Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth and its Applications

very traditional pattern, beginning with the call to adventure and ending with the restoration of the galaxy. Its creator, George Lucas, actually took many of Joseph Campbell’s ideas into account when writing the story; in fact, there is a picture of Luke Skywalker, Star Wars’ protagonist, on the cover of “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” Some have used this connection to explain the unbelievable success of Star Wars. Christopher Vogler, a story analyst for major movie studios and the author of a book called “The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers & Screenwriters,” contends that the reason movies such as Star Wars were so popular, almost bordering on "religious experience", was because they "reflected the universally satisfying patterns Campbell found in myths." The entire pattern of the Monomyth appears in both the first Star Wars movie and in the trilogy as a whole; however, the events are more clearly demarcated in the first movie alone. The call to adventure occurs when Ben Kenobi saves Luke from the sandpeople, and Luke sees the message from Princess Leia. According to Campbell, “the herald or announcer of the adventure…is often dark, loathly, or terrifying, judged evil by the world;” although Leia herself is far from loathly or terrifying, the Rebel Alliance which she represents is a force which opposes the galactic norm of the Empire. Luke refuses this call and returns to his home; Campbell states that “the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one’s own interest,” and here, Luke is interested more in attaining his own life goal of becoming a starfighter pilot than of undertaking what he sees to be a doomed journey with a “crazy old man.” However, when get gets there, he finds that his aunt and uncle have been murdered: he cannot return to his normal life, but must follow the hero’s path. This follows Campbell’s assertion that “one is bound in by the walls of childhood; the father and mother stand as threshold guardians…” and as Luke’s surrogate parents, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru fill this spot. They are the guardians to this stage of the journey, and through their death, Luke is able to move on to the next stage, the obtaining of “supernatural aid.” Luke gets this “supernatural aid” component from Ben Kenobi, who fits the bill of a “little old crone or an old man” and uses the Force, which is a feat akin to magic and the “amulet against the…forces that [Luke] is about to pass”; Ben is not only a mystic, but acts as a mentor to Luke, and “represents the benign, protecting power of destiny.” Ben assists him in the crossing of the first threshold, which takes place at Mos Eisley, where Luke and Ben meet Han and Chewie. The threshold separates the “limits of the hero’s present sphere, or life horizon”, which is Tatooine, from the “darkness, the unknown, and danger,” which is represented here by the vast, dangerous expanse of space. Notable imagery here is the marked contrast between the bright, twin-sunned desert world and the perpetual, all-pervasive darkness of space. The threshold guardian, who makes a personal appearance only in the new, remastered version of the 1977 classic, is none other than Jabba the Hutt. This “dangerous presence” appears “just beyond the protected zone of the village boundary,” although in this case, it is by appearing in the village of Mos Eisley, a dangerous place in itself, that Jabba asserts his danger. Once Luke and company have flouted Jabba and blasted off through the threshold, they are ready to enter the “belly of the whale,” represented by the Death Star. “Instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, the hero is swallowed,” in this case, pulled by tractor beam, “into the unknown and would appear to have died,” according to Campbell; the passage into the “Death Star” certainly fits with this symbolic death, from which rebirth is

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