The Hunger Games. Jane Eyre. Watership Down. Brideshead Revisited. Bridget Jones’s Diary. Anna Karenina. The Secret Garden. The Hobbit.
What do these stories have in common? Not much, at first glance, other than that they’re widely recognised as classics, much loved by successive generations. Whether or not each story is to your taste – not all fans of Brideshead Revisited will regard Bridget Jones’s Diary as a classic – it cannot be denied that something in each book speaks to millions of readers, earning a deserved place in literary history.
But what is it about a story that grips the attention? What makes one book unputdownable while another is eminently forgettable? Many issues are at play here: believable characters, a sound grasp of language, lyricism and imagery, an unusual setting, a theme that sparks the imagination… All must come together to create a work that holds its readers in thrall. And one element that has a large part to play in the weaving of this magic is plot.
The story arc, the progress of the narrative towards its ultimate conclusion, the question ‘what happens next?’ – this, perhaps more than anything, is what keeps the reader turning the pages. (At least, this is the case in genre fiction; literary fiction is a somewhat different beast.) A scene that concludes on a cliffhanger, a key fact we learn about one of the characters, a sudden realisation that all is not as it seems… It is human nature to want to know where we go from here, and so we stay up late, reading ‘just one more chapter’, and before we know it we are falling asleep over our Hogwarts feast or our pile of dead orcs: we are hooked.
Although the number of possible stories in the world is limitless, it has been argued that the number of possible plots is not. Christopher Booker, in his 2004 book The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, identifies the seven narratives he considers to form the basics of plot-writing:
Overcoming the Monster: The protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic force (often evil) which threatens the protagonist and/or protagonist’s homeland.
Rags to Riches: The poor protagonist acquires things such as power, wealth and a mate, before losing it all and gaining it back upon growing as a person.
The Quest: The protagonist and some companions set out to acquire an important object or to get to a location, facing many obstacles and temptations along the way.
Voyage and Return: The protagonist goes to a strange land and, after overcoming the threats it poses to him or her, returns with experience.
Comedy: Light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion.
Tragedy: The protagonist is a hero with one major character flaw or great mistake which is ultimately their undoing. Their unfortunate end evokes pity at their folly and the fall of a fundamentally ‘good’ character.
Rebirth: During the course of the story, an important event forces the main character to change their ways, often making them a better person.
The stories listed at the top of this article provide examples of these different plots. Other writers have come up with different combinations, but the general idea is the same: all stories – and, it follows, all human endeavour – fall into one or other of these narrative structures. Traditional writing advice suggests that an author following one of these structures closely cannot help but write a book that touches people, as readers will, if only at a subconscious level, recognise their own life experience and therefore be personally invested in the outcome. It’s debatable whether an author should actively try to write a book ‘by numbers’ in this way, but there is certainly something to be said for recognising patterns of behaviour that we have exhibited over the centuries, and reflecting them back at us.
If you’re on the ball, you’ll have noticed that, while Booker lists seven plot types, I’ve actually listed eight books. The last one – The Hobbit – does fall into the category of ‘The Quest’, but it is also a classic example of something much bigger: the Hero’s Journey.
Several decades before Booker identified his basic plots, an American scholar named Joseph Campbell was carrying out detailed research into comparative mythology and comparative religion. He believed that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which he called the monomyth. His 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces lays out his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero found in these mythologies. Campbell summarised the basic narrative pattern as follows:Narrative
‘A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.’ (Campbell, 1949, p. 23).
This journey is broken down into a number of stages. Different scholars have identified different variants of these stages, and not all myths necessarily contain all stages, but Campbell’s original analysis identifies seventeen stages, divided into three parts, or ‘acts’:
I. DEPARTURE
1. The Call to Adventure: The hero begins in a situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown.
2. Refusal of the Call: Often when the call is given, the future hero first refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold the person in his or her current circumstances.
3. Supernatural Aid: Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his guide and magical helper appears or becomes known. More often than not, this supernatural mentor will present the hero with one or more talismans or artefacts that will aid him later in his quest.
4. Crossing the First Threshold: This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are unknown.
5. Belly of the Whale: The belly of the whale represents the final separation from the hero’s known world and self. By entering this stage, the person shows willingness to undergo a metamorphosis. When first entering the stage, the hero may encounter a minor danger or setback.
