Source: Masterplots II: Nonfiction Series; March 1989, p1-4 Article Author: Mazzeno, Laurence W.; Includes bibliography Document Type: Work Analysis Biographical Information: Campbell, Joseph Gender: Male National Identity: United States Language: English Publication Information: Salem Press Abstract: A summary and analysis of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Literary Genres/Subgenres: Criticism; Nonfiction Subject Terms: Culture Heroes or heroism Learning or scholarship Literature Manners or customs Mythology or myths Social life Storytelling Tradition ISBN: 0-89356-478-8 Accession Number: 103331NON11169260000095 Publisher Logo: HTML Full Text The Hero with a Thousand Faces Contents Quick Reference Form and Content Analysis Critical Context Bibliography Listen Select: Joseph Campbell Born: March 26, 1904; New York, New York Died: October 30, 1987; Honolulu, Hawaii Quick Reference First published: 1949 Type of work: Cultural criticism Form and Content Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces is primarily a scholarly study of a cultural phenomenon: the appearance of the figure of the hero in the various literatures of both Eastern and Western societies. In the course of his investigation, Campbell uses the tools of psychology and psychoanalysis to assist him in uncovering the answer to several intriguing questions. “Why is mythology everywhere the same, beneath its varieties of costume? And what does it teach?” More specifically, what similarities do the various stories from different civilizations share? What are the underlying characteristics of “the hero” who appears in these stories, a figure admired for his exploits in aiding society at large? In the course of his analysis, however, Campbell digresses from the scholarly format on occasion to discuss the larger social and political implications of his findings and to issue a call to readers to recognize ways in which heroism can become a part of their own lives. Campbell begins with an explanation of the pervasiveness of myth in all societies and cultures, noting its function as a means of making the world around primitive man more intelligible. His inquiry into the nature of myth leads him to the discovery that, though every group has its own particular tales about heroes, the stories from such diverse places as China, North America, India, and Mexico share certain similarities. What Campbell sees is a strikingly rigid pattern beneath the variety of details. This he calls the Adventure of the Hero, a carefully structured series of events that leads the chosen one from a state of normalcy within society to a position set apart from his fellow citizens; as a result of his adventure, the hero becomes the object of their admiration and reverence. The outline is simple enough and one immediately recognizable to anyone who has read a number of ancient tales. The “standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero” is one of “separation — initiation — return”: A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. In his lengthy analysis of more than two dozen disparate ethnic and racial groups, Campbell fills 391 pages with hundreds of anecdotes to demonstrate his thesis. Two major divisions of The Hero with a Thousand Faces focus on the Adventure of the Hero and on what Campbell calls the Cosmogonic Cycle, the manifold guises that the hero may take in the hundreds of societies where stories of heroes were generated. In part 1, Campbell outlines the generic elements of the Quest that all heroes undertake. First there is a Call, which the hero often refuses; then Supernatural aid is often provided to head the hero toward his destiny. The hero crosses a symbolic threshold, beyond which he cannot retreat from his quest, as he begins his initiation into the mysterious world of adventure where he must do one of several things — rescue a maiden, recover a treasure — before returning to his society to receive the adulation accorded to one who braves the various kinds of demons that keep the more faint of heart from undertaking the Adventure. Often he must descend into the underworld, or into some night realm, cut off from society. He may meet with a Goddess or Temptress, or both; he must learn to adjust his feelings toward women in either role. As a result of his adventure, the hero gains some knowledge of the world, and his return to society allows him to share his newfound knowledge with his fellow citizens, thus improving society at large. In part 2, Campbell details the many ways in which the hero may function in society: as warrior, lover, emperor, saint, even redeemer. Whatever the guise, the hero contributes something to his culture, giving the average member of a community a model for action, holding out hope for the group at large to advance in its fight to create an Edenic world by rising above the forces of darkness and anarchy that constantly threaten to dismember it. The text is amply illustrated with photographs and line art displaying the appearance of the hero in a variety of forms — sculpture, painting, architecture. Campbell also provides numerous explanatory footnotes that further detail the wide-ranging basis for his argument. There is also an excellent index to aid the reader in locating specific references to the hundreds of stories and dozens of ideas Campbell interweaves throughout his