SPRINGVILLE, Utah (November 7, 2018)—The Springville Museum of Art currently has an exhibition titled “Journeys: Monomyth and Transformation.” In conjunction with this exhibition, BYU professors Dr. Matthew Wickman and Dr. Kerry Soper were invited to speak at the museum alongside the museum’s director, Dr. Rita R. Wright, about the hero’s journey, and how that journey can be seen through religious, literary, and cultural lenses.
The hero’s journey (or monomyth) is an archetype that manifests itself in spheres such as literature, film, and art. In discussing the hero’s journey, all three speakers referenced the work of Joseph Campbell, who wrote on myth and helped define and categorize the hero’s journey. According to Campbell, the hero is typically a young boy who experiences a “call to adventure,” then refuses the call before ultimately accepting it. The hero receives the help of mentors along the way, undergoes critical tests or rites of passage, is “marked” by the villain while confronting or destroying them, and finally returns triumphant. The three speakers all noted the pervasiveness of the hero’s journey, saying that it is a myth that can be found all around us. Wickman stated that “these hero journeys are virtually ubiquitous.” The speakers then gave examples to demonstrate how surrounded we are by this myth.
Dr. Soper outlined the use of the hero’s journey in pop culture. He brought up examples from Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, How to Train Your Dragon, and Spiderman. Soper showed how these heroes followed along the cycle Campbell had outlined, but Soper also pointed out how some of these stories differed from this typical hero’s outline. Soper noted that “up until recent years, when people talked about the monomyth and the hero’s journey, it was always about young boys… and only in maybe the last decade do we see… characters like Rey, where it can be a young woman who gets to be the hero.”
Dr. Wickman examined the monomyth through an array of different lenses. He talked about the ways in which modern and post-modern literature follows the hero’s journey, “but,” Wickman said, “almost ironically.” Wickman, like Soper, discussed the ways that the hero’s journey has been twisted and adapted, even as it has continued to survive as a common archetype in our culture. Wickman also spoke about the hero’s journey from a religious perspective. Wickman stated that “the hero’s journey is a spiritual quest,” giving biblical examples of the hero’s journey, such as stories about Christ and Joseph of Egypt. Wickman continued, saying that “Even the Bible narrative itself may be interpreted as a hero’s journey, beginning in Genesis with expulsion from the Garden of Eden and concluding with the rapturous return of Christ to the Earth in Revelation.”
The speakers, as well as the carefully selected art of the exhibition, showed the ways in which the hero’s journey permeates our everyday lives and culture. Museum Director Dr. Wright noted that the artists of the works chosen for the exhibition “did not, all of them, create works to go into [the hero’s journey] pattern.” Nevertheless, within each of the works, elements of the monomyth can be seen. The works of art on display left the audience thinking not only about the hero’s journey as an archetype in our culture, but about how this archetype plays a role in the way we live our own lives. Wickman addressed this thought by saying that there are causes and experiences that “make us better than we would otherwise be; they are the mythic, the heroic, the substance of Campbell’s theory in a more common register.”
Emma Ebert (Editing & Publishing ’21)