The Monomyth

Is this the one story shape that underpins all the truly great stories?

Way back in the years surrounding the Second World War, an American academic called Joseph Campbell was having insights that would change the movie and the television industry forever. (Amongst other, slightly more high-minded achievements.)

He was looking back into history, going back hundreds, thousands of years. He was looking back across the breadth of human storytelling, hovering up all the ancient stories and myths he could find, performing immense feats of analysis and abstraction and working out what they all had in common.

When he’d finished, he wrote a book about it, called:

The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

The rest is (new) history.

The book was an immediate landmark, and it’s never gone away.

Since 1949 smart storytellers – and screenwriters in particular – have been aware of the powerful story structure described by Campbell.

Campbell’s gift to us all was to describe how all so many of those stories and myths, picked from anywhere within the vast majority of human history and culture, could, time after time, be boiled down into one basic melting pot or story shape.

Apart from the fact that this story shape reflects much of what it is to live and grow old as a human, it’s immensely useful for storytellers. The basic beats he describes are time tested, proven to work over and over again, across all of human culture and history. 

Campbell calls this universal story structure The Monomyth.

The broadest description of this archetypal story involves a Hero and takes him on a very clear journey that allows massive transformation. 

This is a very top-level breakdown of how it works.

Separation – The Beginning

1. The Call to Adventure

The story begins with the Hero, who is a person of exceptional gifts. This fact can already be known to society, or it can be overlooked. It’s entirely possible the Hero is despised by the people around him, and very often he doesn’t yet know about his own abilities. There are often signs of an unusual skill, or attribute, something that in retrospect marks him out as a future hero, such as a surprising feat of strength, or bravery, but at the time these aren’t well understood.

He and/or the world he lives in must also suffer from a deficiency. This may be as slight as the lack of whatever the plot McGuffin is, or as huge as a state of war, famine or plague.

Although he probably doesn’t actively know it, the Hero has outgrown this normal world. His old habits and emotional patterns no longer fit him, and subconsciously some part of him is yearning for adventure.

A mistake, or even just the slightest accident, shows the Hero a world he previously had no idea existed, and he is drawn into a relationship with forces he doesn’t begin to understand just yet.

Campbell puts it, the Call to Adventure is:

… a ripple on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs, which may be very deep, as deep as the soul itself.

There is usually a Message Bearer of some kind; a herald carrying the call to adventure.

The call raises the curtain on a tale of transformation which, when it’s over, will amount to a symbolic dying and rebirth.

The Message Bearer is often unpleasant – even possibly judged evil by the world. But when the Hero follows the call, he will be led

…through the walls of day into the dark where the jewles [sic] glow.

(This call to adventure corresponds directly to the Inciting Incident in modern story-telling jargon.)

2. Refusal of the Call

The first thing the hero does is decide to ignore the call. It seems too far-fetched, too much like a lucky break, too wrong.

The problem is that the damage is done. Whether he only holds out a few seconds, or whether it takes hours, or days, the hatch into the other world has been opened. The Hero has seen something of the deficiencies of their current situation, of which they were previously oblivious. They have realised that they will be in some sense a failure as a human being, or life will just be plain dull, if they don’t accept the call.

So, either the call comes again, and the Hero finally responds, or the Hero chases down the Messenger and accepts.

3. Supernatural Aid

The Hero sets off on their journey. And often the first encounter they have is with some kind of protective figure (often a little old woman or man) who gives the adventurer some kind of talisman or device that will guard against the mighty forces he is about to encounter. You will spot this in The Snake - my novel about a woman who joins the armed police in London. On her first day in the office she meets a sarcastic, misogynist armourer, who gave her the talisman – the Glock pistol that was going to keep her safe in the world of armed villains and snipers she is entering.

4. The Crossing of the First Threshold

The Hero may have been on the journey for some time, or this moment may come very quickly. Either way, at some point the gateway to the new world of the adventure will be revealed. There will be some kind of doorway, or initiation rite, or difficult path, beyond which is darkness, danger, and the unknown.

