Joseph Campbell, a famous author, mythologist, and most notable for his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. During the mid 1900’s, Campbell studied the heroic ideology throughout the world and time. Campbell realized similarities of the heroic journeys between the different cultures and time periods. Even though all heroic stories are different, they all have common patterns of their journey. He wrote his discovery in the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. To summarize the heroic journey, Campbell wrote in his book, “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power …show more content…
The call to adventure starts the hero’s journey. The hero begins in a state of normality until some information is given to the them, usually from a herald or mysterious figure, that leads the hero into the unknown (Hall 2017). After receiving the call, the hero will encounter their supernatural aid. This is the first encounter the hero will make on his journey. It is a “protective figure” who will aid the hero in their journey (Hall 2017). In this play, the ghost of king Hamlet starts Hamlet’s journey and is his supernatural aid. According to “An Analysis of a Hero’s Journey in William Shakespeare’s Play Hamlet”: Hamlet’s heroic “Journey begins with the ordinary world in which Hamlet is in a very melancholy mood due to the untimely death of his beloved father” (2). Then Hamlet “...follows Horatio to the woods where he does meet the ghost of his father. His father then tells him that his death was at the hands of Claudius and that Hamlet must avenge” (3). This is Hamlet’s call to adventure. Before hearing this request, Hamlet lived a normal life, studying in England. Until, a mysterious ghost prompted him to kill his uncle for revenge. Hamlet has never, presumably, killed anyone in the past, and the ghost is expecting him to kill. The ghost is also his supernatural aid. The ghost only directly conversed with Hamlet twice. One was in the forest where the ghost told Hamlet that a …show more content…
Once the hero accepts his journey, they have to cross the threshold. This means that the hero needs to escape the “protection of society” and must enter the “darkness, the unknown, and danger” (Hall 2017). During the danger and evil, the hero must find a way to overcome his fears and find strength in order to save the day (Hall 2017). Finally, the last step of the heroic journey is the hero’s return. The hero must “return to society” and share his knowledge or teach in order to restore balance in the “original world” (Hall 2017). Hamlet’s violence is what gets Hamlet through these three steps. Hamlet crosses the threshold when he was talking to his mother, while Polonius was in the curtain, listening to their conversation. When Hamlet was starting to become aggressive, Polonius yells, from behind the curtain,“What ho! Help!.” Not knowing who it is, Hamlet calls him “a rat” and kills him, thinking that he was Claudius (Shakespeare III, iv, 27-29). Hamlet entered an unfamiliar land of a murderer. This was the first time he killed somebody in the play. This is the start of his murderous spree. Also, his royalty can not protect him anymore since he murdered someone, and the punishment for murder in the medieval times is death. After crossing the threshold, Hamlet is ready to kill Claudius. Hamlet’s belly of the whale occurs in the last scene of the play. After