Heroism In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness” (Campbell 1). These words by the scholar Joseph Campbell illustrates his philosophy of the hero’s journey, which contains the three criteria of a hero. From these three criteria, he describes a hero’s journey beginning with a departure, fulfillment, and a return which encompasses the hero’s sacrifice for the good of others. As a result, from Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the characters could be applied to Campbell’s theory of heroism due to their life experiences. For example, the character Rose does not undergo a heroic journey. From Campbell’s theory of heroism, Rose contains the departure and the fulfillment of a hero; however, she lacks a concrete return Campbell describes as the moral objective to sacrifice for another person or idea. To start with, Campbell explains that departure is the first stage in which the character traverses to enter the unknown. To demonstrate, Joseph Campbell elaborates on how the departure begins when he says, “There are both kinds of heroes, some that choose to undertake the journey and some that don’t” (Campbell 3). In Rose’s case, she voluntarily ventures …show more content…

By going through her relationship with Ted, an event which Rose struggled through, her journey would have been complete if she sought to save someone as told by Campbell. Regardless, she has traveled through a departure and a fulfillment stage when she met Ted and had a divorce; however, it is apparent that she is missing the paramount moral of heroism when she only sought to benefit herself by acquiring the house. All things considered, Rose still had a change in consciousness when she was deep in thought about how to face her divorce and accordingly, she acted upon what she desired. Hence, she only fulfilled part of the