There will also be some kind of Guardian figure. They may seem helpful, trying to keep the Hero in safe familiar territory – or they may seem dangerous, trying to block the Hero’s passage.

But the Hero will show determination and the spirit to go beyond, and the influence of the Guardian will fade as the Hero goes past.

(This corresponds to the end of Act 1 in many stories.)

5. The Belly of the Whale

Once they have gone past the first threshold, at some point the Hero will find themselves in a difficult place of rebirth. The belly of the whale is a symbol for a kind of eternal womb, where this rebirth can begin.

To all intents and purposes the Hero is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died.

This allows the Hero to be dismantled, so that they can be reborn by the end of the story. In this place, wherever it is in your story world, the Hero will gain self-knowledge. He somehow get a glimpse of the eternity of the universe and the smallness of his own being within that.

After this period of the story the Hero will emerge born-again as if coming from his mother’s womb. He’ll be changed, and ready to continue with the journey with renewed vigour.

Campbell puts it soon after the crossing of the Threshold, and I’m sure he’s right historically. It’s a quirk of mine, and the story telling pattern I use, that I tend to put it later in Act 2.

Initiation – The Middle

6. The Road of Trials

Now the Hero is deep into the strange world of the story. Things are deeply different to where he has come from, and the Hero doesn’t always understand the people he meets, or the things that happen to him.

This is where the talisman may come into play. Or he might discover some kind of ally, supernatural or otherwise, who supports him through this part of the journey.

There will be a whole procession of battles – mini victories, and mini defeats, with unretainable joys and the occasional glimpse of the promised land before they are snatched away.

(This corresponds to the bulk of Act 2 in most stories.)

7. The Meeting With the Goddess

At some point the Hero will come up against a feminine force. This can be a good thing – the Hero can be united with a paragon of beauty, the reply to all his desire, the bliss-bestowing goal of every quest.

If the female force materialises in this way, she can be all that is archetypically positive about Woman — mother, sister, mistress, lover, bride, the promise of perfection given physical form.

Marriage to her, who represents Life, would be a dream come true. Think Galadriel or Arwen in Lord of the Rings.

8. Woman As the Temptress

Yet the problem is the female principle is often hard to pin down. Sometimes ‘she’ can be deceptive and change her nature. (Think of the female lead in a thousand noir movies.)

Sometimes the Hero can be betrayed by a false woman, or a previously benign female principle can turn bad. Sometimes she can even be physically shapeshifting.

Campbell believes this draws emotional power from all the memories of bad mothers: the absent, unattainable mother against whom you direct aggressive fantasies, and from whom violent repercussions are feared. The hampering forbidding, punishing mother.

• The mother who tries to stop the child breaking away.

• The desired but forbidden mother whose presence is a lure to dangerous desire.

• Woman, or femininity, as Destruction. (Think Ripley in the exoskeleton battling the Alien Queen in Aliens. But the extent to which you can find this kind of beat in popular culture suggests Campbell has a good point in general here.)

Another angle on this is to see the feminine impulse as a red herring, something to distract the Hero.

Given that in the greatest of stories the Hero is really on a journey to make his soul, stopping for earthly love would be a disastrously wrong move.

The Heroes with the greatest stature will inevitably recognise they have to press on beyond the woman. They have to defeat the temptations of her call, and soar on up to even greater, purer regions of pure spirit.

Which makes sense of what happens if the Hero does refuse to leave her. In these story terms, that means the woman has blocked the spiritual growth of the Hero, and so she usually falls off her pedestal as the Goddess and becomes the Queen of Sin.

9. Atonement With the Father

There is often (usually?) a confrontation with some form of Ogre — or in modern terms, any other dangerous, violent, and Male principle.

Though the Hero seems utterly outgunned, and outclassed at this point, they must engage in this battle and must look within themselves to find some way of winning.

This, like so much of the Monomyth, mirrors our own journey through life. When the child outgrows being with their mother they must turn to face the world of adult action. Campbell believes this means you pass, spiritually, into the sphere of the father. But then the growing child also has to grow beyond his father and become a free-standing adult. The whole process inevitably causes conflict –

…the problem of rivalry — the son against the father for the mastery of the universe — the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world.

