In his book, The Heroes Journey, Joseph Campbell described two kinds of heroes: spiritual heroes, such as Ghandi or Christ, and physical heroes, such as Achilles and the other ancient gods of mythology. Many times the significance of the spiritual hero surpasses the achievements of the physical heroes, because spiritual growth is so crucial to improving one's life. Several scholars have said that there is no better story than that of the heroes journey. It is a common element in songs, stories, epic poems, as well as current films. One can easily see the heroes journey in most works of art. When one studies them closely, one can see the basic heroes journey pattern in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Dante's The Inferno, and Burke's Reflections of the Revolution in France, and realizing this theme, one can gain a better insight into the meaning of each work.
There are three basic parts to the heroes journey: the call, the journey, and the return. The call can include several things: a call to service, drafts, or just the inner voice of an individual telling him that there is something to be done in his life. The call is the moment when an individual is called from his ordinary life to go out into the unknown. A person can either accept or refuse the call. If the call is refused, one will plunge into the wasteland. The wasteland, as it is discussed in several philosophy courses, is a place where we dwell in our fears. Many people refuse the call, because they lack the courage and risk factor to accept it.
Simply put, the wasteland is the state of mind we are in when we give into our fears, and take the easy or safe way out of our problems. Unfortunately, this process leads to worse situations, such as bad dreams or nightmares, self-deprecating thoughts, and addictions. We feel our life is empty, so we seek out instant gratification to fill the void that is left inside us. A common characteristic of the wasteland is that when we are stuck there, activities we normally enjoy don't bring us any satisfaction or enjoyment anymore. At least fifty percent of today's Americans are stuck in the wasteland, which could be one explanation for this society's dependence on prescription drugs. Being in the wasteland becomes a very bad problem when we do not realize that we're in it. The wasteland slowly and methodically produces stagnant lives. Our souls tend to dry up and lose vitality. It inhibits and sometimes destroys our relationships with others because we tend to get angry when those around try to help us. It can quickly spiral to a life time of sorrow and discontent. It is the ego that prevents us from getting in touch with our inner voice. Control, rules from society, teachers, and parents, can hinder the closeness we should have with our inner voice. If we are in touch with our inner voice, however, we will accept the call. If one does accept the call, he goes onto the journey itself, when he will encounter several trials that will help his character to grow.
The journey exposes a person to the trials, which make us grow stronger. The trials are typically very difficult situations, where we are forced to look critically at ourselves in order to make a much-needed change. It is on the journey that one is forced to face his fears. Trials develop our character because they develop courage, a willingness to sacrifice, and they always teach us lessons needed to grow up. It is the trials themselves that force us to grow up, to be stronger, and to instill humility. After we suffer and grow from our trials, we experience the return.
The return is the time that one comes home in order to revitalize his family or culture. It is here that one must trust a higher power or inner voice. Carl Jung said the inner voice is the self, and it must be trusted and listened to in order for one to revitalize the society he lives in. The most evident of this process is seen in Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The very first sentence of Thus Spoke Zarathustra informs us of the potential for a heroes journey plot. "When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains" (79). Here we see that he left an assumedly nice habitat to become a hermit. This exemplifies the courage that is necessary in order to accept the call. It would have been easy for him to stay in his element and be content, but he decided to face his fears and leave the safety at his home. Thus the journey began. "Here he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not tire of it. But at last a change came over his heart, and one morning he rose with the dawn, stepped before the sun…" (79). Zarathustra was being prompted by his inner voice. He listened to it, obeyed it, and decided to go down the mountain:
Behold, I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to receive it. I would give away and distribute, until the wise among men find joy once again in their folly, and the poor in their riches. For that I must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening when you go behind the sea and still bring light to the underworld, you overrich star. Like you, I must go under--go down, as is said by man, to whom I want to descend (79).
After his long exile from humanity, he aspired to teach man the knowledge he had gained from his decade of reflection. He realized that he may have been mocked, even persecuted for what he had to teach the villagers, but he went down anyway. He suffered the fear of being rejected, and grew as a person as well, because he did not let his anxiety rule him. It was time to teach the world what he had learned.
