A Practical Guide

Vogler starts this chapter by introducing Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces and as he said the "ageless patterns of the hero and his/her journey". There are twelve stages to a heroes journey that can be understand by everyone and can be seen in almost every culture. First in the ordinary world or the place where the hero lives before it is call to an adventure which is a problem, challenge or adventure. Then the hero is reluctant since the adventure does not affect him personally, but then a mentor encourages him or her to cross the first threshold and face the challenge. On the way it will meet tests, allies and enemies. After that comes the approach to the inmost cave or the lion's cave, there it will confront an ordeal or the confrontation with it's greatest fear. Finally the hero obtains the reward, starts it's road back, learns from the experiences and resurrects to return with the elixir to the normal world.

Even though these stages are use to explain movies it can also be use to explain life. Life itself is a journey we start in that place were we feel most comfortable and as we grow up we have to go to special worlds to meet our expectations and fulfill our dreams. On this hard journey we are guide by people like our parents and professors and helped by our friends and family. Of course the way is not easy and there will be time in which we also enter the cave and face an ordeal like money, family or internal problems. We all hope that at the end we receive our reward and learn all we need to achieve our dreams. Then when we get older we will have no regrets.

In western Heritage last semester we also talked about the meaning of a hero and its journey. The stages were not unfamiliar to me and it is really interesting how as mentioned in the book, you can find them in almost every culture in the world. We read books from Greek culture like The Odyssey and Indian like The Ramayana and both follow this pattern. To explain the stages many movies were used, most of them were unfamiliar to me. The one I could identify was The Count of Monte Cristo. Dante is a peculiar hero since his motives are based on revenge which made him act in a way not common to the stereotype of a hero. He commits crimes against people that did not do anything wrong to him, he will use them to be able to get his revenge. For example how he use and almost killed Albert without knowing he was his son. Still while watching the movie we cheered for him and as him we wanted his enemies to die too. In some way he makes the audience perceive him as a hero.

Questions

1. What makes Edmund Dante from "The Count of Monte Cristo" a hero in a journey?
2. Do you think that all of the twelve stages can be use not only to explain movies and books, but to explain life?
3. Of the twelve stages, which one is the most important?