The Hero with a Thousand Faces Themes

The Hero's Journey is basically a quest for identity: finding out who you are and what you're capable of. The irony, Campbell observes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (like the philosophical litt...

Like a lot of things in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Good and Evil usually aren't quite what they seem. On the surface, the hero is the good guy and he (or she) sets out on a journey to stop som...

Destiny plays a pretty big hand in the The Hero with a Thousand Faces, tapping the hero or heroine on the shoulder and showing him or her the path. But it's not all set down on shining steel rails....

Hey, anytime there's a dangerous quest, there's going to be a little death involved. We tend to think of death as evil, since we don't want to die and don't like it when people close to us do. But...

When it comes down to it, The Hero with a Thousand Faces is about spirituality…but it's not about any one specific religion. Campbell believes that the stories we tell are ways of symbolizing and...

The Avengers, Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen and the Star Wars crew are all new creations, but they're actually part of a way, way older tradition. The customs we engage in are the same way: weddin...

Traditions and customs help keep things the same…or at least in the same spirit as the past. But life means growth and change, and that means transformation. We're never quite the same as we were...

Above all else, The Hero with a Thousand Faces shows us how a young person becomes a grown-up: taking on adult responsibilities, gaining the skills we need to pay the bills, and otherwise accepting...

The tag says "Wisdom and Knowledge," but those aren't necessarily the same things in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Wisdom is understanding the greater mysteries, and having the humility to see ho...

At the end of the day, The Hero with a Thousand Faces is all about exploration: going somewhere you've never been before and seeing what it has to offer. Again, the mileage may vary depending on th...