The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell 416 pp.

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces forms the basis of the monomyth theory of analyzing literature generally and mythology specifically. This theory, in brief, is that the hero in almost every story told in any culture around the world goes through most or all of the same stages in their journey. Thus, by applying the monomyth structure to stories, we can gain a rapid understanding of their similarities and an insight into their meaning.

To discuss this book further, I will separate this review into two parts; first I will discuss the theory itself, it’s positive traits and its drawbacks. Second, I will discuss some larger issues with the structure of the book itself and some of Campbell’s claims about “primitive” societies.

Campbell’s central conception of the book is the monomyth, a cycle of stages present in nearly every story told throughout human history. The hero will pass through a fixed progression of coarsely-defined motifs, beginning with the refusal of the call to adventure, progressing through the dangerous task ahead, and finally returning to bequeath the boons of his task. This conception is remarkably useful as an analytical tool, but it is problematic to assume that all stories can be shoehorned into one narrative structure, no matter how coarse the defined stages of that structure are.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces takes each of these stages in the journey and provides selections from myths from around the world to demonstrate them. Campbell picks up different stories at different points, weaving them throughout the book as a whole. This structure works very well for illustrating the application of the theory to individual events in stories, but I found myself wishing for just a little bit more. If Campbell had taken some space aside at the end of the book to lay out one or two myths beginning to end, annotating them with each stage in the cycle, the reader would easily be able to apply the structure to a story as a whole, without taking the added challenge of compiling Campbell’s scattered references.

I wanted to like this book. I’ve been a fan of Campbell’s work since high school, especially of Myths to Live By and The Masks of God. Yet, until now, I’d never managed to make my way through The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Every time I attempted to read the whole book, I ran aground on Campbell’s style of writing. Hero was Campbell’s first major book, and the unpolished nature of his prose shows. Frequently Campbell’s voice seems to be little more than a backgrounded narrator, meekly tying together lengthy quotations from other texts.

The problem, however, comes forth when Campbell does begin to use his authorial voice. For much of the book, he ties together myths from all around the world, Native American, European, African, Middle Eastern, Asian, and does so somewhat seamlessly. Two-thirds of the way through the book, Campbell decides to address, “folk mythologies.” At this point, he makes the claim that the stories from cultures on the periphery of what he describes as great civilizations (Mostly empire building, large edifice erecting, literate cultures) simply could not have arisen organically. To deny the independent origination of ideas hurts The Hero with a Thousand Faces in two ways.

First it hurts the book’s credibility as an academic work. To belittle and deny the validity of the cultures whose stories one is studying damages the reader’s interest and the author’s voice. Denying the creations of cultures one does not consider to be “civilized enough” reeks of the imperialistic and racist mindset which led many European explorers in Africa to invent progressively more and more ludicrous theories to explain the builders of large stone structures and cities across the continent.

Secondly, it damages, by virtue of a very odd sense of humility, the potential reach of Campbell’s monomyth theory. If all humans across the entire world tell stories which fit neatly into one large narrative structure, then it seems that this structure is something inherent in the human mind. Campbell picks up on this idea in Primitive Mythology, so I won’t discuss it in detail here. 

These flaws do not entirely manage to sink the book in my estimation, but they do problematize my enjoyment of it. After making my way through the entirety of the text, I realized why I was never able to finish it before now, despite at least a dozen attempts. Campbell’s style is not developed adequately in the book, the structure focuses far too heavily on the placement of block quotations, and when Campbell’s voice does rise to the foreground, his opinions, products of their time or not, force the reader to question the validity of his writing.

Would I recommend The Hero with a Thousand Faces? Hesitantly yes, but only as a way to fill out one’s understanding of Campbell’s thought after reading his other works.

Score: 3.2/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar