Tyler van Opstal- Some brief notes on Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces

    As it was one of our textbooks this semester it seems very unnecessary for me to write here any manner of summary of Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), and while I prefer to write about it in reference to other works as they follow the pattern Campbell identified it would be remiss not to have at least one journal entry centered upon it. The subject of these scribblings then, so as not to just retread discussions from class, is an extremely brief review of the critical and cultural contexts that Hero exists in. 


Critical Reception 

    The Hero with a Thousand Faces is an instantly recognized work of near universal acclaim, at least among academics and critics. It is listed as one of the top 100 nonfiction works since 1923 by TIME magazine, was the winner of the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Contributions to Creative Literature (one of six writers to win in 1949) and is a popular choice for college courses across the country. 


Predating Works 

    The most important works for the formation of Hero are another work coauthored by Campbell and the book that work is based upon, Campbell and Robinson’s Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake (1944) and Joyce’s Finnegan's Wake (1939). The word ‘Monomyth’ is directly taken from Finnegan’s Wake, and the Skeleton Key (an exegesis of Joyce’s novel) was written after Campbell and Robinson noticed the extraordinary similarity between the award-winning play The Skin of Our Teeth and Finnegan’s Wake, a line of research that (combined with other more subtle influences) led him slowly to the hero’s journey. 


Inspired Works 

In Adams’ Watership Down, the Hero is quoted for one of the epigrams that preface every chapter of the book, placing it in the company of psalms, Shakespeare, and folk songs (as well as other great works of literature). The quote, “... after the shaman has wandered through dark forests and over great ranges of mountains, he reaches an opening m the ground The most difficult stage of the adventure now begins. The depths of the underworld open before him.” (p. 91 in Hero, p. 233 in Watership) is used before a chapter detailing a vision had by Fiver (a rabbit with prophetic abilities) that leads him to the realization that Hazel (the rabbits' leader, who had been shot) was alive and trapped in a hole that they must rescue him from. 

George Lucas’ inspiration from Campbell is well documented, though I think I cannot explain it better than he himself and so will not try- “I wrote many drafts of this work and then I stumbled across The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It was the first time that I really began to focus . . . I went around in circles for a long time trying to come up with stories, and the script rambled all over and I ended up with hundreds of pages. It was The Hero with a Thousand Faces that just took what was about 500 pages and said, here is the story. Here’s the end; here’s the focus; here’s the way it’s all laid out. It was all there and had been there for thousands and thousands of years, as Mr. Campbell pointed out. And I said, “This is it.” After reading more of Joe’s books I began to understand how I could do this (1985)” 

Final Notes- 

While it seems uncouth to drop another block quote after just doing one with Lucas, this is an informal journal, and I’ll do as I please by including as a closing remark this quote from Campbell about the heroine’s journey and why he cannot write that book regardless of how much he might research it (emphasis my own): 

“I don’t know what the counterpart would be in the woman’s case . . .  There is a feminine counterpart to the trials and the difficulties, but it certainly is in a different mode. I don’t know the counterpart––the real counterpart, not the woman pretending to be male, but the normal feminine archetypology of this experience. I wouldn’t know what that would be. Women will have to tell us the way a woman experiences the journey, if it is the same journey (1983).” 

 

Books referenced with page numbers: 

Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press 

Adams, Richard. Watership Down. Penguin Books 

All other quotes are courtesy of the Joseph Campbell Foundation 

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