The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a comparative study of the religions and myths of the world. Its central theme is that all of their stories are essentially the same. They follow certain archetypal paths that are different in particular circumstances, but in general, follow the same overall arch. Now, this is not 100% true as even he admits - stories get changed around a bit and different things happen, but to the extent that he makes his point, the similarities are astonishing. His conclusion - or ONE possible interpretation - is that this reflects certain archetypal themes that are in every society's collective subconscious (Jung) and that these myths represent eternal truths about life...how to look at it and how to live it.

Now, as to the criticism that his examples don't bear out his theories, Campbell states that he is just choosing an example or two to illustrate his point. The purpose of this book is not to be a comprehensive collection of the world's myths - that book is The Golden Bough. Campbell selects myths that the average reader may not be familiar with. While sometimes similarities may not be immediately apparent, it is open to disagreement as any essay on literature is. Campbell warns though that these myths must be ready as poetry, not prose - so beware of any callow analysis. Personally, I would have like his using more familiar myths - especially Arthurian legends - to illustrate his point.

As for his seeming to rely on Freud and Jung as gospel, that is a bit dated. Even so, the fact that his theories do jibe with Jungian psychology is significant - if not actual "proof" that he's right. And as for disagreements with his world-view, that is irrelevant. Campbell has developed a framework with which to view the world; you do not have to draw the same conclusions from it that he does. Campbell did not believe in a personal God, and I believe he is wrong about that. But the underlying message to me is that, even though people may have divergent beliefs about religion, the underlying ideas and values of religion ARE DEMONSTRATABLY TRUE.

Campbell goes through each stage of the hero's journey, with all its variations. This is meant not only as academia but it is for YOU - the READER. This is how one views one's own life. These ancient stories were not just for entertainment - they showed us how to live. That's what this book is for.


Wrongheaded, but influential   May 28, 2001
Tyson D. Rahmeier (Roswell, GA USA)
33 out of 75 found this review helpful

Were it not for the fact that several prominent individuals (George Lucas, Neil Gaiman) claim to have been influenced by Joseph Campbell, I would say that THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES is book that should never have been written, let alone published. Nevertheless, I continue to be amazed at the number of people who insist that their lives have been changed by this book. Personally, I find it a wrongheaded attempt to present myth and mythology as an historically unified body of work stretching from the ancient Sumerians to the 1940s. This, quite simply, is preposterous notion. Consider a statement Campbell makes on pg. 29 of this edition: "It is the business of mythology proper, and of the fairy tale, to reveal the specific dangers and techniques of the dark interior from tragedy to comedy." Nothing could be further from the truth. As regards the ancient civilizations, mythology filled a religious, not a psychological or philosophical, role. The myths of the ancients (Sumer, Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, etc...) were produced from the need to explain cosmological & natural questions, NOT to investigate "humanness" or to reveal the subconscious. The ancients had no time for that, concerned as they were primarily with survival rather than personal identity. The examples that Campbell uses to promote his view of what he calls "the hero quest" are highly questionable. At a very basic level, he almost NEVER cites his sources for the "myths" to which he refers. The reader has no idea of where Campbell finds his versions. His rendition of the story of Cupid & Psyche is REALLY off the wall. It would be interesting to know from where he got it, or did he just make it up. Second of all, he goes into great detail over what the "hero quest" entails and then uses an example that doesn't fit. His use of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Frog King" is only one example. There is no "call to adventure", "initiation", "transformation", or "return". Yet "The Frog King" is the very FIRST example he uses. More damaging, he tries to draw Jesus and Mohammed into the "hero quest" and both of them, focal points for two of the largest and most important religions in the world, don't fit at all. Nevertheless, Campbell repeatedly asserts that "all" religions fit his model. It's just not so. Additionally, Campbell's short piece on what he calls "the World Navel" is simply laughable. Trying to picture a global belly-button, physical or conceptual, should knock any possibility of taking Campbell seriously right out the window. The "World Navel" is a ludricrous assertion of a bad idea gone wrong. To try to apply 20th century Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis to the myths & minds of the ancients is clearly useless. To have a section on tragedy & comedy and include only ONE reference to Aristotle reveals either arrogance or carelessness. To attempt to impose a single unified archetype on such a varied body of human imagination trivializes the human mind and its millenial accomplishments. In THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, Campbell commits all of these offenses and should be justly criticized for them.


Provocative, poetic, scholarly... and downright beautiful   June 19, 2000
Earl Hazell (New York)
31 out of 39 found this review helpful

Having moved so far beyond the intellectual/psychological paradigms Campbell subscribed to and so magnificently introduced to me with this book, I had forgotten how important his way of thinking is and had been to both regular people and anthropological scholarship- and my own personal development as a person.

