Talk:Monomyth/Archive Archive1

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[edit] Older comments

Who keeps editing the external links page???????????????

Using the relative temporal term "modern" is inaccurate. Already The Lion King's relevence as modern is questionable. I would suggest a different term be used or this article continues to be updated (especially since Star Wars is now more modern than tLK. --Duemellon 14:46, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think the solution is to use the term "more modern" or "more recent". The point of the comment seems to be to represent the inherent timelessness of the concept of the monomyth rather than comment on the timeline of human multimedia. -- Andy, at some point today.

Considerable portions of this article were taken word-for-word from this page, though I am currently in contact with the author, who seems to be sympathetic to Wikipedia. I'm trying to keep him informed about his rights (and the implication of licensing under the GNU FDL) and as of last mail, this was his response:

I created that web page a few years ago for a class, and I haven't made any changes since. I like that there is an article about the mononmyth, and I think that it's a pretty good one (better than my amateur web-site). I'd hate for them to delete it or anything. And it's not like I said anything new; I basically just paraphrased Joseph Campbell. But it is my wording, and I'd like some credit--maybe a link to my site or something.


[edit] Sperm and Egg as Archetypes

Some have noted the similarity of the sperm's journey to the egg as reflecting the male and female archetypes: the sperm travel as an army through a dangerous and long journey, often battling with other sperm (see the book Sperm Wars and the theory of sperm competition), to the secluded queen/egg in the castle/womb, where only one hero can succeed with the mission of fertilization, and the rest of the army are discarded/sacrificed for the hero's success. It has been cited as an example of fractal self-similarity in the realm of consciousness studies.

[edit] Egg as Destination

The individual at peace, resting in wholeness, is depicted as the center of a Mandala. An orderly harmonious system is described as the cosmos. The egg can be seen as a state of nondualism, or non-separateness. The Hero's journey becomes to overcome an illusory false dichotomy or dualism. The world, Earth, is associated with Maternal symbolism, such as Mother Earth, as the giver and sustainer of life. The Gaia theory (science) describes the Earth as a model of a geo-biosphere.

[edit] Egg As Origin

Womb has a similarity to egg as archetype. The Hero's journey can also be seen sperm's journey to escape from the egg. Flammarion woodcut depicts a pilgrim breaking out of a sphere. Sigmund Freud described a maternal attachment phase in a male child's development in Oedipus complex. A diagram of Freud's psyche theory, Image:Structural-Iceberg.png, shows a shape breaking out of water. Child Development may be seen as the progressive separation of the individual identity from that of the parent.

[edit] Male Archetype See Also


[edit] Female Archetype See Also


They shouldn't be merged, the '(Phrase)' section should be deleted, its the same thing, we should keep the page but simply provide a link to the Monomyth one instead of re-explaining each step of the Hero's Journey...again

[edit] Atonement With Self

The section Atonement With Father hints at a broader pattern. The Hero must come to terms with a part of himself which he fears. In Star Wars, Luke's fear is that he is like his Father. Anikin's fear is the loss of women he loves, and his choices take him off of his original path. Anikin's progeny are the twins, who must both come to terms with each other and their origins. The object of the quest becomes to reach unity with a splinter of themself.

[edit] EarthSea

Ursula K. Le Guin's EarthSea series is an exemplary use of the Hero's journey. In that story, the hero abuses his power, resulting in the creation of a 'gebbeth', a shadow of himself. His hubris has unleashed a darker side of himself, which only he can overcome, by recognizing it as part of himself.

[edit] The Matrix

At the end of the first Matrix episode, Neo goes too far by inserting himself into the Agent Smith. In later episodes, we learn that this act has endowed Smith with a new autonomy. Smith becomes the anti-One, a kind of virus or duplicating machine who haunts Neo as he pursues his quest.

[edit] Harry Potter

The Harry Potter mythology bares many resemblances to Earth Sea. In the Potter series, our Hero finds that his journey, and the journey of 'He who shall not be named', have become intimately linked. Harry is the 'boy who lived' and Voltemort is the one who died and struggles to return. Harry's destiny lies in coming to terms with the choices of his parents, and his inevitable rendezvous with this sinister doppleganger.


--Pipian 23:45, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You know, taking the example from the the page above, some images of various famous scenes could help with the article. --Paul Soth 06:32, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Adding to the monomyth: movies, TV, and more

Who I am: I am currently a PhD candidate at Pacifica Graduate Instutute, in Santa Barbara (where the Campbell library is currently housed). In the course of my study, I have spent countless hours researching the hero's journey as it is evolving. My particular interest is the female hero's quest (not to be confused with a heroine!). As to what I've done here: I have added some of the movies mentioned - the odd-ball seeming ones -- to this discussion. My reason for including movies such as While You Were Sleeping, Garden State, etc is that I believe the Hero's Journey is part of all good storylines. At least some variation of the hero's journey. Christopher Vogler, screenwriter and screenwriting teacher at UCLA extension has a terrific book that covers this: The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers. My hope is that others will see the connection in movies, books, TV, and even songs and will add their own ideas about these archetypes.

