Heroes In Joseph Campbell's Into The Beautiful North

During his landmark interview in 1988 with Bill Moyers, mythologist Joseph Campbell explained the significance of hero myths and why they continue to be of interest to audiences today. In his interview, Campbell explains that there are two types of heros and how their journeys might be different. Heroes have sacrificed and have a moral objective that inspire average people to want to do something similar. They have a transformation of themselves, that show anybody can change. As well as heroes go and achieve something that most would view as unobtainable. In the novel Into the Beautiful North you follow the journey of a girl named Nayeli and how she crosses the mexican-american border, in order to find men willing to travel back to mexico and fight the encroaching drug problem, as well as give the women men to marry and start a life with. She also comes to the US to

Hero stories make us feel happy according to psychologist Scott Allison. He notes that a sense of elevation occurs when we read hero stories, that people feel in awe of the hero and what things they are encountering on their journey. This can be seen, for example, in audience's response to the story Into the Beautiful North. Readers get excited when Nayeli and her gang make it over the border the second time without being caught or when she fights off the guys from Tijuana, who were looking to do bad things to her group of friends. Another sense of elevation can be seen in Rick Smolan’s Ted talk, when he goes back to find the little girl who was left to him, or when he saves his friend, who was adopting the young Korean-American girl, his friend's son and the young girl from a hotel fire in South Korea. The audience watching this ted talk feel a sense of elevation when Rick returns to bring the young to America where she’ll find a life where she is accepted for being different or of a mixed race. People are in awe that a normal photographer could