The Hero Quest
Heroic Search as Life Process
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Birth
Maturation
Death
Rebirth
Thetis dipping Achilles in the river Styx. Thomas
Banks (1735-1805) English; about 1788
Victoria and Albert museum
Rites of Passage
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Birth
Puberty
Coming of Age
Death
Question: What are some modern examples of such rites of passage?
The Psychological Quest
Sigmund Freud, c. 1921
(1856-1939)
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Hero Quest in the Individual Mind
• dream world of the individual
• importance of subconscious in
determining human behavior and
belief
• psychoanalysis
– a method of therapeutic analysis
based on theory that abnormal
mental states result from the
repression of desires that the
conscious mind rejects but which
persist in the unconscious
• id / ego / superego
• Oedipus complex
Sigmund Freud, c. 1921
(1856-1939)
Freud on Achilles
• Relationship with parents
– Thetis, his mother
– Peleus, his father
• Mortal vs. Divine
Attic red figure kylix, signed by Peithinos
500 BC
Antikenmuseen, Berlin
Achilles and His Mother
Achilles and Peleus
• Peleus marries Thetis
• Mortal Peleus makes Achilles mortal
• Peleus gives Achilles to centaur
Chiron to be raised.
Peleus consigns Achilles to
Chiron's care, white-ground
lekythos by the Edimburg
Painter, ca. 500 BC, National
Archaeological Museum of
Athens
Joachim Wtewael
The Marriage Feast of Peleus and Thetis
ca. 1606-10
oil on copper, .75 x 8.75 in., t Feigen
Hero Quest in the Collective Mind
• dream world of society
• collective unconscious
• archetypes: recurring
myths characters,
situations and events
• archetype as primal form
or pattern from which all
other versions are derived
More on Jung: http://skepdic.com/jung.html
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Achilles as an Jungian Archetype
• Mortal Yearning for Immortality
• Achilles’ Choice (Immortal Fame)
Students of Jung
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1975)
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)
Victor Turner (1920-1983)
Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)
Ernst Cassirer
(1874-1975)
German philosopher
and historian of ideas
one of the leading exponents of
neo-Kantian thought in the 20th
century
Emphasized the inevitable relationship of myth and language
The great symbol systems from science to mythology are not modeled on
reality but model it.
Myth as mind's spontaneous creation of an emotionally satisfying cosmos.
More on Cassirer: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cassir.htm
Marcia Eliade
(1907-1986)
Eliade's analysis of religion assumes the existence of "the
sacred" as the object of worship of religious humanity.
Myths reflect a creative era, a sacred time, a vanished epoch of
unique holiness.
More on Eliade: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/bodhidharma/mircea.html
Victor Turner (1920-1983)
Anthropologist at Stanford
developed a unique ritual approach stressing the
processual nature of ritual among the Ndembu and of
ritual activity in complex societies.
myths serve a combined psychological and social purpose
in the present and promote a liminal or threshold
experience
Myths ease people through life's difficult transitions
Rituals as symbolic actions.
PROCESSUAL SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS
Ritual analyses are dominated by myth, speech, and
thought analysis.
More on Turner:
http://www.cla.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zturn.htm
Joseph Campbell
1904-1987
Hero's rite of passage
journey of maturation
Growth into true selfhood (Jung's individuation)
More on Campbell: http://www.jcf.org/about_jc.php
Five Stages of the Hero Quest
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Call to Adventure
Struggle or Crossing the Threshold
Tests of Will, Endurance and Ability
The Ordeal and Its Reward
The Return
Call to Adventure
Each hero receives a call to his task--either through some inner voice
of feeling of through outside circumstances. he may eagerly accept
of bluntly refuse his task. (If he refuses, he is usually forced through
trickery or violence to accept.)
Struggle or Crossing the Threshold
These are the steps into the world of
conflict and danger, which may
be conceive in human terms (e.g.
a war) or in religious and
mythological symbolism (e.g.
monsters the lower world). The
hero often has a helper (human
or divine) who aids him with extra
knowledge and strength. At times
the hero must seem to die to his
old life in order to enter the world
of the quest (e.g. disappearance
for years, descent to the
underworld).
Tests of Will and Endurance
• These test (whether only one or a series) usually
take the form of conflict or battle with monsters,
natural forces, or hostile humans. Again, the
hero may have help, but he must successfully
overcome the obstacles himself.
Ordeal and Its Reward
• This is the supreme test of everything the hero is and
represents, and ultimately decides his fitness to be a
hero. It ends in his triumphant reward which may be
expressed in terms of human love (marriage), triumph in
battle, reunion, possession of some treasure or precious
substance, or deification.
The Return
• If the successful accomplishment of the heroic
task is to be truly beneficial, then the hero must
return to the world he left, bringing the princess,
gift, treasure knowledge, of whatever it is with
him. If he is the symbol of a group, then he is
bringing a benefit to them all.
Sometimes his return is
aided by the gods or other
forces; sometimes he
must flee hostile forces
that resent his seizure of
the reward. This is a
theme of renewal and
rebirth, the way the old
individual, nation, and/or
world can be restored and
live again.
Five Stages of the Hero Quest
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Call to Adventure
Struggle or Crossing the Threshold
Tests of Will, Endurance and Ability
The Ordeal and Its Reward
The Return