text. Analysis The first thing that strikes a reader of The Hero with a Thousand Faces is the breadth of Campbell’s scholarship. The author ranges East and West, from the earliest recorded civilizations to contemporary cultures, to collect stories of heroes for examination and dissection under his critical microscope. The eclecticism with which he approaches his materials suggests not only that he is a scholar of great acumen but that his work is truly universal in its applicability as well. Certainly, the reader will come away not only understanding the manifold similarities that exist in folktales of heroes from hundreds of different parts of the world but also appreciating the nature of the hero’s quest: a journey that will reveal to the hero something about himself and something about the nature of the world, something key to human happiness that society has lost, and which the hero can restore to it. Whatever the country, whatever the century, these tales of heroes reveal that man is indeed a microcosm for civilization: The pattern of a person’s life and that of a society are similar. In fact, the individual human life is simply a part of a natural pattern of energy within the world; ultimately, when all living organisms work in harmony, sharing the benefits of the world rather than hoarding objects for individual advantage, happiness results for all. Unlike the hero, however, the common folk do not rise to this level of awareness about the nature of the world; in fact, the members of society at large are often at odds with the hero, and sometimes it is only through superhuman effort that the hero is able to make society see that it is drifting away from happiness because it does not understand or appreciate the “oneness” of all living things. Campbell deduces from his study of these many heroes that human societies are constantly drifting from activity into inactivity, from knowledge into ignorance; the hero’s task is to bring back lost knowledge, to get society moving again toward bettering itself by coming to understand the way nature works and the way man fits into the cosmic scheme. Tales of casting out monsters symbolize the cleansing of those beasts within the individual or the society that promote stasis. Campbell calls these beasts the Holdfasts, the preservers of the status quo, those who, for selfish reasons, want to hold onto possessions or ideas or old ways rather than share things with others — which, as the hero discovers, is the only way for individuals to better their lot and for society to achieve real progress. This notion is similar to the observation of one of the Western world’s greatest heroes, King Arthur, who in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859-1885) tells his faithful companion Sir Bedivere, “The old order changeth, yielding place to new,/ And God fulfills himself in many ways.” Campbell does not argue, however, that God, in the traditional way in which human beings have thought of God, is the ultimate object of the hero’s quest. While most of these tales of heroes have religious overtones, Campbell does not view the religious impulse as the final explanation for the similarities he sees in all tales of the hero. In fact, he views religion as simply a form of symbolic representation by which people have managed to explain the unexplainable. Instead, Campbell finds the root of the similarities in the psychological makeup of the human species. Myth and religion are simply ways in which mankind has expressed metaphorically the impulses that dwell in the unconscious mind. Campbell is fulsome in his praise for Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and their disciples who have “demonstrated irrefutably that the logic, the heroes, and the deeds of myth survive into modern times.” These pioneers of psychology have provided an intellectual framework in which man can finally understand, without resorting to metaphor, the pattern and significance of the quest for self-knowledge that leads to a greater appreciation of what it means to be human. His text is filled with analysis of the psychological ramifications of the various stories detailing the hero’s descent into the underworld, his meetings with supernatural figures, his mastery of skills, and his triumphs over monsters and ogres. Using primarily the techniques of dream analysis popularized by Freud and the explanation of archetypes outlined by Jung, Campbell shows how the hero’s triumph is not over outside forces but over himself: “The perilous journey” turns out in every case to be “not of attainment but of reattainment, not discovery but rediscovery. The godly powers” which the hero strives to possess “are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time.” Campbell’s manner of presentation for this provocative thesis is largely anecdotal. Entire pages of the text are often devoted simply to recounting in detail the adventures of a hero whose story illustrates a single point Campbell wishes to make. The juxtaposition of tales from a variety of cultures helps Western readers understand the universality of these stories, and Campbell frequently chooses to illustrate his argument with non-Western examples for precisely that reason, leaving it to readers to see the parallels to stories with which they are more familiar. For example, after giving a brief account of the biblical version of the