Joseph Campbell was an intellectual/spiritual throwback to the pre-Victorian age, when myth was not degraded for religious, socio-political and scientific agendas. It is almost hard to believe- thanks to him- that the word could have ever taken on the connotation of lie or trivial fantasy. Or, that the ancient myths at the foundation of what we know to be culture, universal in much of their form and reason for being, could ever possibly be ignored or trivialized. So much wealth of human history do they hold, and so many treasures of inner knowledge do they make as gifts.

Campbell set out to be not just a scholar or intellectual, but a modern Bard of his own, in the tradition of Homer, Sophecles, Confucius, Shakespeare and Freud. In so doing, he also cut through much of the modern culture's historic efforts to divide the world into some form of the Pagan/Believer dichotomy (via religon or science or politics vs. the regular folks of every century and their traditions) and reestablish the hegemony of the ancient truths that still serve as the fountain head of our imagination. HERO OF A THOUSAND FACES does that so elegantly, and so compassionately, that it becomes a truly life- affirming as well as paradigm shifting adventure.

Some scholars have had and will continue to have problems with his work and approach. Don't kid yourself; it's in part because he was such a wonderful writer who can connect the daunting intellectual scope of his ideas with the general public, almost regardless of one's level of education. Weaker writers cannot do that, regardless of their intellectual capacity or theories, and hide in the ivory tower where it is safe. Another reason, however, is the degree to which his work relied on the psychological theories of Jung. Though Jung's genius is also unquestionable, he did not provide the only lens by which to look at ancient myth, and via staying so deeply in a psychological paradigm (for more than just altruistic therapeutic reasons) he served to antagonize variant approaches and perspectives on the same materials. (Jungian psychologists and architects for example can almost never sit in the same room together without a fistfight practically ensuing, so violently and diametrically opposed they become on Jung's interpretations of what very often is actually ancient science and mathematics.) Yet though I tend not to agree with a significant portion of the meaning given to Campbell's work and discoveries anymore for that reason, I cannot help but remember that it was he more or less who opened my eyes to so much of what I now understand to be human and universal, transcending culture, "race", language and time.

Campbell's unexpected bringing together of mythical similarities from Celtic, native American, Indian, Bablyonian and other divergent world sources of myth is done so well, and so poetically while again with great erudition, it will put you in touch with much of what is beautiful in art, literature, religion, and the human mind- not to mention the human heart. And of the several of his books I have read, HERO OF A THOUSAND FACES is the best. Your soul-quest will far from end with his work and ideas, but I can't imagine it having a better beginning.


A Child of Its Time - But not now   January 27, 2004
Karl (England, Great Britain)
28 out of 64 found this review helpful

When this book was written, in 1948, the very idea of questioning the rightness of Freud or Jung, even though they had fallen out with each other, was (supposedly) something only an idiot would contemplate.

Today, thanks to studies such as Richard Webster's "Why Freud was Wrong", we have learnt to treat the teachings of these men with a great deal of caution, and the psychoanalytic movement as a whole enjoys nothing like the unquestioning acceptance it claimed for itself in the first half of the 20th century.

And the point is:

There are two main flaws in Campbell's book:

1. The style of the writing is hopelessly scholarly and pedestrian. In its time, no doubt this help to justify the book's claim to be academically respectable. Today it just makes it a very heavy-going read.

2. Campbell himself attaches terrific importance to the validity of Freud and Jung's work when he seeks to explain the elements of "The Hero's Journey". And since the credibility of Freudianism in particular has been seriously undermined over the last 50 years, that inevitably consigns Campbell's work to the outer fringes of valid interpretation of the material he covers.

As interesting as the basic material is, the dry-as-dust style of writing robbed it of most of its sparkle, as far as I was concerned. The highly questionable interpretive/psychoanalytical sections further interrupted the flow - whilst adding nothing of any value.

If I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered with this book.
I reckon you'd learn just as much about the basic process of The Hero's Journey by watching all three "Lord of the Rings" films. And it would be a whole lot more fun, to boot.


"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."   May 27, 2000
Curtis L. Wilbur (San Diego, California USA)
26 out of 37 found this review helpful

I'm tempted not to bother writing a review here, simply because most of what I would say has already been said: The true value of a myth lies in the lesson imparted behind the words; If you believe the words of a myth, you destroy it; All myths have a common origin in the complex behavior patterns that are humanity. It would be quite human of me to lavish praise on Campbell, and say that he is one of the great minds of the 20th Century, and I might even be right in doing so. But ultimately I don't think that's what Campbell would have wanted. More, I think that he, along with other great minds, wish to impart an understanding that reason can never be found within words, only behind them. Only by being on that path can we gain something meaningful from the book, but then we are forced to say also that the book itself is meaningless. And it's true: There are many books that can teach us the same things, and yet there are many who will never learn this lesson, no matter what they read.

The real value this book had for me is that I know I am not alone. There are others who have travelled the lonely path, and I can do nothing better than to examine their footprints in history. Don't iconize Campbell. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. But do follow his signposts, of which there are plenty in this well-written manuscript.