10. Apotheosis

Campbell describes this as the moment where the Hero’s consciousness is annihilated, either actually, or metaphorically. At this point he gains freedom from fear and manages to behind his old failings. He has stepped up to the plate to truly become a Hero.

It’s a moment of total commitment to the quest. A total surrender to the outcome. He will battle his hardest, but whatever happens will be just and acceptable.

You often see it as a calm before the storm moment. The last chance for the Hero and his Lover to take a breather, to get drunk, to make love, to dance themselves silly, before the final challenge sets in.

11. The Ultimate Boon

This is something the Hero takes possession of that will restore or benefit society. It’s a symbol of life energy, stepped down to the level of the story, and the Hero. Big Heroes get big boons, and small Heroes get small ones.

If this goes wrong, and the Hero steals something of which he isn’t worthy, he is storing up big trouble for himself later on in the story.

The Return – The End

12. Refusal of the Return

Now the Hero must return to society with the Boon.

But sometimes he may decide not to go back. He may decide he wants to stay in this magical, blessed land, stay with the Boon, perhaps stay with the Goddess from Step 7.

13. The Magic Flight

If the Hero decides to make the return, this is the point at which he will have to make a run for it.

If he had any supernatural help in step 6, this can return in full force to help him out.

He may have stolen the boon, or the supernatural helper doesn’t want him to return. Maybe he stole someone’s wife or girlfriend. Or maybe he stole treasure of some kind. Or fire in general – think Prometheus. In this case this part of the story can become a lively, sometimes comical pursuit. (And this can be as lively as the writer’s imagination. Tricks, feints, maybe a great chase sequence featuring almost supernaturally clever or magical obstruction and evasion.)

One popular variety of the flight is the situation where items are thrown out by the Hero to distract the pursuer. Sometimes these things pretend they are the Hero. Or they can be devoted sidekicks who sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

Or perhaps the Hero can set up simple magical obstacles to delay pursuit. (But if he does so then he should normally pay a heavy price – it should cost him emotionally or physically.)

14 Rescue From Without

An alternative way of this happening is that if the Hero has made himself so comfortable in the world of the adventure, or it has seduced him so totally he may not be able to face a return to normality. He may have to be brought back from his adventure by rescuers from his old world.

If the Hero is unwilling to return, then the rescuer can suffer a nasty shock. There can be trouble between them and the Hero — but if the Hero is imprisoned by the state he has achieved, perhaps sealed into a state resembling death, (turned to stone perhaps), or by otherwise having reached a state which could be seen as perfect being, then the rescuers will be able to eventually win out and return him to normal society.

15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold

This is almost like a point where the Hero wakes up, and shakes their head, as if waking up from a dream. It’s a point where the experience of the other world and the knowledge gained suffers a transformation, a reduction.

There is always a baffling inconsistency between the wisdom brought back from the world of the adventure, and the way of living that has proved effective in the normal world.

The problem is to maintain the wiser, even cosmic, viewpoint the Hero has learned in the world of the Adventure in the face of the trials of everyday life, and normal, much more mundane, happiness or pain.

16. Master of the Two Worlds

In some stories the Hero demonstrates that he has gained real godlike powers, and he has acquired the freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from everyday life back to the world of the adventure and back.

This is a rare moment, and not to be trifled with. It’s equivalent to the Transfiguration and Resurrection of Christ.

17. Freedom to Live

The final state of the Hero. The summation of the whole adventure. The final state of Grace – why it was all worth going through.

The Hero has been lifted to a higher state – he is a better person. He is more humble, more powerful, more free from selfishness and longing, more free and grief. He is more at one with the world and his god.

If the Hero has a successful adventure the effect is the unlocking and release of the flow of life into the body of the world. This can be in the physical world, such as the giving out of food, or a big party; or dynamically, as a streaming of energy; or spiritually, as a manifestation of grace.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces on Amazon.

Photo by Manuel Meurisse on Unsplash