The Power of Myth

Campbell stresses the transformative message of the hero’s journey myth. The hero always begins his journey with a feeling that “there’s something lacking in the normal experiences available” (152), and so he seeks an original experience that will “bring [him] forth into a richer or mature condition” (152). Campbell argues that the message of transformation makes a hero’s journey symbolic of every person’s life, particularly of the psychological transformation from childhood to adulthood. The ultimate trial of our lives is learning to think unselfishly. In doing so, we can awaken our consciousness to our place and duties in a larger community and universe. Campbell stresses that hero journeys are metaphors for a shared human experience rather than historical stories of exemplary people who cannot be imitated.

Campbell discusses the thesis of his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which proposes the concept of the monomyth—a hero’s journey with a vision quest that involves a spiritual transformation of consciousness. Campbell observes that there are three main ways a hero can embark on this kind of journey. The most common is a hero who “sets out responsibly and intentionally to perform the deed” (158). The second is a hero who is forced onto a journey and into a new role, like being drafted into the army. The final way is a hero ignorantly entering the journey with “no idea what he is doing but suddenly find[ing] himself in a transformed realm”—a common figure in Celtic myths (158). Despite these variations, which depend on culture and environment, the monomyth of trial and transformation remains the archetypal structure.

Campbell and Moyers reiterate their view that modernity alienates people from the spiritual world and disconnects them from acts of heroism. Although Moyers celebrates that the quality of life today is vastly improved from “the plagues of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries” (160), Campbell argues that modern peoples are riddled with “a sociological stagnation of inauthentic lives and living […] that evokes nothing of our spiritual life, our potentialities, or even our physical courage” (161). People have intellectual stimulation but not the spiritual or bodily stimulation necessary for a heroic life. Campbell and Moyers argue that, due to the sedentary nature of modern life, people view heroic deeds as a spectacle to be watched rather than as something they can try to experience firsthand. Heroic stories in the modern world “[invoke] in us the benign passivity of watching instead of acting,” leading to further disconnection from spiritual themes and values (161).

Campbell compares the stories of Buddha, Jesus, and Moses to show the similarities between savior stories across time. Each savior goes off into solitude, receives enlightenment, and returns to his community with life-changing illumination. Buddha receives illumination about the way to Nirvana by meditating alone under the tree of immortal knowledge; Jesus learns of his divinity while spending 40 days alone in the desert; and Moses brings down “the tables of law” after ascending a mountain alone (167). Campbell further compares the stories of Jesus and Buddha, which share the motif of resisting temptation and contain apostle-like figures—Ananda and Peter—who spread the savior’s message. The stories each have cultural and location-specific details, but underneath these details, there is “but one archetypal mythic hero” (166) whose “visionary journeys are much the same” (172).

Campbell and Moyers closely examine the mythological motifs in Star Wars. To Campbell, the villain Darth Vader is a symbol of unformed humanity because he is “living not in terms of himself, but in terms of an imposed system” (178). Darth Vader contrasts with the hero, Luke Skywalker, who rejects the system and follows his own beliefs. The story suggests that one can avoid becoming like Darth Vader by learning to trust one’s feelings and values as Luke does. Campbell and Moyers are particularly interested in how the concept of the Force reflects the transcendent life energy that appears in mythology. Understanding the Force awakens the individual to the connections between and within all things. Campbell points to the movie’s popularity as evidence of its potential resonance with young people who seek new mythological stories about life’s mysteries.

Campbell considers the challenge of following individual bliss while also living harmoniously in society. First, he tells the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain goes on an adventure to receive a blow from the Green Knight, stopping along the way at a castle where he receives advances from a beautiful lady. Gawain stays true to his aim of seeking the Green Knight while also remaining loyal to “the ideals of the order of the knighthood” by resisting temptation (190). Thus, Gawain successfully navigates both individual and societal codes. The next story comes Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which focuses on “the three transformations of the spirit” (191). The spirit symbolically begins as a camel, carrying the expectations of society as an adolescent would. The spirit then becomes a lion who fights a dragon named Thou Shalt; here the maturing self fights off those expectations to grow into an autonomous individual. The spirit finally turns into a baby who operates from a “pure impulse to living” (191). These stages symbolize a person’s journey from a dependent child to an independent adult.

Campbell tells the story of the young Buddha to exemplify the thesis that while suffering is an intrinsic part of life, it can be borne through a transformation of consciousness. As a young boy, the Buddha is confined to his palace, but he suddenly decides he wants to go into town. On the first three of these trips, he sees the three great sufferings of life—sickness, old age, and death. On the final trip, he sees a priest, who symbolizes the search for the path to escape suffering. The experience prompts the Buddha to embark on the same search, which ultimately leads him to Nirvana—a transformed “psychological state of mind in which you are released from desire and fear” (200). Myths teach that compassion for the suffering of others, as evidenced by the young Buddha, can help us to transcend our own suffering.