The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Rating:
Summary: A classic, yes-- it's but one that's flawed and aging
Review: Joseph Campbell's _The Hero with the Thousand Faces_ is one of the most important works ever written in the history of the study of "myth". Penned a half-century ago, it brought a (largely Jungian) psychoanalytical perspective to the study of mythology-- and of literature and through it, argued that asame basic narrative pattern could be found all myths-- and even folktales and literary texts. Campbell termed this pattern the 'monomyth' and argued that it was essentially the basic narrative form that informed all myth-making and story-telling,
of all kinds, among all cultures.

Campbell recognizes, of course, that this basic pattern-- this narrative 'archetype' (to borrow a good Jungian word) varies somewhat in different stories. But ultimately, he argues, it's based on one basic kind of story. Campbell takes the time to outline what he sees as being the basic structural components of this story-- the 'stages of the hero', which include the 'call to adventure', the various kinds of adventures that happen on the hero's quest, and the return home. Campbell spends a great deal of time talking about each of these, as well as their various substages-- in particularly psycoanalytical terms. One of the likely encounters in the monomyth, fr example, is the 'encounter with the temptress' or the encounter with the benevolent goddess, who comes to represent the mother. For each of these stages, he provides ample quotations and summaries of various myths to show that this isn't just some crazy theory-- you actually can see it operating in the stories of legend, folktale, myth, and even literature.

For those sympathetic to a psychoanalytical reading of myths, this book is highly compelling. It also seems to be compatiable with a wide range of other 20th century ideas on the nature of myth and literature, with connections to Northrop Frye's theory of archetypes (in _An Anatomy of Criticism), to the work of structural folkorists (like Vladimir Propp), and of course to the the work of Freud, Jung, and those who sought to apply their ideas to the study of story (especially Otto Rank's _The Birth of the Hero_).

While I am generally sympathetic to this kind of approach, I nonetheless feel that this classic text, important and full of insight as it is, strikes me as a bit flawed. The biggest problem I have is the fact that it just ties everything up a bit too neatly, a bit too certainly, a bit too conveniently. Campbell always chooses mythic stories that support his particular point-- or at least he interprets them in ways that seem to. Yet, there are plenty of stories out there that would seem to go against a particular point-- and many of the ones he cites could well be interpreted quite differently. Moreover, the fact the remains that, while there may be fundamental similarities among mythic narratives, there are still differences. By emphasizing the existence of the monomyth and downplaying the relevance of those differenes, Campbell seems to me to be stripping individual myths (and distinctive mythologies produced by different cultures) of their unique character and cultural relevance simply in order to fit them into his (reductionist?) theoretical framework.

Readers should also be aware that the study of mythology has moved in many new directions since this book was first published and that, in many ways, it isgetting increasingly dated. The structuralist approach to myth pioneered by Levi-Strauss and the more semiotic understandings advanced by Barthes (and others) offer compelling interpretations of what myths are and how they work... ones that have nothing to do with psychoanalysis. That's not to say that it's unimportant, irrelevant, outdated, or any of that. Quite the contrary, this book remains a classic. Still, it's hardly the be-all and end-all of myth-scholarship these days, and I would encourage readers who like this to *also* explore other theories and interpretations of myth than Cambell's.

Rating:
Summary: A Book with a capital "B."
Review: First of all, I feel inadequate and unworthy to review this book, but since Amazon has given me the chance, all I can say is that this is one of the greatest Books (with a capital "B") of my experience. I suspect that it shall be recognised as one of the single greatest products to come out of 20th century American letters.
No, I'm not setting Campbell up as a prophet or anything like that, indeed, I suspect that this book's greatness lies in the eternal truths that transcend Campbell's individual personality. He just managed to tap into them- thank God.
The entire book deals with the hero's journey. This is the Monomyth shared by all cultures- and indeed seems to be a direct inspiration from the cosmos itself by way of the collective unconscious. Here we have the eternal cycle of 1) the call to adventure; 2) the crossing of the threshold; 3) the tests, trials, and helpers; 4) the sacred marriage, apotheosis (becoming one with god), or elixir theft; 5)the flight 6) recrossing/ressurection; and 7) the return to society with hard won gifts. He examines all of these elements in depth with a wealth of cross-cultural examples. The first half of the book deals with this cycle on a more individual and personal level (the microcosm), while the second half deals with the greater cosmogonic importance (the macrocosm.)
Now, the really amazing part of all this is that virtually all of it comes across as meaningful, interesting, and totally nonacademic. That's why academic typpes hate Campbell, and his mentor Jung,- they know that Campbell's and Jung's works will endure and be read a thousand years from now, while their own monographs will be justly forgotten. There are a lot of mediocre Ph.D's out there that can never forget that Campbell never bothered to get a doctorate, because he considered such degrees to be a worthless and meaningless waste of time....
I've read this particular edition three times now- it is well designed and manufactured and has resonable sized print. I've also listened to the entire audio version at least twice- it is well edited and it is very difficult to figure out where exactly it is abridged.

