The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Rating:
Summary: Overrated
Review: Remarkable content. The writing style, however, is professorially pompous and pretentious. Campbell would have flunked English 1A for being wordy and torturing the English language.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I took a class called "The Bible As Literature" while I was attending college, and this book was required reading. Very thought provoking.

Rating:
Summary: It could use an updated introduction
Review: The premise of this book -- that through the aid of psychoanalysis, we can find common elements in the world myths, folk tales, and religions -- is appealing. The layout of the body of the book highlights the beginning, middle, and end of the hero journey, as told through a catalog of stories from all over the world in different time periods. Roughly speaking, the "meta-story" Campell tells is a) a journey to a mysterious place, where the protagonist has been shaken out of the world of reality, b) a disintegration of identity, and, through battles with allegorical foes, a reintegration that gives the reinvigorated hero a power and the secret to conquer the "tyrant" of the old and decaying world of reality, and c) the hero's interaction (or refusal to do so) with the world of reality with his enlightened state. The various motifs Campbell labels along the hero journey (e.g., the call to adventure, the belly of the whale, the magic flight) are intended to further this meta-story.

There are two problems I have with the book as it appears today, one of which is by Campbell's doing and the other not. First, the method Campbell uses to make his points, through a series of concrete examples, is overwhelming to someone who has only a laymen's knowledge of the stories. As he jumps from a myth from, medieval Judaism and then (without a segue) to, for example, ancient Egypt, makes it harder and harder to understand the point he's trying to make by linking these stories together.

The second problem has to do with the state of scholarship in both psychology and religion since the 1940s, when Campbell wrote the book. In psychology, there's a heavy reliance upon Freud and Jung in the book. While I wouldn't say that their theories are obsolete, I would doubt that an author today were to use psychoanalysis to study world religions, I would doubt that he/she would use so much unfiltered Freud and Jung.

The study of religion has changed as well. In particular, religious scholars today aren't as enthusiastic about the "history of religions" school as they were in the first half of the 20th century. While some evangelical scholars will bristle at any notion that elements of their faith looks like others, the assumptions underlying Campbell's statement that "[t]hroughout the ancient world such myths and rites abounded: the deaths and resurrections of Tammuz, Adonis, Mithra, Virbius, Attis, and Osiris, and of their various animal representatives . . .are known to every student of comparative religion" would come with some serious qualifiers today.

This isn't necessarily to say that these criticisms cripple Campbell's basic premise, or that these criticisms are even correct, but an introduction addressing these developments by a student or contemporary of Campbell would allow the reader to put more trust in the author when reading the book.

All in all, this method of studying comparative myths and religions has some value. Certainly the mysteries of life and death to which these myths point have some similarities. But if we are to suppose that psychoanalysis is a good tool to examine these similarities (a major assumption in itself), then the tools need to be sharpened a little more to reflect the development of religion and psychoanalysis since the middle of the 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: The key to unlocking every book.
Review: This book is a godsend. While reading this book, I began to see the elements of the Monomyth in almost every story. Not only does this enhance my appreciation for the Star Wars Hexalogue, but for other films and books as well. If you are a fan of "Lord of the Rings," "Dune," "The Matrix," or even "The Smurfs," you see elements of the Monomyth.

Campbell has uncovered something profound in this analysis. There is a structure to the stories we tell, much like the structure to a Renaissance painting, or even a sonnet or limerick. A formula? No, not if it is done right. It is only formulaic if it is done poorly, like a bad sonnet. But the structure enhances poems--think about the last clean limerick you heard. The meter and structure made that last line all the funnier. So too with stories that follow the Monomyth pattern. The structure enhances the storytelling.

Aspiring writers should memorize and internalize the pattern in this book. It is the key to unlocking every good book.

Rating:
Summary: A FASCINATING WORK
Review: First of all, let me make it dreadfully clear that this is NOT a book you should read just on the fact that it inspired George Lucas. That means nothing. Even stupid books can inspire you (it's happened to me, but that doesn't mean you should go read them). You should read this book because you're either interested in 1) heroes in all their different forms, 2) mythology in general, and/or 3) a writer. Secondly, who cares if some of Joseph Campbell's papers didn't make it to the Sarah Lawrence College. Does that mean he's a bad writer/researcher? NO! Spielberg didn't get Best Director for Jaws, does that mean he's a bad director? NO! I rest my case. Overall, I found this to be a very rewarding book, full of mythology, poems, thought-provoking passages, things worth taking notes about. But one thing that bothered me was this: This book is supposed to be about heroes and for the most part, it is. Basically, as long as Mr. Campbell mentions the word "hero" fairly often, you'll soon see the relevance. But in some chapters--like "Apotheosis"--you will probably have a harder time, or not see it at all. Also, I couldn't help but sometimes question his choice of stories to illustrate some of his points. To me, he should have mentioned Jonah somewhere in his chapter about the Refusal of the Call. But apart from those minor points, this book should be pleasing to writers and mythology buffs alike.

Rating:
Summary: A Milestone Book
Review: This is one book by Joseph Campbell that one can read with great enthusiasm and devoted interest; one can literally get carried away with excitement in this mythic presentation. In "The Hero With A Thousand Faces," Joseph Campbell offers literature, philosophy and psychology interests an advanced placement status.