The return is always the most important part of the heroes journey, because the lazy, passive man who does not act on his inner promptings is a bad man. The peaceful, content man who does not strive to better himself or challenge those around him is a bad man. "Zarathustra has changed, Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra is an awakened one" (80). The awakening is the first step to what Zarathustra has to teach the villagers, it is the first step to achieving the overman. "I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?…man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment" (82). Zarathustra challenged the people around him. He wanted the villagers to go under, to let go, to submit to the higher power within them all, which is the overman, to bring them to the awakening.
It is only through this awakening that we can realize our own faults and personal limitations, and begin our own journey to the overman. It is Nietzsche himself who is challenging the world as a race to try to better ourselves, to evolve, to create something new, different, and superior to the worms still inside us. Zarathustra explained to the people that through the power of disgust with our previous selves, the overman is born. The self-loathing we feel will give way to an excitement, a need for change and empowerment. Through this chaotic energy, the overman is able to overcome mankind, to make right what has been wrong in the past.
Nietzsche's metaphor of the tightrope artist is a very intriguing one, for it is not immediately that we grasp the concept. There are two towers in the story. The first tower seems to represent man's beginning, from where and what we evolved. The second tower is the overman himself, the next phase, the improved version of a human being. It is this that we should all be striving for, towards which mankind should be moving. The rope that the tightrope walker is walking on is the bridge itself that takes a man from one point of his lifelong evolution to the next. The crowd down below, to which the tightrope walker falls signify the last men, those who will not try to better themselves. The walker himself is trying to evolve, but he is too careful. When one decides to go under, he must do so quickly, so that he does not lose his way because of pondering too much. The pole that the walker was carrying was sort of a life jacket or security blanket. As long as he held onto it, he was safe. The dwarf who jumped over the tightrope walker was perhaps Nietzsche himself, who is trying to hurry mankind along on their journeys to excellence. "What are you doing here between towers? The tower is where you belong. You ought to be locked up; you block the way for one better than yourself" (88). The tightrope walker was blocking the way for the rest of humanity, because he was too careful. Unfortunately, it seemed that the people were not yet ready to hear his message.
But Zarathustra became sad and said to his heart: "They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears. I seem to have lived too long in the mountains…My soul is unmoved and bright as the mountains in the morning. And now they look at me and laugh: and as they laugh they even hate me. There is ice in their laughter" (87).
No matter what the outcome, it is clear that Zarathustra had a successful journey. He listened to his inner voice, acted on those promptings, left the comforts of home, and learned. Then he brought his newly found knowledge to the people around him, and although it may have taken some time for them to understand him, they listened too.
The heroes journey is also seen in Dante's The Inferno, which although written several hundred years ago, is still a viable force in our educational system today. Dante accepts his call. The night before Good Friday, Dante finds himself adrift in a dark wood, "Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path" (113). Immediately, this tells us that Dante is not afraid to take risks in order to seek out a better understanding of life. "I raised my head and saw the hilltop shawled in morning rays of light sent from the planet that leads men straight ahead on every road…I rested my tired body there awhile and then began to climb the barren slope…" (113-114). The dawn sun revealed a beautiful mountain that he walked towards, but then the three beasts appeared and forced him to return to the forest. It is then that he is met by Virgil, who promises to rescue him and take him on a fantastic journey through the depths of Hell. Like many faced with a difficult call, Dante was seized by fear, but this is quickly alleviated when Virgil explains that Beatrice and the Virgin Mary sent him to escort Dante through the inferno. It is in the last two stanzas of the first canto that Dante accepts the call, making his way to his journey that will change him forever:
And I to him: "Poet, I beg of you, in the name of God, that God you never knew, save me from this evil place and worse, lead me there to the place you spoke about that I may see the gate Saint Peter guards and those whose anguish you have told me of (118).
Dante's journey is a long and painful one. Each level of hell progresses horribly, teaching Dante what happens to each kind of sinner when they die. It is a difficult journey--demanding in both emotional and physical ways. It is a necessary one, however, because, in essence, it is Dante's own journey to salvation. Dante said that he found himself, he came to his senses. He had strayed from the true faith without realizing it; "how I entered there I cannot truly say," (113). The important thing, however, is that he has the desire to return to God. Throughout the entire poem, Dante is insisting that man must continuously strive for goodness and righteousness. Because man is selfish by nature, man does not see how his day-to-day actions can so gravely influence his consequences. It is this that Dante wished to bring forth to the world.
