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The hero's journey story concept outline
The hero's journey story concept outline
Hero's journey with true grit
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Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” is a common myth in global mythology. The hero’s journey is exactly what its name implies; a tale of a hero’s deeds and adventures. The stages and sub-stages that Campbell outlines as part of the journey are simply guidelines and don’t appear in every story, but this is what makes each story unique. Jeff “the Dude” Lebowski is not much of a hero himself, but his story certainly falls in line with the hero’s journey.
The Big Lebowski is a parody of Raymond Chandler style hardboiled detective stories about men swept up into mysteries and conspiracies much larger than they initially appear. Jeffery “the Dude” Lebowski (hereafter referred to only as the Dude) is a slacker mistaken for the millionaire Jeffery Lebowski (the titular Big Lebowski) by pornographer Jacky Treehorn’s thugs. The Big Lebowski’s wife, Bunny, owes money to Treehorn, and when his goons come to collect one of them urinates on the Dude’s rug as an act of intimidation before they realize they’ve got the wrong guy. That rug really tied the room together, so the following day the Dude goes to the Big Lebowski’s mansion to demand compensation, but their meeting doesn’t go very well. The next day Bunny is kidnapped and held for ransom by an unknown party, and the Big Lebowski enlists the Dude’s services to get her back. So begins the Dude’s hero journey.
The first stage of the hero’s journey is the departure. This stage begins when a herald gives the hero the call to adventure. The herald in this story is the Big Lebowski who as a bitter, crippled old man fits the description of the herald having a loathsome, underestimated appearance. The call to adventure comes when he offers the Dude $20,000 to make the drop off of Bun...
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...al stage of his journey, the return.
All the Dude has wanted to do since the bungled drop off is go back to his regular life, and at this point he is finally ready to cross the return threshold. With the revelation that Bunny was never in any danger and the kidnapping situation behind him, it looks as though the Dude is free to go, but unfortunately the nihilists still think he has the ransom money. The dragon battle with them and his friend Donny’s subsequent death are the final road blocks between the Dude and his peaceful life.
The Dude was already at peace with himself and his world at the beginning of the story. The real journey for him was trying to get back to the way things were before his rug got peed on. The Dude isn’t the kind of guy one would expect to find in the leading role of a hero myth, but his story still fits into Campbell’s myth structure.
One well-known example of “The Hero’s Journey” from popular culture is the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling. In the novel, Harry Potter, the main character, is the chosen one and “The Hero’s Journey” applies to his life from the moment he is attacked by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as a baby. Joseph Campbell calls the initial phase of a hero’s development the “Call to Adventure.” The call is the in... ...
Joseph Campbell’s many stories are all different but have the same concept. They speak about journeys they go on and the hero of the story also has a problem they have to face before they can continue the journey. Ordinary World, Call to adventure, Supernatural aid, Crossing the first threshold, The belly of the whale, Road of trail’s,
As the story comes to its conclusion, the hero has endured his hardships; he went from the one that started fights to the one that thought of what could make everything work. An ordinary person in an ordinary world faced his share of trials and tribulations to come out as a new person. Defining the hero myth—he struggled and still was able to triumph to his prize at the end ; individuals relish these type of stories, they can
Watching a film, one can easily recognize plot, theme, characterization, etc., but not many realize what basic principle lies behind nearly every story conceived: the hero’s journey. This concept allows for a comprehensive, logical flow throughout a movie. Once the hero’s journey is thoroughly understood, anyone can pick out the elements in nearly every piece. The hero’s journey follows a simple outline. First the hero in question must have a disadvantaged childhood. Next the hero will find a mentor who wisely lays out his/her prophecy. Third the hero will go on a journey, either literal or figurative, to find him/herself. On this journey the hero will be discouraged and nearly quit his/her quest. Finally, the hero will fulfill the prophecy and find his/herself, realizing his/her full potential. This rubric may be easy to spot in epic action films, but if upon close inspection is found in a wide array of genres, some of which are fully surprising.