Rating:
Summary: A Lifetime Pass to the Amusement Park of the Divine
Review: If you are struggling with life in general, reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces will reveal to you what you must do in order to earn a Lifetime Pass to the Amusement Park of the Divine. And you will earn it because this book requires you to engage and exercise your brain to understand its wisdom.

Just like an amusement park, life is not enjoyable if you are too frightened to get on a ride. Campbell teaches you how to enjoy the Ride of your own Life.

Rating:
Summary: Provocative, poetic, scholarly... and downright beautiful
Review: Having moved so far beyond the intellectual/psychological paradigms Campbell subscribed to and so magnificently introduced to me with this book, I had forgotten how important his way of thinking is and had been to both regular people and anthropological scholarship- and my own personal development as a person.

Joseph Campbell was an intellectual/spiritual throwback to the pre-Victorian age, when myth was not degraded for religious, socio-political and scientific agendas. It is almost hard to believe- thanks to him- that the word could have ever taken on the connotation of lie or trivial fantasy. Or, that the ancient myths at the foundation of what we know to be culture, universal in much of their form and reason for being, could ever possibly be ignored or trivialized. So much wealth of human history do they hold, and so many treasures of inner knowledge do they make as gifts.

Campbell set out to be not just a scholar or intellectual, but a modern Bard of his own, in the tradition of Homer, Sophecles, Confucius, Shakespeare and Freud. In so doing, he also cut through much of the modern culture's historic efforts to divide the world into some form of the Pagan/Believer dichotomy (via religon or science or politics vs. the regular folks of every century and their traditions) and reestablish the hegemony of the ancient truths that still serve as the fountain head of our imagination. HERO OF A THOUSAND FACES does that so elegantly, and so compassionately, that it becomes a truly life- affirming as well as paradigm shifting adventure.

Some scholars have had and will continue to have problems with his work and approach. Don't kid yourself; it's in part because he was such a wonderful writer who can connect the daunting intellectual scope of his ideas with the general public, almost regardless of one's level of education. Weaker writers cannot do that, regardless of their intellectual capacity or theories, and hide in the ivory tower where it is safe. Another reason, however, is the degree to which his work relied on the psychological theories of Jung. Though Jung's genius is also unquestionable, he did not provide the only lens by which to look at ancient myth, and via staying so deeply in a psychological paradigm (for more than just altruistic therapeutic reasons) he served to antagonize variant approaches and perspectives on the same materials. (Jungian psychologists and architects for example can almost never sit in the same room together without a fistfight practically ensuing, so violently and diametrically opposed they become on Jung's interpretations of what very often is actually ancient science and mathematics.) Yet though I tend not to agree with a significant portion of the meaning given to Campbell's work and discoveries anymore for that reason, I cannot help but remember that it was he more or less who opened my eyes to so much of what I now understand to be human and universal, transcending culture, "race", language and time.

Campbell's unexpected bringing together of mythical similarities from Celtic, native American, Indian, Bablyonian and other divergent world sources of myth is done so well, and so poetically while again with great erudition, it will put you in touch with much of what is beautiful in art, literature, religion, and the human mind- not to mention the human heart. And of the several of his books I have read, HERO OF A THOUSAND FACES is the best. Your soul-quest will far from end with his work and ideas, but I can't imagine it having a better beginning.

