Noah Halili - The Departure of Private Blithe in Band of Brothers

  Episode 3 of Band of Brothers explores the journey of Private Albert Blithe in the immediate aftermath of D-Day. Joseph Campbell splits the hero’s journey into multiple parts with defining moments. In this episode, Private Blithe experiences numerous parts of Campbell’s journey. From the series, we can infer that he experienced the call to adventure and during the episode we also see his refusal to the call. Furthermore, Blithe ends up experiencing the crossing of the threshold as well as the belly of the whale. These aspects of the hero’s journey are extremely relevant to Blithe’s story and his own journey among the paratroopers of Easy Company. 

Similar to most soldiers in WWII, Blithe experiences the call to adventure in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Though this event is never shown in the miniseries, Blithe appears determined to aid the war effort and likely enlisted just as most members of Easy Company enlisted. While Blithe accepts the call to join the war, he struggles to accept the call to combat. That is, when he reaches Europe, he struggles to fight alongside his fellow soldiers and frequently experiences panic attacks. In the first few combat experiences, Blithe hides in a hole and even loses his eyesight at one point out of fear. At one point in the episode, Blithe admits to eventual Easy Company captain, Ronald Speirs, that on D-Day, he chose to hide in a hole and sleep instead of searching for the allied forces that had landed. Blithe shows an immense amount of hesitation and refusal to fight the Nazi forces because he fears for his own survival. This is the refusal to the call that Campbell outlines in his writing.

Later on in the episode, Blithe becomes involved in a firefight between allied and German forces. During this fight, he eventually gains the courage to stand and fight after being encouraged by Lieutenant Richard Winters. It is in this fight that Blithe finally overcomes his fear and refusal of the call and ultimately kills his first enemy soldier. The miniseries chooses to show Blithe confirm the kill and take a symbolic flower attached to the man’s clothing. This is Blithe’s first threshold that he must overcome to enter the main part of his journey. It is only after crossing this threshold that he begins acting like a normal soldier and fighting alongside his brothers-in-arms. At the end of the episode, we see Blithe after crossing the threshold and entering the belly of the whale. It is during this point in his journey that he has become a model soldier and goes as far as to volunteer for a scouting assignment when everyone around him was too afraid. Blithe’s experience and journey in Band of Brothers serves as an example of the Departure phase of the hero’s journey as Campbell outlines in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 

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