# The Hero’s Journey

LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt)

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In his influential book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces [^89], academic Joseph Campbell asserted that the various heroic myths of all cultures follow the same, basic storyline. His theory was that myths are tied to the human psyche; they are cultural expressions of the universal need to explain the same, fundamental concepts of social, worldly, and other-worldly realities. Not all narratives follow the basic pattern (which is called the hero’s journey [^90]), but all myths and epics do. Famously, the movie Star Wars follows the hero’s journey almost to the letter.

Many of the steps in the hero’s journey are symbolic or metaphoric, so it may take a student of myth to recognize some of the more subtle ones. Once they have been identified, however, the basic sequence will usually be the same. Occasionally, steps may be omitted or reversed in order, but on the whole the overall structure of the myth will be the same. Heroes are heroes because they complete the hero’s journey.

This is a different perspective on heroism to that understood by players of virtual worlds. The hero’s journey includes heroic acts, but these alone don’t make someone a hero. If you risk life and limb—even in a PD world—to save an innocent, that’s an heroic act. People may regard you as a hero, but it’s a simile: They’re holding you in the same esteem they would hold a hero of ancient myth. If you want to be a hero, though, you have to complete the hero’s journey.

This, you can do. Let’s examine how.

The hero’s journey consists of a number of steps. Some of these are more significant than others, some take longer to occur than others, some have more symbolic connotations than others. They are grouped into three phases: departure, initiation, and return. Here’s a brief description of the steps.


[^89]: Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, Bolllingen Series 17, Princeton University Press, 1949.
[^90]: It works for heroines too, but this is 1949 speaking.