Rating:
Summary: A landmark of 20th century literature.
Review: Joseph Campbell was one of the great souls of our age. I've read this book twice, first on my own and the second for a class in "Myth, Religion & the Mythic Imagination." I read the paperack to tatters, literally, marking each illuminating, exhilirating insight. "Dry"? "Not a fun read"? What book did YOU read? Campbell is unlike other writers on myth; he looks not at an entire myth but at its parts. By the end of the book, he has essentially created the Ultimate Hero Myth, which takes bits of every hero myth from virtually every culture (heavy on Native Americans). Campbell was not a dispassionate academic--this was his gospel, and he lived by it. This book is alive and inspiring like no other book I know. One unique aspect of it at the time it was published was its approach to Christianity. For Campbell, Christ's life had to be seen as a myth. Before him, most Western scholars wouldn't have dare to say such a thing. Others had written on that, but in a skeptical manner. Campbell's view is that the Virgin Birth, miracles, Resurrection, etc have meaning only because they ARE myths. Look, there'd be no "Star Wars" without this. No "Sandman" comics from Neil Gaiman. No "Watership Down." This book is for the intellectual who wants to LIVE, not just to sit sterile at the desk. Recommended like mad.

Rating:
Summary: Hero Of A Thousand Feces
Review: This is a good general introduction to the barest basics of mythography, recommended for jr. highschool students or adults wanting to get their feet wet before diving into actual texts and theory.

However, this book is no more than a New-Age philosophy manual - far closer to Deepak Chopra than the works of say, Roger Loomis.

This is best for Star Wars-headed armchair 'mythologists' i.e. hobbyists with no true inkling of what the research of cultural evolution is all about. If you're looking for a quick fix to your 'deeper' questions about Star Trek and Hobbits, or a framework for your million-dollar Hollywood script project, this is for you!

If you are serious about mythograhy, however, you'd better get a serious grip on linguistics and begin tackling the extant texts in their original languages. Any other approach is a waste of time.

Rating:
Summary: It changes lives
Review: Consider for a minute, every movie that has ever touched your heart, every story that still moves you, or every hero/heroine that has inspired you. Every bit of magic in the world of story telling that you could not define or articulate. This is the logic behind it. And the logic in itself, is magical.

This book makes every goosebump make sense. It will make you smile in recognition or gasp at the recall, and all in all, you see how the hero's journey is not just applicable to a Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker, but to your own life . This is not for people who are looking to be spoonfed, or who like their knowledge with a big dose of fun and excitement. Yes, it is pedantic, and it is long winded, but if you are patient, and do not require special effects to understand transformation of the spirit, this book will find a permanent place in your book shelf and you will feel rejuvenated everytime you read it.

Rating:
Summary: A Child of Its Time - But not now
Review: When this book was written, in 1948, the very idea of questioning the rightness of Freud or Jung, even though they had fallen out with each other, was (supposedly) something only an idiot would contemplate.

Today, thanks to studies such as Richard Webster's "Why Freud was Wrong", we have learnt to treat the teachings of these men with a great deal of caution, and the psychoanalytic movement as a whole enjoys nothing like the unquestioning acceptance it claimed for itself in the first half of the 20th century.

And the point is:

There are two main flaws in Campbell's book:

1. The style of the writing is hopelessly scholarly and pedestrian. In its time, no doubt this help to justify the book's claim to be academically respectable. Today it just makes it a very heavy-going read.

2. Campbell himself attaches terrific importance to the validity of Freud and Jung's work when he seeks to explain the elements of "The Hero's Journey". And since the credibility of Freudianism in particular has been seriously undermined over the last 50 years, that inevitably consigns Campbell's work to the outer fringes of valid interpretation of the material he covers.

As interesting as the basic material is, the dry-as-dust style of writing robbed it of most of its sparkle, as far as I was concerned. The highly questionable interpretive/psychoanalytical sections further interrupted the flow - whilst adding nothing of any value.

If I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered with this book.
I reckon you'd learn just as much about the basic process of The Hero's Journey by watching all three "Lord of the Rings" films. And it would be a whole lot more fun, to boot.

Rating:
Summary: A classic treatise on the mythological hero
Review: Joseph Campbell was undoubtedly one of the most influential mythologists of the twentieth century. This, his crowning achievement, celebrates the nature of myth, and in particular the nature of the mythological hero. Drawing from sources all over the globe, from primitive stories to complex pantheistic mythologies, and including many religions still extant today, such as Christianity and Buddhism, Campbell explains the archetypal elements of the hero myth, the different forms of the heroic quest, and the purpose of the hero's life work.

