[Part One]
[Part Two]
Stories are codified maps of rejuvenation and rebirth. They’re not power fantasies - about the nerdy kid becoming a superhero and being able to beat up his bullies - although Hollywood often focuses on this most satisfying aspect of the journey. For the circle to become complete the hero must dive to the depths of the lake and steal the glittering pearls - and then bring them all the way back up onto the land so that the pearls may benefit the people on the banks who were left behind. The hero touches the eternal when meeting the goddess, overcomes the power structure of the old world represented in the father, wins some ultimate boon, and then must take that boon back so that the external world may be enlightened in the same way that the hero just was.
There is no room for ego in this - although of course there is plenty of room for ego in the tensions of whether the quest will be successful. The hero fights against their ego continually. But stories are always stories of oneness. The external world, as it falls into disrepair and disease, births the unlikeliest of seeds: a peasant orphan, a lazy hobbit, a young girl scared and clinging to her parents’ coattails. This individual then journeys to the heart of the world’s problem - growing into extraordinary power as they do so, and then uses that power to bring back some trinket or wisdom that will set right the disease of the world.
The first step on this return is often a refusal. For the inner sanctum, at the bottom of the circle, mirrors the status quo of the ordinary world at the top. There is safety and comfort in both. Often times, then, the hero fights down to a state of bliss and blessing, and finds they do not want to leave. The love interest’s bed is too perfect, the Arkenstone under the mountain too wondrous. Often the hero will have to be reminded of their responsibilities to the external - that they weren’t adventuring for themselves, but for the poor suffering townsfolk all across the land. With great power comes… well, you know.
Once the hero sets off, there can be a road of trials back out of the chaos realm - again mirroring the road of trials down towards the middle. It is often here, in fact, where the atonement with the father happens. The meeting with the goddess is delicious and empowering, and then forcing themselves back away from this perfect point the hero is faced with everything rigid and aggressive for which the structure of the ordinary world stood.
Let’s say a fairytale land is being tormented by a dark lord atop his tower. The hero adventures away from the safety of her village (crossing the threshold), fights her way to the centre of a magical forest (road of trials) where she earns the blessing of the spirit of the woods (meeting with the goddess). She is now the most powerful warrior in the land. But she can’t stand around and enjoy being swooned at by attractive lads (refusal of return). She’s got a responsibility. So she fights her way to the black tower, duels with the dark lord, and in defeating him frees the land and all its inhabitants.
Or perhaps the power structure, the father, of the story’s world is seen as not inherently evil, not in need of overthrowing, but just in need of being refreshed. Perhaps the king’s daughter falls ill, and only a magical elixir guarded by a sacred but dangerous dragon can save her. The hero journeys all the way to the dragon’s lair, steals the elixir, but awakens the dragon in the process. The hero has no desire to kill the dragon, a divine beast who protects the world, so the hero runs. The road of trials back up from the bottom of the circle will now be what Campbell refers to as a Magical Flight - fleeing the manifestation of the chaos world all the way back to the threshold between realms.
Or perhaps when the dragon awakens the hero charms it - plays the flute given to him by the goddess, or uses cunning and wiles to trick it, or bests it in battle to win its respect. Now the magical flight will take the form of a delightful ride, with the hero as emissary, borne on the wings of the beast that is now transformed into the most dazzling of allies. Spirited Away has a gorgeous version of this, with Chihiro being carried back to the boundary between worlds by the dragon Haku, who is in turn transformed mid-flight by Chihiro who remembers his true form as the spirit of the Kohaku River - and thus the final trappings of darkness are shed and the adventure almost ready to be ended.
There are many different ways for the formula to play out. What matters is that the chaos world, the opposite of the ordinary life from the beginning of the story, must be penetrated to its core, and some aspect of it brought back into ordinary life, thus transforming not just the hero but their world as well.
This is done by a return crossing back over the threshold. The magical world is left behind, and the regular world rejoined. In Spirited Away, after one final test is passed, Chihiro’s parents are returned to her, and together they cross the river and walk out of the abandoned theme park, the spirit world fading around them, and they find their car where they left it, buried beneath dust and leaves. Dorothy clicks her heels three times and awakens out of Oz. The hobbits travel back to the Shire. John McClane descends from the Nakatomi Plaza, his inner cowboy having defeated the shadow self/brother of that blonde terrorist, having atoned with the father embodied in Hans Gruber, and having realised his selfishness in his failing marriage. The journey into the unconscious is complete, and the revitalised McClane is ready to step back into his role in society down at street level as a cop and a husband.
This is the change Campbell refers to as Master of Two Worlds, and Freedom to Live. Neo, having achieved god-status and transcended the danger of Agent Smith, can step between the Matrix and the real world at will. He is master of both realms, and will use this power to rebalance the relationship between man and machine. In children's films where a put-upon kid from the real world is thrust into a magical world, this last section is regularly visualised with the kid back in their town/school/home, facing whatever was initially causing them harm, and defeating it with ease. The school bullies don’t realise they’re now picking on the chosen warrior and champion of the galaxy. The diving board that was too high to jump from is now nothing for one who has flown on dragon wings. Your step-father is not so scary when you’ve duelled in single combat with the Lord of Darkness himself..
The boon has been won, carried back over the threshold, and is now used to revitalise the kingdom. Normality returns - but a normality somehow changed, enlarged, now containing a drop of the chaos world that at the beginning of the story had been drained dry. The two worlds often must remain separate, and there is a sadness at leaving the magical realm - allies met usually cannot pass back across the threshold, all that was unknown and exciting must now be integrated into the everyday - but the worlds are not removed from one another as they were at the outset. An element of the ordinary - the hero - has penetrated to the core of the magical, and brought back an element of the magical - the Ultimate Boon - into the ordinary. As I said in that post about The Matrix, it’s like yin and yang.
And that, really, is the essential quality of a completed story: balance. There’s no necessity for a happy ending, let alone a happily ever after - but for the hero’s journey to be complete the ordinary world at the conclusion of the quest should be deeper, fuller, and more honest than it was at the outset.
In actual fact, this honesty in really good stories usually transcends the simplistic moralising of Hollywood. The cosmic cycle repeats through destruction as much as it does rebirth. If there is a God then he is a murderer as much as a creator. There are vicious beasts in the basements of the unconscious. But behind this ferocious rising and falling of forms there is something everlasting and untarnished. The hero’s apotheosis generally requires some conception of this - an ability to stare directly at the furnace of existence and face the fact that we all are swallowed in the flames - but through this to comprehend that we are not just what is swallowed but also what swallows: the furnace, the flames, the ever-nourishing energy of life.
So the hero’s journey isn’t necessarily palatable, but its complete cycle should ultimately be a comfort. We are led into dark forests, and then we are led back out again. We have faced that which was hardest to face - pretty universally the fact that we’re all someday soon going to die - and through that awareness of death we have found the courage to live anew. The cycle is complete. The story, for the moment, is over.
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