The Hero Quest

Heroic Search as Life Process• Birth

• Maturation

• Death

• Rebirth

Thetis dipping Achilles in the river Styx. Thomas Banks (1735-1805) English; about 1788Victoria and Albert museum

Rites of Passage

• Birth

• Puberty

• Coming of Age

• Death

Question: What are some modern examples of such rites of passage?

The Psychological Quest

Sigmund Freud, c. 1921(1856-1939)

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Hero Quest in the Individual Mind

• dream world of the individual• importance of subconscious in

determining human behavior and belief

• psychoanalysis– a method of therapeutic analysis

based on theory that abnormal mental states result from the repression of desires that the conscious mind rejects but which persist in the unconscious

• id / ego / superego• Oedipus complex

Sigmund Freud, c. 1921(1856-1939)

Freud on Achilles

• Relationship with parents– Thetis, his mother– Peleus, his father

• Mortal vs. Divine

Attic red figure kylix, signed by Peithinos500 BCAntikenmuseen, Berlin

Achilles and His Mother

Achilles and Peleus• Peleus marries Thetis• Mortal Peleus makes Achilles mortal• Peleus gives Achilles to centaur

Chiron to be raised.

Peleus consigns Achilles to Chiron's care, white-ground lekythos by the Edimburg Painter, ca. 500 BC, National Archaeological Museum of Athens

Joachim WtewaelThe Marriage Feast of Peleus and Thetisca. 1606-10oil on copper, .75 x 8.75 in., t Feigen

Hero Quest in the Collective Mind

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

• dream world of society• collective unconscious• archetypes: recurring myths characters, situations and events• archetype as primal form or pattern from which all other versions are derived

More on Jung: http://skepdic.com/jung.html

Achilles as an Jungian Archetype• Mortal Yearning for Immortality

• Achilles’ Choice (Immortal Fame)

Students of Jung

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1975)

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)

Victor Turner (1920-1983)

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1975) German philosopher and historian of ideas

one of the leading exponents of neo-Kantian thought in the 20th

century

Emphasized the inevitable relationship of myth and language

The great symbol systems from science to mythology are not modeled on reality but model it.

Myth as mind's spontaneous creation of an emotionally satisfying cosmos.

More on Cassirer: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cassir.htm

Marcia Eliade (1907-1986)

Eliade's analysis of religion assumes the existence of "the sacred" as the object of worship of religious humanity.

Myths reflect a creative era, a sacred time, a vanished epoch of unique holiness.

More on Eliade: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/bodhidharma/mircea.html

Victor Turner (1920-1983)Anthropologist at Stanford

developed a unique ritual approach stressing the processual nature of ritual among the Ndembu and of ritual activity in complex societies.

myths serve a combined psychological and social purpose in the present and promote a liminal or threshold experience

Myths ease people through life's difficult transitions

Rituals as symbolic actions.

PROCESSUAL SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS

Ritual analyses are dominated by myth, speech, and thought analysis.

More on Turner: http://www.cla.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zturn.htm

Joseph Campbell1904-1987

Hero's rite of passage

journey of maturation

Growth into true selfhood (Jung's individuation)

More on Campbell: http://www.jcf.org/about_jc.php

Five Stages of the Hero Quest

• Call to Adventure

• Struggle or Crossing the Threshold

• Tests of Will, Endurance and Ability

• The Ordeal and Its Reward

• The Return

Call to Adventure

Each hero receives a call to his task--either through some inner voice of feeling of through outside circumstances. he may eagerly accept of bluntly refuse his task. (If he refuses, he is usually forced through trickery or violence to accept.)

Struggle or Crossing the ThresholdThese are the steps into the world of

conflict and danger, which may be conceive in human terms (e.g. a war) or in religious and mythological symbolism (e.g. monsters the lower world). The hero often has a helper (human or divine) who aids him with extra knowledge and strength. At times the hero must seem to die to his old life in order to enter the world of the quest (e.g. disappearance for years, descent to the underworld).

Tests of Will and Endurance

• These test (whether only one or a series) usually take the form of conflict or battle with monsters, natural forces, or hostile humans. Again, the hero may have help, but he must successfully overcome the obstacles himself.

Ordeal and Its Reward

• This is the supreme test of everything the hero is and represents, and ultimately decides his fitness to be a hero. It ends in his triumphant reward which may be expressed in terms of human love (marriage), triumph in battle, reunion, possession of some treasure or precious

substance, or deification.

The Return • If the successful accomplishment of the heroic

task is to be truly beneficial, then the hero must return to the world he left, bringing the princess, gift, treasure knowledge, of whatever it is with him. If he is the symbol of a group, then he is bringing a benefit to them all.

Sometimes his return is aided by the gods or other forces; sometimes he must flee hostile forces that resent his seizure of the reward. This is a theme of renewal and rebirth, the way the old individual, nation, and/or world can be restored and live again.

Five Stages of the Hero Quest

• Call to Adventure

• Struggle or Crossing the Threshold

• Tests of Will, Endurance and Ability

• The Ordeal and Its Reward

• The Return