Marisa Paris
Humanities 220
Professor Cope
12/8/14

In 1949, American scholar Joseph Campbell, published what could possibly be one of the most influential non-fiction books of his time, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. (Joseph Campbell Foundation) After lifelong research, Joseph Campbell discovered as well as exposed, a number of common patterns linked between multiple myths and stories spread all over the world. Thus, giving way to the composition of his book. The “hero’s journey” can be described as the various stages or phases that pretty much every hero-quest experiences, with no regard to what culture the myth plays a part in. Put more explicitly, the “hero’s journey” is an adventure the person known as “the hero” takes on behalf of the …show more content…
In this stage, the hero is out of place; uncomfortable, uneasy, and sometimes even, unaware that he or she is being introduced to the audience in a sympathetic, relatable way. We see him or her in his or her natural environment and receive some background, also including personal history. (The Writer’s Journey) There’s a characteristic or trait the hero possesses that separates him or her from the rest of the society; something that makes the hero seem considerably odd or eccentric. In Spider-Man, we’re first introduced to Peter Parker’s parents, who are frantic and frazzled due to some sort of dilemma going on at the time. They leave Peter at his aunt and uncle’s house to get on a plane, which shortly after crashes, and we never see them again. So, now we have Peter Parker, a parentless boy living with his aunt and uncle in New York City. Flash forward about ten years, and now we’re finally focused on Peter. Peter’s in high school, with thick-rimmed glasses, a camera basically attached to his hip, no muscle, and sadly only known really as the boy who takes the school pictures. Fletch, a jock, throws a basketball at his head and bullies him on the daily. In the Aeneid, Aeneas is somewhat portrayed in the same way. “I sing of arms and of a man: his fate had made him fugitive; he was the first to journey from the coasts of Troy as far as Italy and the Lavinian shores. Across the lands and waters he was battered beneath the violence of High Ones, for the savage Juno’s unforgetting anger; and many sufferings were his in war” (1). Although Aeneas’s name isn’t specifically noted of, we can assume that this is whom Virgil is speaking of and we learn a lot about him, without him even knowing. This quote highlights Aeneas’s absence of significance as an individual; what he does now will serve as a definition of him in the future. Both Peter and Aeneas aren’t taken very seriously; they’re merely