[edit] So when you say "Monomyth", you mean "Late20thcenturyChristianWesternizedsci-fi/fantasyshallowpopculturemainstreampseudomyth", right?

The examples of "monomyths" used in this article are, in order of how many examples are given from the single source throughout the series:

  1. Lord of the Rings: 24 times
  2. Star Wars trilogy: 13 times
  3. The Matrix: 12 times
  4. Silence of the Lambs: 8 times
  5. The Bible: 5 times (+1 reference to Jonah and the Whale)
  6. Ender's Game: 4 times
  7. The Odyssey: 3 times (including an extremely vague reference with no actual examples provided that actually seems to violate the "monomyth" cycle in a large number of ways, despite being arguably the most famous "hero" story in human history)
  8. Nightmare Before Christmas: 2 times
  9. The Lion King: 1 time (no actual examples)
  10. While You Were Sleeping: 1 time
  11. Almost Famous: 1 time
  12. Hercules: 1 time (note: this is about the 2005 TV series, not the actual ancient myth of Hercules. ... did this article accidentally get transferred here from Uncyclopedia?)
  13. Garden State: 1 time
  14. Harry Potter: 1 time (no actual examples)
  15. Shrek: 1 time
  16. James Bond: 1 time (.. wait, this one can't be serious... ?!?)
  17. Cinderella: 1 time (even more vaguely, and self-professedly not a good example of a "monomyth", as subtly implied by "somewhat more loosely")
  18. Every other story, myth, legend, fable, tale, and historical account throughout the entirety of human history, on every continent, in every culture, ever: 0 times

Is there any specific reason that almost the entire page is dominated by the comparisons to Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Martix, and Silence of the Lambs, with a handful of Bible and Ender's Game examples thrown in and a whole heap of totally irrelevant, nonsensical, rambling plot summaries of the series people who edited this article happen to like? How does exclusively relying on modern, mainstream, popular-culture quest epics prove that there is a universal and inherent "monomyth", when clearly they all were aware of one another and drew upon one another to some extent? Wouldn't a more appropriate way to show the ubiquity of this concept be to provide a series of hero stories that aren't from the exact same culture, time period, and sci-fi/fantasy genre? With the exception of the Jesus tale, are there no non-sci-fi/fantasy stories that adhere to this role? No non-American and non-British ones? None from before the mid-20th century? (And most are from the last 10-20 years!) I hope I've made my point.

Although I certainly am aware that this author has used some of these comparisons in the past (I saw a video of his last year and was fairly amused by the Star Wars analogies), that doesn't make it appropriate to spend an entire article about mythological universals throughout the entirety of human history discussing only a remarkably narrow handful of extremely recent and clearly cross-pollinated works of literature and cinema! If you intend solely to provide the arguments he provided, then cite all of the ones on the page so it looks like he's the one arguing for his claims, not Wikipedia; see WP:NOR. But if this article is to look at all encyclopedic and to provide readers with real evidence of the Monomyth's pervasiveness in culture, then why don't we start including examples of this occurrence throughout mythology that's older than a hundred years? There's plenty to draw from, surely, if this Monomoth truly is so prevalent? It can't just be Jesus, Luke Skywalker, Frodo, Aragon, Neo, and friggin' James Bond and Shrek and Harry Potter, now can it?

Of course, perhaps I've just hit the nail on the head: is this Monomyth a truly universal myth, or is it a universal Christian myth? Skywalker, Frodo, and Neo have all been heavily compared to Jesus in the past by a number of scholars; is changing the debate from "What figures are subtle references to Jesus?" to "What figures are recent depictions of the universal Monomyth?" a brilliant new breakthrough in mythological sociology and anthropology, or is just a Christian-centric, Western-biased terminology shift to try to establish a specific mythological sequence of events that happens to have been popularized within the Christian world by the Jesus tale as "the best story" or "the universal story"? And no, those aren't rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely curious. :)

