The Hero’s Journey

A heroes journey isn’t a linear path, it is a physical, mental and spiritual journey of a character or person where they must break free from normality, go on a quest, learn much about themselves and what is possible before finally coming full circle and returning home in the end a stronger person. This path was originally broken down into 17 stages, popularised by American professor of literature Mr. Joseph John Campbell in his book “Hero with a Thousand Faces” in which he theorised about the path a hero typically follows during a plot. Later, Christopher Vogler, a screenwriter who’s done work with Disney and is also known for his screenwriting guides adapted Campbell’s theory into 12 stages instead, these stages include:

1. The Ordinary World
2. Call To Adventure
3. Refusal Of The Call
4. Meeting With A Mentor
5. Crossing The First Threshold
6. Tests, Allies, Enemies
7. Approach To The Innermost Cave
8. The Ordeal
9. The Reward
10. The Road Back
11. Resurrection
12. Return With The Elixer

Stage one, the ordinary world, is the start of a story. It features our hero in a place of comfort and normality, before the journey has started. It is then that the call to adventure, our second stage, comes along. In this stage, the hero will have something in their life change which will lead to their adventure beginning, whether it be a challenge, threat of just an adventure. In stage three, the heroes doubts in themselves and inner thoughts will usually get the better of them, making them refuse the call at first. This is when the mentor archetype is introduced to teach the hero what he must know to succeed in his quest. The first threshold is the first step out of the ordinary world and into the special world, the world that is out of the heroes comfort zone. Next comes tests, allies and enemies, this stage is the obstacles the hero must face to learn what he must know to complete his quest. The tests come via the mentor teaching our hero about this new world, the hero making allies and possibly a love interest and a villain or villains attacking. The approach to the innermost cave is where the hero is met with setbacks making him question and adapt how he will move forward before being met with stage eight, the ordeal. This is the stage where a tragic event takes place, possibly a near death experience of there self or another ally, which makes the hero stronger. This strength is the reward mentioned in the title of stage nine. The hero will now be able to focus on their path to ordinary life (stage ten) and to do this, the hero will face a final challenge in which they use everything they’ve learned to win. after this win, the hero returns to their ordinary world with gained insight, knowledge or the “elixir” and applies it to all those there, ending their journey.

The Legend Of Zelda series has a key focus on the journey of a hero to defeat a great evil, in fact the lore of the games is literally based off of three key roles of wisdom, courage and power and the battle between the characters that fill the shoes of these roles in the place of the game on the timeline. I could choose almost any game as an example to talk about but I personally believe the wind waker would be best. Our hero, Link, starts the game chilling on his home of outset island where he lives with his grandma, sister and a few other residents of the small village. This is his ordinary world and through out his time there interacting with the other villagers we’re given an in into his life and shown our hero’s traits and humanity (stage 1). His call to adventure comes when a giant bird flies over the island with a pirate ship shooting cannonballs at it. one cannonball hits the bird, causing a girl to be dropped by it down into the forest situated on a mountain north of the society of the village, after Link investigates and rescues the elf-eared girl he finds out she is captain of the pirates on the ship seen earlier. As they leave the forest though, the massive bird sweeps down, picking up links sister and taking her away, mistaking her for the pirate captain Tetra. Link embarks on his whole adventure to rescue his sister from evil, until the plot grows. While Link, representing the triforce of courage obviously doesn’t straight out refuse the call, you can tell via the cut-scene of him leaving with the pirates to chase down the bird that he has his doubts still, probably just about leaving his grandma alone on the island. Link attempts to rescue her and fails and after a short meeting with the main enemy of the game Ganon, the bird launches him away into the sea to die. This is where the mentor saves link bringing him to a small island. The King Of Red Lions is a talking red boat which tells link what he must do to start off his journey and helps him all throughout his journey. The threshold has already been crossed by this point, it was crossed the second link made the brave decision to leave the island. The interaction with the Helmerock king (bird’s name) and Ganon at the Forsaken Fortress as well as the first two dungeons represents stage 6, as link meets allies, explores both an island and dungeon of lava as well as a deep forbidden forest, and also defeats plenty enemies and a few bosses. The innermost cave comes after Link collects three spiritual stones from these dungeons (and a big fish back on Outset) to reveal the tower of the gods. This is the innermost cave as this dungeon was created in the world to test the hero’s might. The boss of this dungeon is also stage 8, the ordeal, as he poses as the true test of everything the hero has been through thus far and after this Link is granted access to the city below the waves, Hyrule, where he also gets access to the master sword, the reward from his journey so far. as well, Tetra the pirate is revealed to be princess Zelda and the king of red lions the king of Hyrule and Zeldas father, this will be important for the ending. The journey back to the normal world begins and now that Link has enough power he heads back to the forsaken fortress, and frees his sister. Link could easily head home with his sister now however, following the hero’s path he seeks justice and defeats the Helmerock king. In stage 11, Link faces the greatest challenge of all, after scouring the ocean to gain even more power via upgrades to the master sword and finding his piece of the triforce, he enters Ganon’s domain in Hyrule, fighting enemies, memories of already fought bosses and even two forms of Ganon, all of this before the final encounter. Link fights Ganon with the help of Zelda restoring peace to the kingdom. The final step is slightly different to the traditional hero’s ending depending on how you view it. Yes, Link returns home with his sister reuniting the family. He then however leaves with Zelda/Tetra to create a new Hyrule above the waves. Now one could see this as Link not returning home and while this is true physically i believe from a spiritual and historic viewpoint his return to Hyrule and connections with prophecies mentioned at the start of the game could show that Link has returned to where he should be. No matter what you see as right however, the ending could or couldn’t properly link (lol) up perfectly with the structure of a hero’s story, but nonetheless everything else does.