Heroism in the Dystopian World: Home

Joseph Campbell’s first full-length solo book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen Series XVII: 1949), earned the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Contributions to Creative Literature. In this study of the myth of the archetypal hero, Campbell posits the existence of a “monomyth” (a word he borrows from James Joyce), a universal pattern that is the essence of, and common to, heroic tales in every culture.

In this post, we’ll walk through the elements of the Hero’s Journey step by step. We’ll also study an archetypal example from the movie The Matrix (1999). Once you have mastered the beats of this narrative template, you’ll be ready to put your very own spin on it