclusion about a “hero with a thousand faces” makes sense, even in the context of modern day