Campbell's work is important because of its attempt to resurrect myth--in other words, to restore its credibility in a technological society where science rules all--and to show the important function which myth can play, even in a society as complex as ours. He argues that "whenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed" (in Chapter IV of part one, "the keys"). In other words, myth should not be viewed literally, but rather allegorically for the lesson it can teach. Furthermore, Campbell argues that truth manifests itself in many different forms, ranging from a simple fairy-tale to a complex Egyptian ritual. For Campbell, the purpose of myth is to rise above the limits set by science and reasoning, and to provide mankind with a metaphysical form of fulfillment not attainable through modern technology.

Campbell's analysis of the various parts of the hero myth is very enlightening. There are shortcomings, of course (as there necessarily must be), and the archetypes he defines are not universal in nature. Still, he does a remarkable job of showing how myths from all parts of the globe often create essentially the same hero, albeit in different forms and with different attributes dependent on local customs. My only complaint with this book is that I believe Campbell takes the parallels of psychoanalysis and myth too far, especially in Part One of the book. His argument is made good by the many examples of similar myths from distinct parts of the globe, and the use of modern dreams as examples does only little to strengthen this hypothesis.

I believe this work is a necessary part of any study of mythology. It may be dated, true, but that does not entirely discredit it as a strong analysis of the universal hero. I certainly do not regard this work as authoritative on the subject of myth, but I do think Campbell's argument is one worth considering.

Rating:
Summary: A legendary work, better read than heard
Review: As a devoted fan of the great Joseph Campbell, I was excited to add this audio CD to my travel audio collection. While I will keep the collection for a subsequent journey, a refresher of sorts, the audio version is no substitute for the printed mastery of Campbell's work.

I thought this guide to the mythical path of the hero would be an ideal accompaniment to the actual paths of freeway over the course of my roadtrip, but was disappointed in the audio version. The reading was hurried, to the point of me repeatedly checking if I had missed a "speed" setting.

Campbell presents a number of brilliant insights while using actual myths and legends from cultures around the world as examples. So many times, I felt rushed in considering a concept or even in organizing the distinct bullet-point criteria of the heroic journey.

In my opinion, Blum's pace does not do the material justice. So many of Campbell's examples, from different cultures and traditions, require taking a moment to virtually journey into the scenes of the mythical tale. Like the brilliant storyteller that he is, Campbell's writing brings the reader into that world, then enchants with the rhythms of the legend. To me, the rhythm of the writing gets lost in the reading.

A required challenge that makes this work difficult in any audio version is the variety of unfamiliar names and pronunciations that are necessary in descriptions of heroic tales from other tribes, languages and cultures. This factor alone would complicate any audio version of this type of anthology; however, there are employable methods to simplify or clarify the different characters to create a better organized audio image. I have traveled extensively and lived on six continents among a variety of tribes with difficult pronunciations -- I can easily imagine the extreme difficulty for someone only familiar with English names.

Like any good bedtime story reader knows, sometimes it takes a little effort to create a mental picture of a remote tale. Specifically, two simple recommendations would have improved these stories greatly: 1. SLOW DOWN, and 2. USE DIFFERENT VOICE TONES OR ACCENTS TO DISTINGUISH CHARACTERS.

1. Slow down - seems obvious, yet in several instances, there is little pause to help the listener structure the separate identities. At times, the main characters have similar sounding names (to the external audience, anyway). Imagine, for example, someone recounting the nuances of the nursery rhyme of "Jack" and "Jill" to an audience of local villagers in Thailand. Without even knowing the genders of each character by its spelling, a lot more effort is required to create the mental image of the allusion.

2. Vary Accent/Cadence - I can only recall one clear example of Blum assuming a noticeable accent among all the opportunities, and it was a butchered Irish accent for an ancient Irish myth. Unfortunately, it wasn't utilized as a way to distinguish characters, but rather as a way to make the entire tale "feel" Irish. While I believe the accent was poor in accuracy, at least its attempt allowed me to plunge into the tale fully.

In summary, I found the audio version a poor replacement for the written piece. I often found that the audio version required two or even three listening attempts to let the message sink in, but in the end, I felt like I gained from the experience. Use the audio version as a companion to your Joseph Campbell collection or a refresher. Listen to a chapter and discuss with others in the car. Listen, pause, repeat!