Virgin Birth, Campbell devotes several pages to stories from India, Tonga, and pre-Columbian South America — all to make the point that the miraculous tale of Jesus’ conception is not unique but simply one of several such tales about heroes who come as redeemers to their civilizations. At another point, after quoting the Creation story from the first chapter of Genesis, he adds that this “is the Biblical version of a myth known to many lands.” In part, at least, Campbell is out to demonstrate that no religion has unique or privileged claim on mankind; all are simply representations of the human need to find explanations for vexing phenomena. There is, too, in Campbell, a nonscholarly bent toward the dramatic, a sense that scholarship must be placed in service to a higher political or social calling. On numerous occasions in the text he interrupts his commentary to exhort his readers to some kind of special awareness or even to action. If there is an overriding purpose beyond the scholar’s desire to illuminate or explain the past, Campbell expresses it succinctly near the close of his study: “The hero-deed to be wrought is not today what it was in the century of Galileo,” he notes; instead, it “must be that of questing to bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the coordinated soul.” This cannot be accomplished by turning away from modern advances; the contemporary hero must face progress squarely so that he may make the modern world “spiritually significant” or in other words make “it possible for men and women to come to full human maturity through the conditions of contemporary life.” Humanity itself is now “the crucial mystery” to be penetrated by the contemporary hero, the “alien presence with whom the forces of egoism must come to terms.” The modern hero must seek to understand the true human nature in spite of current prejudices against doing so, the chief among them, Campbell intimates, being the spirits of individualism, misguided religious fanaticism, and nationalism that characterize twentieth century society worldwide. These are the monsters from which the contemporary hero must save mankind. Campbell’s modern hero is modeled on existentialist lines. Like Friedrich Nietzsche’s Superman, he relies on no gods or demons to support him, believes in no magic totems to ward off forces bent on his destruction. Instead, he recognizes clearly that none of these exist — except in his own mind. The ultimate horror that he confronts is much like the horror that Joseph Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz cries out against in Heart of Darkness (1902): The potential for savagery, greed, cruelty, and bestiality exists within man himself, as forces to keep him from realizing his full potential and achieving happiness. Campbell’s contemporary hero will come to grips with himself, understanding the need to give of himself so that society will prosper. Critical Context The Hero with a Thousand Faces is Joseph Campbell’s major contribution to scholarship, the crowning achievement of a distinguished career as an editor and author. It is the most famous of his works on primitive mythologies, which include his multivolume study The Masks of God (1959-1968). Though Campbell makes only one reference to Thomas Carlyle, his study of heroism is a direct descendant of Carlyle’s On Heroes and Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1840); the works are especially similar in that both authors digress from scholarly examination of evidence to engage in rhetorical flourishes exhorting their readers to recognize the benefits of the heroic life-style to society at large. Campbell is also clearly indebted to the work of Sir James Frazer, whose ground-breaking study The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion (1890-1915) pointed the way for many who have sought to uncover the mysteries underlying myth and ritual in earlier civilizations. Nietzsche, too, provides Campbell an ideological backdrop; his theory of the hero, especially the existential hero facing the realities of life in a world where the notion of God has been exploded, underpins Campbell’s own explanation of the psychological significance of the hero’s quest for knowledge about himself and the world. Campbell’s work is one of several written in the twentieth century to use the findings of anthropology and psychology to illuminate literary study. It is a fitting companion piece to such classics as Claude Levi-Strauss’ Anthropologie structurale (1958; Structural Anthropology, 1963), Maud Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination (1934), and Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957). These and other standards of archetypal criticism help to make clear to the student of literature the relationship between the varying myths that lie at the base of any civilization’s writings and demonstrate the psychological dimension of the art of literary creation. Essay by: Laurence W. Mazzeno Bibliography Chase, Richard. Review in The Nation. CLXIX (July 2, 1949), p. 17. Lord, George de Forest. Trials of the Self: Heroic Ordeals in the Epic Tradition, 1983. The New Yorker. Review. XXV (May 7, 1949), p. 113. Radin, Max. Review in The New York Times. XCVIII (July 2, 1949), p. 23. Reinhold, H. A. Review in Commonweal. L (July 8, 1949), p. 321.
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