Also, it doesn't help that almost every single one of the examples provided in the entire article doesn't actually give an example whatsoever of the part of the Monomyth it claims to. "The Meeting with the Goddess" in the Monomyth is supported by "In Shrek, Shrek tells Fiona he loves her."? Jesus. -Silence 07:08, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Kids come here and leave their thoughts. Nobody seems interested in maintaining this article, left alone rewriting it. I think this article is quite bad. Apparently, Campbell's legacy somehow doesn't inspire to further its understanding, and that is the best conclusion there is to draw. No substance for observing some religious agenda, I am afraid.
I wouldn't really mind reading a serious overview of similarities between real myths, which is, as far as I know, what monomyth is about. Some searching on WWW did not reveal anything like that. Maybe nobody had really read those old, long books (both Campbell's and Homer's), or maybe there is nothing in them to write about. Monomyth itself may be a shallow product of American mainstream culture of the 50's don't you think, and represent a need for a wise man on TV, more than anything else. Just joking, really. Conf 10:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Well yes, the Jesus-repeating-motif thing was just an afterthought, and I'm sure has more to do with the editors' bias than with Campbell's in any case. But yes, if this page is to be comprehensive, it should (1) remove at least a large number of the current examples (I'm quite tempted to move a number of them to BJAODN because they give me quite a giggle, but it might be too subtle for that, so best to just worry about the page for now) that don't really fit, (2) add a large number of examples from every culture and time period, as much as similarities can be found, and (3) add counter-examples and real criticism, if any exist, rather than acting like everything supports the monomyth theory no matter what. The problem with monomyth is that it's so vague, it's like a typical telephone psychic's predictions: it uses generalizations to make it seem like everything conforms to its predictions and descriptions, and it's almost entirely unfalsifiable (and thus unscientific)! The fact that it seems that you can take any aspect of the entire elaborate monomyth and say "this story is an example of a monomyth because it has a goddess-like woman somewhere in it" or "this story is an example of a monomyth because it has a gateway" or "this story is an example of a monomyth because it has a guy who is really nice and helps everyone" or anything like that really does some damage to the monomyth concept, because how could just about any story not have at least one of those elements? You might as well say "every story has a conflict, a climax, a denouement, and a black monkey that eats babies. To prove my point, here are 15 stories that have climaxes, 300 stories that have denouements, and two stories that have conflicts." Surely something must agree with at least a third or half of the overall monomyth to qualify as an example, not just one or two?! So, yeah, those are the three things. -Silence 13:26, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I think it's quite plausible that Campbell had, to a great content of many, been proving that every culture had been a worse attempt at being like theirs. What I've meant was that the selection of examples here is just a selection of popular trivia, and not motivated by consciously adding Christian bias to this particular article.
On the other hand, I think what also may be happening is that people are underestimating the complexity of the monomyth structure. Those nice lists and circle diagrams don't seem to reflect what seems to emerge by adding bits from different webistes and Campbell himself (I think I've read only a part of the first chapter which is online).
If you want to research myths, please do! Only remember it's not welcome here because of NOR. Sorry for sounding harsh, but I'm in a rush. Conf 14:00, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Firstly, no, as Conf says, the Christian bias in the article is a Wikipedian bias, not Campbell's. In fact, flipping through The Hero With a Thousand Faces (an excellent book), I can't see any Christian examples—Campbell's examples are drawn from European, Mediterranean, Indian, South Pacific, Asian and American Indian mythologies.
Campbell did include a few examples from the Torah and the New Testament(I can give you page numbers if you want) in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Such as Moses leading the Jews from slavery in Egypt to bring the Ten Commandments to the Jews. Or Jesus's test of trials that Satan put him through. But there are few Christian-Jewish references (probably because the Torah discourages hero worship). Campbell probably references the Quran more then any other work in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
I do agree with Silence's commits on the descriptions for the stages; some of them are pitafull. Especially the Rescue from Without; Frodo giving into the ring belonges in the Refusal of the Return. A better example would be Gandolf and the eagles rescuing the two hobbits from their doomed by lava fate(because it's a more literal example of a rescue and plus the two hobbits didn't try to escape intill the ring was destroyed).
If your looking for modern non-Eurocentric examples. Inuyasha and DragonBall Z would be excellent examples(but that would be against NOR). I can rewrite some of the sections with actual quotes from The Hero With A Thousand Faces.
--Number7 07:44, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree that each subsection in the article needs a rewrite, removing the vast majority of the contemporary examples in favour of a much broader variety. I also think that each example myth needs to be cited consistently throughout the stages—not that it needs to be used for all seventeen stages, but that each myth needs to be used for, say, twelve or thirteen stages. I'd also like to see each stage of the monomyth actually elaborated, rather than just being defined with a single statement.
My ideal format for each stage in the article would be a brief paragraph describing each stage—its definition, its variants, its psychological significance—and a second paragraph providing examples from a broad but specific range of human myths. And yes, the examples should be weighted slightly toward modern storytelling, simply because those will be the stories most familiar to the vast majority of our readers.
My own background is exceedingly Eurocentric, so within that constraint I can present here what I think is a good range of representative myths for use as examples, though I'll rely upon other users to provide myths from other cultures:
It shouldn't be terribly hard to find monomyth analyses for most of these. Vogler in The Writer's Journey, for instance, does The Wizard of Oz and The Lion King in great detail (he was a story consultant for The Lion King), as well as Titanic and Pulp Fiction.
A section on Jungian/Campbellian archetypes wouldn't go amiss, either. Binabik80 14:25, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Wouldn't it make more sense to begin by adding in some of the examples that Campbell himself actually gives in the book? This article is already far too close to original research. The Singing Badger 14:48, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I believe the eruocentric bias of the article is due to the reading background of the author(s) rather than the cultural footprint of the monomyth. If it is at all helpful, the structure of the monomyth is quite clearly present in the Part 2 of the Popol Vuh. This is the mesoamerican (principally Maya) creation story/myth. It was transcribed in the 1702 from oral tradition. The copy we have is from the Quiche Maya. Scenes from the story can be found on funerary vases from 1500 to 1000 years before this time. As near as I understand, the last contact the Maya had with the Eurasian continent prior to conquest by Europeans was 11,000 years ago when people crossed the land bridge. This would speak for either the antiquity of the monmyth structure or its universality.

