The Hero's Journey

The Hero’s Journey: Life’s Great Adventure – This is the original student text from our teacher’s guide discussing why we should study the hero’s journey and outlining its eight stages. (This article has been updated and expanded for new teacher’s guide.)

Vogler’s “Writer’s Journey” – Screenwriter Christopher Vogler modified Campbell’s monomyth to be used as a tool for analyzing and writing fiction. This article introduces and briefly discusses Vogler’s model.

My Journey into the Journey – This article chronicles my (Reg Harris) forty-year exploration of the Hero’s Journey, beginning with Campbell’s mythological model and expanding into the psychology and philosophy of the journey experience and the neurobiology of the “narrative” brain.

Threshold Guardians – Threshold guardians are often seen as evil or repressive, but (like all archetypes) guardians have a polar nature. If we resist them, they challenge and fight us. If we embrace them and explore what they can teach us, they open the way to a journey of growth and enlightenment.

The Call Refused: Evoking the Shadow Journey – Accepting the Call to growth and transformation can be daunting. However, not accepting it can lead to a life of defensiveness, bitterness and isolation: the Shadow Journey of the Call Refused. This article explores the dangers of rejecting the Call.

Joseph Campbell and the Monomyth

Campbell’s “Other” Monomyth – Campbell’s monomyth is usually depicted in 17 stages or 12 stages (Vogler). However, Campbell’s own summary in The Hero with a Thousand Faces suggests a much more manageable six-stage model.

Rethinking Campbell: When Stages are not Stages – Joseph Campbell’s monomyth is the standard, virtually sacrosanct, model of the Hero’s Journey. However, Campbell himself said creating a single model of the journey process is virtually impossible. In “Rethinking Campbell,” I look at how Campbell’s 17 stages can be consolidated into a concise, practical eight-stage model.

The Call to Adventure: Beginning the Hero’s Journey – The Call to Adventure is the first stage in Campbell’s monomyth. The Call is triggered by a disruption to or a limitation in our lives. Our challenge is to “work through” this resistance so that we can restore coherence and flow.

The Call Refused: Evoking the Shadow Journey – Accepting the Call to growth and transformation can be daunting. However, not accepting it can lead to a life of defensiveness, bitterness and isolation: the Shadow Journey of the Call Refused. This article explores the dangers of rejecting the Call.

Vogler’s “Writer’s Journey” – Screenwriter Christopher Vogler modified Campbell’s monomyth to be used as a tool for analyzing and writing fiction. This article introduces and briefly discusses Vogler’s model.

Teaching the Hero's Journey

A Myth to Live By: The Soul's High Adventure: This introduction to the current edition of The Hero’s Journey: The Path of Transformation outlines the goals and philosophy of teaching the Hero’s Journey. It explains the role of the Hero’s Journey in education and life, and it proposes a new role for you as a mentor in your students’ journeys.

Beyond Censorship: Four Timely Themes In Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, but the book contains four themes which are as relevant today as they were more than 60 years ago.

“Bet it’s Not in the Simpsons”: This is a short description of an incident I had in class many years ago. I told the class that the Hero’s Journey or its elements was in virtually every story, no matter what its form. One student immediately challenged me, “I bet it’s not in the Simpsons.” Turns out he was wrong.

Fly Away Home – Finding hero’s journey stories with strong female characters can be challenging. This little film not only shows one girl’s journey, but it shows how our journeys are often interlinked with the journeys of others.

Illustrating the Journey: Exploring different ways of illustrating the journey process can give us insights into the journey pattern itself.

A Myth to Live By: Introduction to the 1995 Edition: This is the introduction to our original Hero’s Journey teaching guide. It explores the significance of the Hero’s Journey in the classroom and how teaching it can help your students understand both literature and life.

Reading for Experience: To Live or to Tell: For literature (and film) to have lasting value in our students lives, we must not impose an “alternative text” between them and the story by asking them to read for analysis. We must allow them to engage the text directly and emotionally so that the story can expand their horizons and offer alternative meanings. After they have “lived” the story, they can analyze or tell about it.

The Journey and Brain-Based Teaching: Using the hero’s journey as a foundation for studying and analyzing literature and film finds solid support in research on brain-based teaching.

The Journey as a Learning Schema: Schema theory tells us that we learn best when we have a mental schema that we can use to understand and organize new information. The Hero’s Journey can become a powerful learning schema for studying literature, film and other forms of narrative.

Psychology and the Hero's Journey

Attributing Outcomes: The Journey from Victim to Hero: Often the first step in the Hero’s Journey is learning to accept responsibility for our own lives. This article explores a concept called the “Locus of Control” and the process of building more effective, life-affirming meaning in our lives.

Gestalt’s Paradoxical Theory of Change: By far the most-read article on our site, this piece explores Gestalt psychology’s “Paradoxical Theory of Change” – that before we can become someone new, we must first become who we are – and its relationship to the Hero’s Journey process.

Making Meaning of our Journeys: One of the most important—but often neglected—parts of the hero’s journey is building meaning from the experience. This article explore how, to “story” experience, our journeys must include a stage for reflection and consolidation.

Ripening as a Hero’s Journey: In our culture we think of growth in quantifiable, measurable terms, but there is another kind of growth that is actually more important: the process of maturing. This article explores the concept of ripening as a Hero’s Journey.

Seeing Our Journey with Soft Eyes: Seeing with soft eyes means maintaining the focus needed to pursue our goals while, at the same time, keeping our vision open for other possibilities that may be available to us. Sometimes this means being able to see beyond the limits of our personal narrative to the opportunities that await on the periphery.

Self-Realization: To “realize” something is to bring it into being, to make it real. Often our quest in the Hero’s Journey is to realize a dream or a potential, to make it manifest in our lives. This article explores the Hero’s Journey as a process of self-realization.

Philosophy and the Hero's Journey

Hegel’s Dialectic: Hegel’s Dialectic—thesis, antithesis and synthesis—offers us valuable insights into the psychological processes that drive the Hero’s Journey. This article explores the strong parallels between the dialectic and the cycle of the journey.

The Hermeneutic Loop: Hermeneutics is the art or theory of interpreting text and other communication. The hermeneutic process is cyclic, often illustrated by the hermeneutic circle or loop. This article explores the hermeneutic loop as the foundation for the Hero’s Journey cycle.

"Hsiang Sheng": Mutually Arising Opposites - Often our call to a journey comes when our lives have gotten out of balance, when we are focusing too much on one aspect of our existence to the exclusion of its complimentary or “mutually arising” opposite pole.

The Yin-Yang: Polarity and the Hero’s Journey – We are all familiar with the taijitu or Yin-Yang, the Taoist symbol for the unity and cyclic nature of all life. This article explores the meaning of the taijitu and the insights the Yin-Yang concept can give us into the Hero’s Journey.