Skip to main content

Joseph Cambell's Monomyth

Reading Update

    In my Reading Fiction course, my professor started class by saying he was going to change some of our lives that day. 

Simultaneously, he was going to ruin every movie, book, and basically story telling for us. 

He did this by showing us Joseph Cambell's Monomyth concept. 

I have a huge interest in writing as well as reading, as they kinda of go hand-in-hand and I found this very interesting fro not only a readers perspective but from that of a writers. The monomyth is the idea that every hero's story can be broken down into these 12 different stages and has 8 different archetypes. 




    In this installment, I want to breakdown these steps, and in later posts, I'll use this to breakdown the different books I read and talk about on this blog.

    I'm going to start with the 12 different stages.                            

1. Ordinary World - This is usually the environment/ lifestyle the hero exists in when the story starts.

2. Call to Adventure - The problem is presented to hero, who is the only one who can stop it

3. Refusal of the Call - Denial of responsibility, the hero doesn't believe they can stop/solve the problem.
 
4. Meeting the Mentor - The Mentor is the one to gives the hero what they need to know to succeed.

5. Crossing the Threshold - often the same person as the mentor, they accept the hero as worthy of the journey/trust/responsibility.   
                                                       
6. Test, Allies, Enemies- Hero meets friends, enemies and has a test of some sort.

7. Approach the Inmost Cave - This is something the hero goes into that changes them, they "exit the cave" a different person, with a different motive or perspective and surprisingly often they do leave an actual cave, hence the name of this step.

8. Ordeal - This is the fight for all the marbles, the climax, the final battle, the last heist, what have you.

9. Reward- This is the peace, or the crown, or even the spouse they want set out to get.

10. The Road Back- usually skimmed over, but the return home, back to the place they started. 

11. The Resurrection- The hero sees how much they've changed and how they are going to proceed. 

12. Return- The hero can't fall back into life how it was before their journey. 

The 8 different Archetypes are:
1. Hero
2. Mentor
3. Threshold Guardian
4. Herald 
5. Shapeshifter
6. Shadow
7. Trickster
8. Allies

Now, this structure works for hero stories, and don't have to happen in any particular order and one character or object and serve as multiple archetypes. 

I am wondering about other stories, as not all stories are hero quests and journeys, and I founded the basic:

Man vs. Man

Man vs. Nature

Man vs. Society

Man vs. Self

This are very simplistic, for example the hero joinery might have all of these plots going at different points in the story. I think these are good things to keep in mind to make your story deeper. 

I got this information from my professor, but I'll link an website that gives a more in-depth description of these stages and archetypes, but I plan of using this and exploring it more as I review books.

https://libguides.gvsu.edu/c.php?g=948085&p=6857311 <link for website.

:)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What If's

What If's By Ashley The Science Fiction and Fantasy genre's of literature can be hard to describe. They can take place anywhere, in space, under water, virtual realities, or nowhere at all, in some made up place like Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings. One author, Veronica Roth, described it as the genre of "What If's". What if these certain worldly limitations vanished, or what if humanity discovered this new technology, what if something or everything was different, what would it do to humanity. Authors make us these scenarios and let it play out, focusing in on one character living in that "What If", and playing out how they would respond.  Thats what makes this genre so special, there are no rules and authors play gods. For me, the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy is that in Science Fiction, those "What If's" come from a new discovery, something that someone discovered and explored and it changed the world as we know it. In...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ender's Game vs. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

 Ender's Game and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Orson Scott Card and Gabrielle Zevin Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you. On the surface level, Enders Game and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow  have nothing  in common. In fact, the only reason  I even thought about these two books being comparable  was because I read them  one after another, and both had an impact  on me, but I wasn't sure what is was.  Enders Game  is a science fiction novel written in 1985, and is about one boy, Ender, being the only hope for the human race to defeat a war against a bee-like alien species. The training for this was was done through strategy games and fake battles, and training began at 6 years old for Ender.  Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is realistic fiction and about two people coming together and creatin...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Prince of Thorns

The Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence      This series by Mark Lawrence changed my reading life. I read it during high school and four years later, I still think about lines from these books. This is what made me declare Mark Lawrence as my favorite author. I started reading more adult fantasy after this and picked up his other trilogy series (The Liars Key) and the only reason I haven't read the rest of he books is because I want to have the time to fully enjoy them and I'm simply not in a place, mentally, where I can appreciate these books and Lawrences story-telling skills.  These books take place in the future after humanity as we know it destroyed itself. There were the builders, and that represents us/current time in history, and how the world was broken after us and we left fragments behind and now humanity is back to medieval times. That concept is really hitting home now with the stat...
Post a Comment
Read more