Hero With A Thousand Faces: Some Introductory Facials

Reading the first sections of Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces (herein after referred to as "Hero"), several issues/concerns immediately come to mind. We discussed several of these in person, this past week, but I think it's worth rehashing them here. These concerns include Campbell's assertion of the monomyth, reliance on psychoanalysis (and its past heroes) and, finally, the decontextualization of the stories told.

Campbell begins Hero with a poetic and powerful view of the nature of myth in society and in our lives. He calls it, "the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestations." The next sentence clenches the gesture of his thought, "Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth." I must admit that I rather love the way Campbell writes, one can feel his excitement and interest pouring through the sentences themselves. Yet, even so, to reduce the whole complexity of the human thought and belief to nothing more than developed myth is suspect. Myth obviously plays an important role in the development of art and society, as well as the psyche, but surely it is not the whole of it. Campbell makes these statements without offering a real boundary or definition for what myth is. While I feel well-informed enough to read on with my own definition and idea of what myth is, Campbell's case may be stronger with something more of a crafted idea of myth at heart.

Yet, Campbell is clearly a studied scholar of many stories from many cultures. His claim that there is a basic structure that all of these stories share is not beyond conception. He claims that the most basic story is that of the hero's quest, which he parses into smaller parts, "The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation-initiation-return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth." (Campbell is appropriating the word "monomyth" from James Joyce, Finnegans Wake). While reading this, I've also been reading the book, The Power of Myth, Bill Moyer's transcribed interview with Joseph Campbell. Taking place many years after Campbell first wrote Hero, it is fascinating to read his even more developed ideas about the interconnectedness/almost-sameness of human thought, experience and religion from around the world. He makes the claim that all religions are meant to be understood in symbolic/metaphorical ways, in almost poetic ways, rather than as literal claims about factual reality.

These (the monomyth and the metaphorical nature of all religions) , in my understanding, are the most interesting claims of Joseph Campbell, and are, in fact, what he's most known for. The monomyth is handy as a literary criticism and creation device, but it also seems vaguely obvious (if that's possible to say). Similarity between stories in their structure certainly must reveal either/or or both/and a shared experience among all peoples or a shared understanding of experiences among all peoples. Both of these are vastly coherent, it just then lies to be determined to what extent. Jumping into the metaphorical understanding of religion, however, is beginning to show a concrete example of how far and deep and wide Campbell believes the sharing goes, that is, 100%.

Back to the original train of thoughts, in Hero, Campbell shows great confidence in the work of the psychoanalysts and in the deeply meaningful nature of dreams. He even calls dreams "private myths." He sees them as the personal and unique embodiment of shared myths, like the hero's quest. I'm not familiar enough with the psychoanalysts to know all of their claims or to understand their qualifications. Though, I've been under the impression, for much of my life, that their theories, particularly about dreams, are of highly questionable validity. Thus, it seems to me that Campbell is much better discussing the myths and stories of various cultures as the prime texts from which to claim the latency and penetration depth of the monomyth, rather than perusing the dreams of strangers.

Finally, though I'm enjoying Campbell's work very much and learning something about story structure and human experience, I'm sure, I still find his methods questionable. For instance, in support of his monomyth thesis and in support of showing the similarity of stories and experiences, he quotes or, sometimes, retells stories, sometimes with elaboration, to show their similarities. Yet, while I see his points about the most general attributes of the various plights of the heroes or heroines, the specifics of them are still so different that it makes me wonder about calling them similar. For instance, he compares the story of the Buddha's enlightenment to the story of Moses getting the 10 commandments from God on Sinai. I can see the similarities, there is agitation in nature (in Buddha's story it is orchestrated by divine beings trying to test and disrupt the Buddha's meditation, while in Moses' story, it is God's presence making the whole mountain quake), the transference of some divine message/enlightenment, and then a descent into the world to proclaim the word. Yet, one's the Buddha and one is Moses, one has divine beings attacking the seeker and one shows nature trembling at the divine presence. One is the reaching of self-knowledge with a goal of self-annihilation and the end of suffering, while the other is a moral code that focuses on respecting, protecting and encouraging life in a community. They are similar, yet they are different.

Also, pulling these from different sources, from different contexts and different times seems to leave out a lot that might lend to how they were understood/interpreted at the time.

Thoughts?