Guide Mentor

Character Role Analysis

Frank Wirtanen

You don't get a nickname like Blue Fairy Godmother without playing some sort of critical role in a character's life. As far as mentors go, Wirtanen is kind of like an absentee parent. What he does provide, besides near-magical escapes, is a figurative mirror that helps Campbell assess himself.

Campbell can't really pretend around Wirtanen. When Wirtanen asks him what would have happened if Germany had won the war, Campbell realizes he'd never undo his Nazi persona:

So I projected myself into the situation he described, and what was left of my imagination gave me a corrosively cynical answer. 'There is every chance,' I said, 'that I would have become a sort of Nazi Edgar Guest, writing a daily column of optimistic doggerel for daily papers around the world. And, as senility set in, the sunset of life, as they say—I might even come to believe what my couplets said: that everything was probably all for the best.' (32.81)

Campbell still sees himself as a creative person, even when he's writing nasty nationalistic poetry, but he concedes that he'd probably eventually brainwash himself. All would be settled, and he'd be a Nazi inside, too, instead of just outside.