II. INITIATION
6. The Road of Trials: The road of trials is a series of tests that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes.
7. The Meeting with the Goddess: This is where the hero gains items given to him that will help him in the future.StoriesNarrt
8. The Woman As Temptress: In this step, the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him or her to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.
9. Atonement with the Father: In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the centre point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving into this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolised by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power.
10. Apotheosis: This is the point of realisation in which a greater understanding is achieved. Armed with this new knowledge and perception, the hero is resolved and ready for the more difficult part of the adventure.
11. The Ultimate Boon: The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, a plant that supplies immortality or the holy grail.
III. RETURN
12. Refusal of the Return: Having found bliss and enlightenment in the other world, the hero may not want to return to the ordinary world to bestow the boon onto his fellow man.
13. The Magic Flight: Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.
14. Rescue from Without: Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience.
15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold: The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world.
16. Master of Two Worlds: This step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Gautama Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.
17. Freedom to Live: Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.
It’s worth saying at this point that, try as I might, I can’t quite map all of Campbell’s stages precisely on to The Hobbit. Some are definitely present, such as The Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call and The Meeting with the Goddess (which, weirdly, I see as Gollum and the Ring), but as the tale progresses, I’m not sure it can be divided up in quite this manner. However, the overall structure is certainly there; and, indeed, the subtitle of the book is There and Back Again. If that’s not a description of the classic pattern of the Hero’s Journey, I don’t know what is.
The monomyth may seem complex and involved, and its validity and usefulness have been disputed by several scholars, not least for its focus on the masculine perspective. However, the concept has become very popular in both literary studies and the self-help movement. In the latter, it is sometimes explored alongside the related subject of Jungian archetypes, for example in the mythopoetic men’s movement: identifying with these archetypes as parts of the self is seen as a means for personal spiritual and psychological growth.
In literary and popular culture, perhaps the most famous illustration of the Hero’s Journey is in the 1977 film Star Wars: A New Hope. Interviewed for a biography of Joseph Campbell, the film’s director George Lucas stated that in the early 1970s, after completing his film American Graffiti:
‘… it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology… so that’s when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore and mythology, and I started reading Joe’s books. Before that I hadn’t read any of Joe’s books… It was very eerie because in reading The Hero with A Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classical motifs.’ (Larsen & Larsen, 2002, p. 541)
And it’s not just Star Wars. According to the blurb for a BBC Four documentary about Campbell’s work:
‘[Campbell’s] ideas about the universal appeal of stories involving a “hero’s journey” have also influenced films as diverse as Mad Max and Babe.’ (BBC Four, 2017)
So, from The Hobbit, through Star Wars, to an animated film about a pig. The Hero’s Journey can take a myriad of forms – but does it cover everything? Can all stories be made to fit into its template? Or should we be looking to the wider variety of plot types as identified by Booker? Is even that too limiting?
Here’s an experiment. Take one of the books listed at the top of this article, and see whether you can map the Hero’s Journey on to it. Can you do it? If so, does it fall naturally into this structure, or is it forced? Are all stages present, or are some of them skipped? Does the story focus intentionally on just one or two of them? What does this tell you about the monomyth? Does it help you see the book in a new light? In short, is this a helpful way of interpreting stories?
There is no right or wrong answer. You will read a story the way you want to read it, informed by your personality, your background, your values and priorities – there is no one ‘message’ you are supposed to take away from any book you read. But we are social creatures, and we instinctively connect to stories we can relate to: stories of those who have gone before us, who have pursued their own quests. Stories of others’ experiences help us figure out what decisions to make in our own lives, what paths to tread, what battles to fight; and it is this that keeps us turning those pages long into the night.
Whether you are Luke Skywalker or Ms Ordinary from Wrexham, you are the hero of your own life – and the best way of navigating this complex terrain is with stories by your side.
References
- BBC Four. Hollywood’s Master of Myth: Joseph Campbell – the Force Behind Star Wars. Broadcast 21 December 2017.
- Booker, Christopher. 2004. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. New York: Continuum.
- Campbell, Joseph. 1949. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Larsen, Stephen and Larsen, Robin. 2002. Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind: the Authorized Biography. Rochester: Inner Traditions.
© Gwyneth Marshman 2024
Originally published (with slight differences) on the Bookylicious website (2018)