The examples cited in this article appear to be culled from Christopher Vogler's text _The Writer's Journey_ which is derived from Campell's book. That text (Vogler's) is ostensibly for "modern" writers, mostly screenwriters, and he goes to a particular effort to "relate those ideas to contemporary storytelling..." (Preface to the Second Edition ix) rather than reference the original examples. The cover even lists The Lion King and Star Wars amongst other films that it describes. He uses very few actual mythological references. Vogler's book was pretty popular amongst certain folks as a kind of dummied down version of Campbell, which is probably how it became so influential to this article. It is the "popular" version of the monomyth. Some more direct examples from Campbell would definitely be worthwhile.

Does the story have to follow the monomyth pattern in order?

it seems that all 20th century modern myths use campbells theory extensively, and fit it all into a major work like star wars or matrix. I think thats a conscious decision, after reading his book. Campbell himself does not use 1 myth to include all stages, his own examples are ecclectic and each from a differen culture and myth, they are examples to show similarity in all folk culture. I have yet to to find a pre 20th century myth that follows this pattern in order . i have however noted how most myth and folklore (pre campbell's formula) have most of the points there, just not in the order he has in the hero with a thousand faces page contents., the Road of Trials, might come before belly of the whale, for instance in one myth.

On trying to prove the theory of the monomyth do you think the order can be mixed around? whats your opinion?

I think your taking a subjective topic way too literal. The monomyth details the way people come across and deal with problems. The Writer's Journey already lists these concepts(right now i've only read half the book and it has already addressed these thoughts; such as whiter the whole monomyth should be used or mix it around.)
Number7 09:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of culture

For christ sake, read at least some Homer before posting this nonsense. Probably one of the most uneducated articles ive ever read.

[edit] Bond?

Having read a little bit of this, and being completely UNqualified to talk about it, nevertheless I can still tell there's NO WAY the James Bond films can be considered a 'monomyth' (or whatever) Indigenius 02:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the challenge:
  • Bond is called or forced into adventure by an evil villain with a maniacal plan, the herald being his spy agency.
  • Bond is involved in whatever Bond does in his off hours, and is initially somewhat reluctant to get back into the adventuring business, but in the end does so gladly.
  • Bond is apprised of the situation in a meeting with his various mentors, one notable one being Q, who provides him with a new gadget (protective amulet) that will indubitably save him later on.
  • Bond travels off to a distant locale, and crosses the threshold by encountering an individual or situation that causes him to first lose his footing, but quickly regain composure and use his wits to conquer this initial test; after the test he is allowed to see that there is far more to the story than he or the audience had originally thought.
  • Bond undergoes a series of increasingly difficult trials, making new friends and enemies (and some that change from one to the other -- shapeshifters) on his quest to thwart his enemy. He always encounters both the Goddess (the good woman that helps him "grow") and woman as temptress (the sinister one he just schtups, and who always tries to lure him away from his true path). He may atone with a father-figure, in some ways his agency and its members who provide him with advice and guidance.
  • Bond gets to a point where he is very nearly beaten -- but not quite. He comes back in the nick of time -- often through the help of an ally, or through use of the amulet/gadget given to him by his mentor Q. This is his rebirth, and there's no stopping him now.
  • Bond reaches the boon: he rescues the girl, he stops the villain, what have you.
  • The rest is really child's play, and the myths vary most in their endings (perhaps because of what the storyteller believes the future will be like, or what they feel suits their needs). Here is the only weak part of the monomyth. But again, this is the part most open to interpretation anyhow.
  • Booya.
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