Like all journeys, Dante's journey is plagued with fear: he was afraid of the dark wood, he was superstitiously afraid of the three beasts, and he was terrified by Virgil's offer to take him through hell. Luckily, however, Dante's inner voice prompted him to accompany Virgil, where he learned the "truth" about life after death. Dante's final trial was when he clearly saw Satan (Dis). Dante stood amazed and shaken in the presence of the horrendous devil, paralyzed with fear. He is so afraid, that Virgil was forced to pick him up and carry him out of hell. He was dazed for a while, until Virgil explains that they are out of hell and Dante sees the stars in the sky. We do not know what happened in the story after the perilous climb back up the hill. One can only assume that Dante's form of return was to publish this poem, even though he had been exiled from his birthplace. He once again risked estrangement from friends and church by writing and releasing this work to the public. Since this poem is required reading for most young adults, it would seem that Dante's journey had a successful return, for he will continue to revitalize societies across the globe.
Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is a powerful piece that still has great meaning in our time now. Knowing what we know about the French Revolution, it is easy to see the correlation between Burke and the heroes journey. The French Revolution was a time of unrest and, at times, pure terror. Thousands were brutally murdered; families were ripped apart, as was the country itself. Most people today know what speaking out against one's rulers can bring. In Burke's case, writing and publishing this piece could have cost him his life.
Burke accepted the call with no hesitations. While he was careful in the manner in which he did accept his call, he nonetheless was rocking the boat. He asked several probing questions which, when considering the ramifications thereof, could not be ignored. "Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her employment of a government (for she then had a government) without inquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom?…Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights?" (2). With these harsh statements, Burke is saying that he knows that just because the rebels took back their rights, they did it in the wrong manner. They acted without considering the consequences, so to Burke, they are no better than murderers who have escaped from prison. Burke uses strong language to prove his point in this fascinating passage:
I should, therefore, suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France until I was informed how it had been combined with government, with public force, with the discipline and obedience of armies, with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue, with morality and religion, with the solidity of property, with peace and order, with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too, and without them liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may soon be turned into complaints.
Burke takes a very adamant stand against the rebels who, claiming their liberty, ran rampant among the streets of France. He went on to say that the rebels were imprudent, inconsiderate people, and he remarked that "in situations where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers" (3).
Burke said that there is always more than one solution to a problem, no matter how difficult the task at hand. He reprimands those rebels who, in the name of God, act in a vicious frenzy and forget their places. "I am as incapable of that injustice as I am of keeping terms with those who profess principles of extremities and who, under the name of religion, teach little else than wild and dangerous politics" (28). Burke's journey takes an even more dangerous turn when he speaks out against politics in general. "The worst of these politics of revolution is this: they temper and harden the breast in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions…This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature…They have perverted in themselves, and in those that attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the human breast" (28).
Not only was Burke treading on thin ice with the monarchy, but also with the revolutionists. A usual adage during wartime is "if you're not for us, you're against us." This was a perilous situation for Burke to be in, especially since he was so candid about his frustration with his generation. His contemporaries were fighting for revenge, instant gratification, while Burke, on his journey, was more interested in bettering himself. His return to revitalize and improve his society was jeopardous because he was constantly criticizing all that were around him. He did not mince words. "People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors…All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society" (3, 30). Burke was admonishing those around him to look to past generations for help. It is a timeless theme and he not only improved the lives f those in his culture, but also continued to do so in the present day. Burke surely was anxious about publishing such powerful words, but he succumbed to his inner voice, because he knew these things needed to be said. He was a true hero and a warrior of truth.
As we continue to learn and read new pieces, we can begin to see the heroes journey aspect in almost everything around us. It is a classic and ageless theme, and perhaps the most intriguing of all themes. The heroes journey makes us into better people first individually, and then slowly by impressing the lives of others. While few people in today's world accept their calls, it is imperative that each of us tries to accept the call and move past our fears, in order to go on our own individual journeys. One never knows where or how enlightenment will come, and how much impact one person's life can have on another. It is frightening to consider what the world would have come to if Nietzsche, Dante, and Burke had refused their calls. Luckily for us, they each accepted their calls, and suffered through their journeys in order to better the lives of future generations.