Want a plot that’s been used successfully thousands of times? Research Campbell’s monomyth or simply read Christopher Vogler’s book on the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey is an idea manufactured as a result of popular literature from Greco-Roman times. However, it does not even include the depth of writing that actually existed within those two cultures. Still some authors have this idea that the hero’s journey as based on Greek myths (and defined by Joseph Campbell) is the only plot worth using. It is becoming the one most palatable to the public. I frequently detect a simplified version of the Greco-Roman literature influencing our culture. How does this affect our society? People assume that this type of literature is used in the rest of the world, but it is not.

I begin to wonder what kind of background some teachers of literature have. I recall a student being downgraded on an assignment when analyzing a story by an Asian author because she could not find the hero’s journey in it. There was none. The main character fled China and came back to find the children she had left behind. Only, these children were now adults and strangers to her. She gained no knowledge and achieved no triumph through her arduous trip back to China. Rather there was a sense of disappointment and doubt about whether she should have taken the journey at all. Still, it was not a tragedy when she realized that her homeland was not worth returning to, and the strange place where her “adventure” took her was now her home.

Most of the time popular stories follow the first half of the monomyth in which the hero goes through ordeals and manages to come back victorious from his journey. They rarely deal with the second part where the hero screws up his life. Read what happens to Jason after he brought back a bride who helped him obtain the Golden fleece, and then decided that one wife wasn’t enough. Perseus faced a similar problem after he killed the monstrous Minotaur and rescued a beautiful woman, who he later abandoned. The heroes of monomyths often make a mess of the second part of their life.

The bare bones of the hero’s journey won’t suffice for the entire story either. It is only a guide. When a story has been told thousands of times what makes it interesting is adding personal details. Each author must ask “What things are important to me that I want to emphasize? What events have occurred in my life that match parts of the story? When I get done reading a good novel I feel like I’ve met some of the characters because the author actually has. And, if it turns out that the hero’s journey morphed into something else, so much the better.

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