The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) Third Edition

This book should be included in high school reading. Regardless of whether you agree with the ideas it is a wonderful example of research, passion, and hard work. It is also well written and brings up religious, societal, and psychological questions and issues that should be examined, researched further, and discussed not just among the academics, but among everyone. Teenagers should be given the chance to get a global, historical picture of religions and how they have shaped the world so that they can be more informed and prepared to create their own personal beliefs and rituals in order to be healthy, functioning adults out in the world who are tolerant and respectful of everyone around them.

This book is for the serious reader who is looking to learn more about the origins and power of myths in their historical context and how timeless symbols including archetypes are being "rediscovered" from a psychological perspective. For the uninitiated, this is an eye opening book in that Joseph Campbell is able to demonstrate in a masterful way how many of "the patterns and logic of fairy tale and myth correspond to those of dream, [and how] the long discredited chimeras of archaic man have returned dramatically to the foreground of modern consciousness" [page 255].

If you are a curious individual or student of history, then you'll find The Hero With A Thousand Faces to be a fascinating read as the author probes deeply into the origins and significance of mythology from epistemological, ontological, psychological, and teleological perspectives. Whether you are a student of the ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Karl Abraham or others, you're sure to find a wealth of valuable information and "perspective" in this book.

A happy outcome is that by reading this book you may glean a glimpse of your own heroes journey. That fact is worth the price of the book alone. It also makes a great gift for anyone who enjoys being reflective and is not fearful of diving into their own psyche and what they might find.

Robert "Bob" Wright, Jr., Ph.D., COFT

All the way back in 1949, Joseph Campbell wrote a book titled The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The book contains hundreds of examples of stories from a wide range of mythology, including those from Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Native American, and Greek (and countless other) canons.

Campbell identifies similarities in style as well as structure between the great adventure stories/mythologies throughout human history. Famously, he determines specific characteristics about the hero and his or her journey, hence the term (coined by Campbell) familiar to readers and writers alike, The Hero’s Journey. In effect, there is a very specific set of rules governing what makes a great story. And just in case I wasn’t certain of the extent of Campbell’s research, the book contains over forty pages of endnotes and other references. The man put in the research time.

Reading The Hero With a Thousand Faces came at the perfect time for me. I’d heard of it and seen it recommended to me on Amazon for quite some time, but I never took the time to actually read it. Actually, I “Wikipedia’d” it a few times, but that was the extent of that. But in finally reading the book, Campbell has helped me understand much better some of the ideas that I’ve been working out in my weekly “Books of the Bible” review posts. If you’ve read any of my recent Bible book reviews, you’ll immediately recognize that Campbell has already clearly written what I’m still trying to figure out for myself. For example:

“For the symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche…”

Powerful stuff.

Here are the rules governing the first great stage of the adventure story (some of it is paraphrased in my own words):

The Call to Adventure
Initial Refusal to Heed the Call
Supernatural Aid/Mentor/“Old Man” (Old man is a direct quote from Campbell.)
Crossing the First Threshold
Belly of the Whale (The Point When the Hero’s Death/Ultimate Failure seems Certain)

Truly, Exodus would have been the perfect story to compare with Campbell’s ruleset, but I just wrote a review of Exodus last week, so I wanted to do something different. The Karate Kid might just might be the most perfect modern example of them all (and one of my favorite movies). So I thought it might be interesting to see just how closely the writers of this movie follow Campbell’s rules.

Young New Jersey native Daniel is called to the great land of adventure (California) by his mother. He hates it there (his initial macro-reluctance to heed the call) and would like nothing more than to move back home. The only saving grace (besides a pretty girl) is a mentor (Mr. Myagi) that he meets when he arrives. After getting into some trouble with the local bullies, Daniel’s mentor signs him up for a karate tournament. Daniel is mortified and has no faith in his ability to survive a karate tournament like that (Micro-reluctance to Heed the Call), “I cannot believe… what you got me into back there!”

But Daniel does as his mentor says and enters the tournament anyway (Crossing the First Threshold), where he manages to make it to the semifinals, further than he ever dreamed, before even hitting a snag. When he gets there, young bully Bobby cheats in a most despicable manner, kicking Daniel directly in the knee, damaging Daniel’s body seemingly beyond repair (into the Belly of the Whale, i.e., Daniel’s ultimate defeat seems certain). But just as soon as all hope is lost, Daniel’s mentor heals his leg through supernatural methods and Daniel comes back to win the tournament, his dignity, and the girl. Indeed, it’s a Hero’s Journey almost worthy of Moses.

Note: There are other rules and further stages to the story that I haven’t included in this short review, but it seems to me that these are certainly the essential components to the modern story. Maybe some other time, I can write about the further stages and which stories they apply to (Lord of the Rings comes to mind).

My final say on this book is as follows: If you’re a student of religion, mythology or philosophy, or if you are a writer (whether of music, poetry, or fiction), read this book. It contains a lot of good information.

This is the guideline for understanding not only all of stories, but all of storytelling. Across cultures from every corner in the planet, the same themes show up time and again--but why? This book looks at why we tell stories, and what deeper truths we can know about humanity from the fact that ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Native American tribes, and African tribes, all consumed themselves with stories that have way more in common with Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad, then you'd think.

Skeptics have pointed to ancient myths, authentically dated well before the life of Christ, that ring far too familiar to His story. They'll say this is proof that Christianity is B.S., but Joseph Campbell says it must mean something deeper.

Campbell was a Christian, and I'm an agnostic, but I'd say anyone who can dig through his heavy rhetoric will find something really valuable here, regardless of their previous spiritual beliefs.

I love Joseph Campbell and this is an exhaustive collection of his works and the Heroes Journey. You have to be very focused when reading. It is a complicated read!

I highly recommend this book if you're wanting to know how to write a screenplay. The author goes step by step on focusing on the hero of your story and the journey he/she has to take in order to full fill his/her destiny. Mr. Campbell uses examples for ancient stories to prove his point. The book is not at all boring and I finished it within a day. I also recommend this for college students.