Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Spring 2010
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 30:3 (Spring 2010).
Abstract
Stories of development from childhood to adulthood or of journeying through a 1ifechanging experience to gain new knowledge are replete in oral and written tradition, as exemplified by the Greek epic of Odysseus and countless other tales. Often the hero journeys naively to an alien land and then, with great difficulty, returns home wiser but forever scarred. Such a journey can take the hero to a terrible place, from which he may escape physically, but from which he can never escape emotionally. The hardship of travel and its ensuing lessons is a common theme in human narratives, its protean form identified repeatedly in world mythologies by scholar Joseph Campbell. According to Campbell, the hero comes in many forms, bearing "a thousand faces," but always with the same underlying experience-moving from a call to journey and often an initial refusal, then acceptance followed by a crossing of the threshold into temptation and atonement, finally leading to an eventual return bearing both scars and the wisdom of a transformative experience. As Campbell writes, "The hero has died as man-he has been reborn ... to return then to us, transfigured, and teach us the lesson he has learned of life renewed."1
Comments
Copyright © 2010 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.