Personally understood, this book truly hits home as a milestone book for a mature consciousness; especially, when one reaches a holistic and comprehensive level of development and understanding in global social philosophy and cultural psychology. One can sit back, relax, and enjoy the thousand or so cultural permutations of the heroic challenge...and follow "The Hero's Journey" (as his or her historical process of individualization) within the cultural time frame in which the journey symbolically took place. In this work Joseph Campbell assumes the role of master story teller, symbolic anaylst, and psychosocial interpreter.

Rating:
Summary: Living life as a hero's journey.
Review: A friend encouraged me to read this book. He said it marked a turning point in his life, prompting him to pursue his path as a writer who remains unpublished. The premise of Campbell's 1949 classic is that although the hero has many faces--Jesus, Buddha, Hamlet, Cuchulainn, Job, Dante, Moses, and Krishna, for example--the hero's journey follows the same basic path: departure (pp. 49-96), initiation (pp. 97-192), and return (pp. 193-244). The hero "is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historica limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms. Such a one's visions, ideas, and inspiration come pristine from the primary springs of human life and thought" (pp. 19-20). The hero's journey may begin with "a blunder" (p. 51) that draws him out of his commonday life to the threshold of adventure (p. 245), where he is tested by "unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces" (p. 246). The hero who "steps an inch outside the walls of his tradition" (p. 83) onto "The Road of Trials," descends "either intentionally or unintentionally into the crooked lanes of his own spiritual labyrinth" (p. 101). He then returns from that "mystic realm into the land of common day . . . where men are fractions of themselves" (p. 216).

The symbolism of this mythological journey has a psychological significance (p. 255), and Campbell observes that we may use myths as a way to become more human. "The agent of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth," he writes. "Art, literature, myth and cult, philosphy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos" (p. 190).

Although Campbell recognizes "there is no final system for the interpretation of myths, and there will never be any such thing" (p. 381), he also observes that "the function of ritual and myth is to make possible, and then to facilitate, the jump--by analogy" (p. 258). Myths may be used as "mere symbols to move and awaken the mind, and call it past themselves" (p. 258). These symbols "are only vehicles of communication; they must not be mistaken for the final term, the tenor, of their reference" (p. 236).

Campbell's book is a fascinating eye-opener. I read it as a reminder that life should be lived with a sense of heroic adventure, and that each of us should make our own journey through life, rather than treading someone else's path. "It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal--carries the cross of the redeemer--not in the bright moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair" (p. 391).

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Hypothesis, No Facts
Review: The good news is that Campbell asserts an interesting and provocative hypothesis: all hero myths have a common storyline. The bad news is that from the examples given in this book we'll have to take his word for it. While entertaining, the myths he uses as examples simply do not prove his point. Written in the middle of the 20th century, The Hero with a Thousand Faces uses Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis to further his interpretation - something that today would inspire a few chuckles. Most readers encounter Campbell in college and believe it's a "profound" experience. It may be, and Campbell might be right, but only English and film school majors looking for plot lines and Psychology majors still needing a shot of Freud and Jung will be convinced by the evidence as presented in this book. I finished the book astonished that it had received the praise it has. The idea of the archetype is brilliant, the supporting evidence lacks rigor.

Rating:
Summary: Wrongheaded, but influential
Review: Were it not for the fact that several prominent individuals (George Lucas, Neil Gaiman) claim to have been influenced by Joseph Campbell, I would say that THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES is book that should never have been written, let alone published. Nevertheless, I continue to be amazed at the number of people who insist that their lives have been changed by this book. Personally, I find it a wrongheaded attempt to present myth and mythology as an historically unified body of work stretching from the ancient Sumerians to the 1940s. This, quite simply, is preposterous notion. Consider a statement Campbell makes on pg. 29 of this edition: "It is the business of mythology proper, and of the fairy tale, to reveal the specific dangers and techniques of the dark interior from tragedy to comedy." Nothing could be further from the truth. As regards the ancient civilizations, mythology filled a religious, not a psychological or philosophical, role. The myths of the ancients (Sumer, Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, etc...) were produced from the need to explain cosmological & natural questions, NOT to investigate "humanness" or to reveal the subconscious. The ancients had no time for that, concerned as they were primarily with survival rather than personal identity. The examples that Campbell uses to promote his view of what he calls "the hero quest" are highly questionable. At a very basic level, he almost NEVER cites his sources for the "myths" to which he refers. The reader has no idea of where Campbell finds his versions. His rendition of the story of Cupid & Psyche is REALLY off the wall. It would be interesting to know from where he got it, or did he just make it up. Second of all, he goes into great detail over what the "hero quest" entails and then uses an example that doesn't fit. His use of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Frog King" is only one example. There is no "call to adventure", "initiation", "transformation", or "return". Yet "The Frog King" is the very FIRST example he uses. More damaging, he tries to draw Jesus and Mohammed into the "hero quest" and both of them, focal points for two of the largest and most important religions in the world, don't fit at all. Nevertheless, Campbell repeatedly asserts that "all" religions fit his model. It's just not so. Additionally, Campbell's short piece on what he calls "the World Navel" is simply laughable. Trying to picture a global belly-button, physical or conceptual, should knock any possibility of taking Campbell seriously right out the window. The "World Navel" is a ludricrous assertion of a bad idea gone wrong. To try to apply 20th century Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis to the myths & minds of the ancients is clearly useless. To have a section on tragedy & comedy and include only ONE reference to Aristotle reveals either arrogance or carelessness. To attempt to impose a single unified archetype on such a varied body of human imagination trivializes the human mind and its millenial accomplishments. In THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, Campbell commits all of these offenses and should be justly criticized for them.

Rating:
Summary: Hero with 1000 Faces
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