“He sees things they do not see.”
The “hero myth” was popularized by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). Campbell gained recognition in Hollywood when George Lucas credited Campbell’s work as influencing his Star Wars saga.
All stories about heroes are variations on the same theme: the hero (or heroine) begins the perilous journey as a “common” man, and encounters dragons which he slays, or mysterious “forces” which he conquers. Challenges never cease but he develops supernatural powers and eventually saves humanity from destruction. And most importantly, comes to know the power of his True Self.
Playwright, screenwriter and film director Auteur Aaron Sorkin seems to sense this in some of his films. “Somebody wants something and something is standing in their way of getting it. They want the money; they want the girl; they want to get to Philadelphia. Then the obstacle to that has to be formidable, and the tactics they use to overcome that obstacle are what shows us the character … you have to write these characters as if they’re making their case to God for why they should be allowed into heaven.”[i]
The story of Job in the Old Testament is an inspiring hero’s journey. Job (“the son”) was greatly blessed, but then very unexpectedly he lost his family, all his possessions and his health. He suffered greatly and was ridiculed by his community, but he never lost faith in his God (“the father”). Due to his unyielding faith, all that was lost was restored ten-fold.
Joseph Campbell shared his opinion about the Job story in Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). “For the ogre aspect of the father [the wrath of God] is a reflex of the victim’s own ego. Atonement (at-ONE-ment) … requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself; and that is what is difficult. One must have faith that the father [Creator] is merciful and then a reliance on that mercy. … For the son who has grown really to know the father, the agonies of the ordeal are readily borne; the world is no longer a vale of tears but a bliss-yielding, perpetual manifestation of the Presence.”[ii]
Insight # 60 comes to us from C. G. Jung (1875-1961). He was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung’s work was influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy and religion.
“Jung puts it that the danger to which the hero is exposed is ‘isolation in himself.’ The suffering entailed by the very fact of being an ego and an individual is implicit in the hero’s situation of having to distinguish himself psychologically from his fellows. He sees things they do not see, does not fall for the things they fall for—but that means that he is a different type of human being and therefore necessarily alone. The loneliness of Prometheus on the rock or the Christ on the cross is the sacrifice they have to endure for having brought the fire and redemption to mankind.”[iii]
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Additional Reading:
- Hero’s Journey, Art and Simple Reality, Vol 1
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[i] Marchese, David. “Talk.” The New York Times Magazine. March 8, 2020, p. 15.
[ii] Campbell, Joseph. Hero With a Thousand Faces. New York: Bollingen Foundation, Inc., 1949, p. 97.
[iii] Neumann, Erich. The Origins and History of Consciousness. NY: Bollingen Foundation Inc. 1954, pp. 378-379.