To fully appreciate the significance of the plot one must fully understand the heroic journey. Joseph Campbell identified the stages of the heroic journey and explains how the movie adheres meticulously to these steps. For example, the first stage of the hero’s journey is the ordinary world (Campbell). At the beginning, the structure dictates that the author should portray the protagonist in their ordinary world, surrounded by ordinary things and doing ordinary tasks so that the author might introduce the reasons that the hero needs the journey in order to develop his or her character or improve his or her life (Vogler 35). The point of this portrayal is to show the audience what the protagonist’s life is currently like and to show what areas of his or her life are conflicted or incomplete. When the call to adventure occurs, the protagonist is swept away into another world, one that is full of adventure, danger, and opportunities to learn what needs to be learned. T...
The “Call to Adventure” is the part in the hero’s journey where the hero receives their first
The Big Lebowski is a stoner comedy about a middle-aged hippie who likes to go bowling. The main action of the plot begins when two thugs break into Jeffery Lebowski’s (a.k.a “The Dude”) apartment and try to shake him down for debt his wife has incurred. After some physical abuse, a lot of yelling, and a rug-urination incident the Dude is able to convince them that they have the wrong man. The thugs have come to the wrong Jeffery Lebowski’s house there is another man by the same name with a “nympho” wife named Bunny and much more money. At the instigation of his bowling buddies, the violent Vietnam veteran Walter and the meek and rarely heard Donnie, he takes his soiled rug to the mansion of the “Big Lebowski” to demand a replacement. He eventually leaves, having taken a replacement rug off the floor of the big Lebowski’s floor. This odd incident leads to his involvement in the complicated kidnapping of Bunny. Though he insists that the woman has simply gone on vacation without bothering to tell her much-older husband, the Dude finds himself inextricably involved in a plot involving a pornographer, nihilists, and a kind-of love affair with the big Lebowski’s daughter Maude. Eventually the...
When the story begins, the hero meets a herald who will bring changes to the hero’s life. For example, Campbell uses the beginning of the Grimm brothers’ “The Frog Prince.” A young princess meets a frog who wants to help her by returning her missing golden ball. Campbell says that the frog “signified no more than the coming of adolescence” (Campbell 42). Sometimes the hero will reject the call and a herald must aid them in answering it. In the example Campbell gave, the princess originally rejected the frog, but determined to make sure the princess kept her promise, the frog followed her until the king made her.
The hero’s journey can be seen as a set of laws or challenges that every hero faces through their own journey(Christopher Vogler). The hero’s journey is used as a general term such as all
“The Hero’s Journey.” Ariane Publications, 1997. Course handout. AS English I. Dept. of English, Woodside High School. 26 October 2013.
Throughout the years, certain writers were able to set off a deep sympathetic resonance within readers by their usage of archetypal patterns. One of those patterns is known as the hero's journey, which Joseph Campbell gave an understandable idea of in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. According to his book, while comparing world's mythology, he found that no matter how far cultures are from each other, they will still have the same structure of hero's journey in their legends (Voytilla vii).
The article,”The Hero’s Journey Defined,” is written by Anthony Ubelhor. A respected scholar, Joseph Campbell, described a cycle of a hero’s journey in mythology consisting of three stages; Departure, Initiation, and Return. The author, Anthony Ubelhor, goes into detail about Joseph Campbell’s work, explaining the entire passage leading up to as well as after the hero’s journey. In Departure, a hero is summoned, aided, and sent out on his quest. The author explains the call to adventure, “...destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown,”. The author’s description of Departure is significant to my understanding of the passage, because his description
The Hero’s Journey is an ancient archetype that we find throughout our modern life and also, in the world of literature.Whether metaphorical or real, the journey that a character goes on shows not only the incredible transformation of the hero but it also gives them their life meaning. It is the ultimate human experience and it reflects on every aspect of life. Take Logan, also known as Wolverine, from the X-Men movie as an example. His adventure starts with “The Call,” which is the first step of the Hero’s Journey. This step happens due to the realization of imbalance and injustice that the character has in their life. Logan steps into the first stage of the pattern but is hesitant to start his adventure because he does not know what and
Holmes, Thomas. “The hero’s journey: an inquiry-research model. Jun 2007, vol 34 issue 5, p19-22.4p. 1 Diagram
Joseph Campbell was a well known mythology teacher who spent his whole life trying to understand the different types of stories that are told. To Campbell “all humans are involved in a struggle to accomplish the adventure of the hero in their own lives.” He made a list of stages that every hero goes through, and sums it up to three sections: separation (the departure), the initiation, and the return.