Paper

Brandon Barton

Dr. Marlen Harrison

Engl 121-003

10/15/09

            You are about to embark on a great journey, and that journey is life. Everyone goes through journeys throughout their lives and, everyone’s life is one big journey with many little journeys in it. I will tell you the basic steps of a journey or the monomyth, I will discuss the different archetypes that people have that you will experience in your life, and how our life is a journey with many smaller journeys in it.

            The basic steps of a journey or the monomyth are the steps of a journey that everyone goes through on a journey. Every journey is usually different from each other but, these steps will be the only common thing with every journey. These stages are very important when you look at a journey and try to break them down, if you are trying to break down a journey from a book or in your own life these are the stages that will appear. Joseph Campbell described the stages in the monomyth in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces written in 1949.

            The first stage is the call. The call is what makes somebody go on the journey. It can be anything, it can be a phone call asking for help or a thought about change and everything in between that makes someone go on a journey. The call is the one of the most important stages in my opinion. This is because without the call there is no journey. The second stage is refusal of the call. This is when you don’t want to go on the journey and decides that they will not go. This will change though; there will be some act that makes you go on the journey in which you have been called to take.

            The third stage of the monomyth is supernatural aid. This is when you receive some kind of help or realize something that will help you on your journey. This aid is from a higher being, like a god or goddess, depending on what you believe in. This is the aid that you usually need to get through your journey. This aid could be what you need to cross the first threshold. The next stage in the monomyth is crossing the first threshold. This is the stage where you leave your comfort zone. This is the first major step in your journey; this could be anything that takes you out of your comfort zone. It could be leaving your house, leaving your family to live on your own, or anything that is a big change in your life. The fifth stage in the monomyth is the belly of the whale. This is as you leave your comfort zone or cross the first threshold. This is when you think that you cannot go any further and you just want to give up. When this happens you will start to question yourself for going on this journey. When you have questioned yourself about the journey you will find your purpose for going on this journey and you will overcome what is stopping your journeys progress.

            The sixed stage in the monomyth is the road of trials. This is when you will face many challenges or tests. In this stage you will learn about yourself, more than you knew before. This is the stage where you will learn how to rely on yourself more than you rely on other people in your life. The next step is meeting with the goddess. This is when you meet with a motherly figure that will help you realize what rewards you will get when your journey is over. The goddess can even be your mother, girlfriend, or wife. Mothers are probably the best though, this is because they will help you get through your biggest journey of all. The journey I am speaking of is growing up and becoming an adult. The eighth step in the monomyth is the temptress. This is when you are tempted from the path or tempted away from completing your journey. This could be anything that could stop you from completing your journey such as a sexy person, a town that looks like it is a good place to live, or anything else. The next stage is atonement of the father. This stage is very similar to the meeting the goddess stage but you will meet a fatherly figure instead of a motherly figure. The tenth stage of the monomyth is the ultimate boom. This is when you have completed the journey or achieved your goal. The next stage is apotheosis. This is when you are elevated above what you normally are like a god. This is the stage where you get some recognition for completing your journey. This can be anything, it doesn’t always have to be someone else telling you that you did a good job or that they are proud of you. Apotheosis can come from within yourself as well as another person.

            Archetypes are a one or two word description of a person’s personality. Even though it describes a person’s personality, one person can have many different archetypes. This is because everyone has one dominate archetype and they can have many archetypes that are not dominate. The ones that are not dominate can and will change based off many different factors such as, mood, different situations, and what is going on in your life at a given moment are some examples. Some examples of archetypes are the innocent, the orphan, the fool, the warrior, the seeker, and the lover.

            The innocent is a person that is innocent, like a child. This type of person is always the person that acts like a child, if they are not a child, and will do things a child would because they don’t understand them that well. This person will be very curious or try to fit in with the rest of society. By trying to fit in they are trying to have a personality or a way to identify themselves as an individual. After the innocent has identified themselves as in individual they orphan may be the next archetype they have.

            The orphan is a person that is trying not to be abandoned. They also try to avoid situations where they can be hurt emotionally. The orphan will try to keep up their image that they have made for themselves. They will do anything to keep their image and, that includes all the things that they have had before they made their image of themselves. This will include morals and thought processes.

            The fool is the type of person that may or may not be the smartest person that has ever lived. The fool is the person that pulls pranks and jokes and they also can be just plain stupid. The fool can be smart in the way he does some things; for example, if a person was screwed over by another person they may try to get even or get revenge. By them getting revenge they may pull a very smart prank or joke on the person that screwed them over, that is one way a fool can be an intelligent person. This archetype can be an archetype that everyone has from time to time and I consider this archetype to be mainly an archetype that is not a dominate one. This does not mean that some peoples’ dominate archetype is the fool.

            The warrior is the person that has a lot of primal or primitive tendencies. These mainly include the urge to fight, even over the smallest things. The warrior is the person that has a big ego, or thinks he or she is the biggest, badest, and toughest person in the world. You will be able to see this archetype in a person very easily. The warrior is the person that will always have to be right and they will argue their right until the other person says they are.

            The seeker is a person that seeks enlightenment or more intelligence. This person wants to know more want to learn more. The seeker believes they are better, have more accomplishments, and are perfect. This is not true, everyone is better at something than someone else is, someone has an accomplishment that the seeker will never be able to get, and nobody is perfect. The seeker needs to become more independent and more self reliant so that when they start their journey they are ready to go into the unknown, or a place that is not familiar to them. The seeker is always challenged to seek and explore what they most fear and, by doing this they have conquered their unknown and they themselves can transform.

            The lover is the type of person that is always looking for love or lust. This person is always looking for attraction with another person. They want to be the sexual being that we as humans were primitively. The lover is a fan of lust rather than marriage. The lover’s life is symbolized by the marriage of the god and the goddess.

            Our lives are one big journey with many smaller journeys in it. This is because our main, or big, journey starts when we are born. This journey has no set ending point, meaning that there are no set goals for it at the point when it starts. This journey will end when we die. This journey will go wherever life takes us, that is how there are smaller journeys in our big journey called life. These smaller journeys are a lot unlike the big or main journey and they have an ending point and a set of goals. Each small journey will be a very short time period compared to our life time, or we would hope so but that is not always true. In our lives we try new things and do many fun and exciting things that are part of our journeys. As we do these things we learn more about ourselves and about the people that surround us. You could say that we all are seekers in one way or another. We all do look to learn more and we all want to have many great accomplishments in our lifetime. These accomplishments that we want will start us on many journeys. They are our call to start the journey.   

            Everyone goes through journeys throughout their lives and, everyone’s life is one big journey with many little journeys in it. You have learned about the monomyth or the different stages of all journeys, some of the different archetypes that people you will encounter on your journeys will have, and how our life is one big journey with many smaller journeys in it. You also have seen how they all connect.  The monomyth is the different stages of a journey, how our lives are one endless cycle of journeys, and that the archetypes are the personalities of the people you will meet on the way.