Week 4 Lab

 When we hear the word ‘myth’, we hear something that is not true. For example, if you swallow a piece of gum, it does not stay in your stomach for seven years. That is a myth. However, there are other kinds of myths, that have significance and staying power. There are some people that say myths only include creation stories, some that include gods, and some that include heroes.

When mythologists first began studying myths, it was thought that they were ‘primitive cultures’ way of explaining what was happening in the world around them. When mythologists combined with anthropologists, they started focusing on what ‘primitive cultures’ knew rather than what they did not know. Now, people are looking at the context of how/when/why people tell myths.

Heroes appear in stories of just about every culture for every age. What makes heroes? Fighting villains, being a protagonist, being a good role model?

Monomyth—series of events that appear in multiple stories across multiple cultures. A hero journeys away from safety and toward adventure, then they come back home again. Heroes tell us something about ourselves. Drew on Freud, and Jung. Emphasized the mother figure and the bond between father and son. “Manifestations of universal cosmic forces that shape the human subconsciousness”. The heroes journey has three main parts and seventeen subparts. Part one: a hero separates himself from the world. Subparts: Call to adventure, refusal of call, supernatural guide, crossing the first threshold, near death experience. Part two: Trials and victories of initiation. Subparts: Belly of the whale, the road of trials, meeting with the goddess, woman as temptress, atonement with the father, apotheosis, the ultimate boon, refusal of the return. Part three: Return. Subparts: Magic flight, rescue from without, crossing the return threshold, master of the two worlds, freedom to live.

Off the top of my head, most of the myths I have heard or read about follow some (if not all) of these patterns. Although Joseph Campbell clearly thought all heroes were masculine, this pattern holds true for myths involving heroines as well.