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This year was a complete and total mess for me. Last year I got royally screwed on scheduling, and had almost no options for classes. I had a couple filler classes just to make enough credits to be a full time student. I fought to get in to this English class, and boy I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I have never been afraid of work; I had a full time job during the summers working construction when I was 13 years old. I know the value of a hard day’s labor, and was not weary of this class when I heard the amount of work that was involved. Like most college students, I was deterred a little bit, just because why do the work if you don’t have to. One thing that I have realized in college though, the professors that really do care, are some of the hardest you will have, because they will push you to grow in ways you never thought possible. Even if I squeeze by just passing this class I will have gotten twice as much as getting an A in a easy class, so in my opinion that shitty grade is better than the A.

My first day of class, I got smacked in the face with the overload of work. The new terms and a way of looking at literature were very different for me. It was overwhelming and intimidating, because I am dyslexic and do struggle through school, but a long time ago I made up my mind that it wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I want to do. I looked at it from a different point of view. I know that I see things differently than other people, and I use that to my advantage. Anyway, my first impressions on this class was that this guy must be crazy it’s a 121 class we shouldn’t have this much work. I soon realized that I would get more out of this class than any one that I would have taken. I embraced that, and drove on.

The monomyth, “what the hell is that,” I first thought. It is the “hero’s journey”, but it’s a lot more complicated than just that. It’s about all the hardships that he must go through to complete the goals that they sent out to accomplish in the first place. I never realized how much that the classic monomyth is actually used. Is there any other way? Once it sank in, I found myself starting to pick it out of the TV shows and movies that I was watching. I found it amusing and annoying at the same time, because I was bringing English class into my everyday life. It is in every book, movie, TV show, myth, everything. Any good story is based off of the few simple rules of the monomyth. It has to have the call, the refusal of the call, some sort of supernatural aid, the first major problem that the hero has to overcome, the belly of the whale, the road of trials, meeting with the goddess, women as the temptress, atonement with the father, apotheosis, and finally the ultimate boon.

The call comes about when the character is in a normal situation of their everyday life. It comes usually with little of what they are about to, and they either need to answer it or deny it. That is where the refusal comes in. At first they refuse to do whatever they were called for. An example that I think of is in the movie “Shooter.” Bob Lee Swagger is an ex-Marine sniper, and he is called to plan a presidential assassination to prevent the actual attack. When Colonel Isaac Johnson first shows up Bob wants nothing to do with them, once he thinks about it, he accepts the call and plans the assassination. Once the refusal of the call happens, and then they begin their journey, they find a supernatural aid. Using the same movie, Bob Lee Swagger was set up for the assassination, and he finds his dead friend’s girlfriend, Sarah to help him. She is his aid throughout the movie, just by the fact that couldn’t have made it without her help. Taking a step back the first major event that he has to overcome is escaping from the guys that set him up. They almost kill him but he manages to squeeze through and make it out alive. From this point forward represents Swaggers road of trials. This is where he faces a ton of challenges that he has to overcome. The belly of the whale represents the hero being separated from the normal life that he had. In this case, Bob was retired and living in the mountains in peace. Sarah also acts as the goddess and the temptress. She is the temptress because there is chemistry between Bob and Sarah, but Bob resists it because she was his best friend’s girlfriend. Sarah is the goddess because he finds himself in love with her, and soon fighting for her life.  Let me express nothing will stop him to save her. After all of these have taken place, the story starts to wind down. The atonement with the father happens. The atonement is when the hero has to make a confrontation with whatever is affecting his life at the time. In this movie it was the guys that recruited him in the first place to plan the assassination. He ends up killing all of them, expect for Colonel Isaac Johnson, who is the boss of the operation. At this time in the movie it is also the Apotheosis, because it seems that Bob has accomplished what he needed to and that everyone will be going home. That’s not the case though; he escapes prosecution and takes the law in his own hands. He finds the people that were responsible for the assassination and kills them all. This is where the Ultimate Boon comes in, because he is finally done with his journey, and he set out on a new journey headed for home.

Any piece of work that has a plot has the monomyth. It even applies to everyday life, which I believe is why every story has it. We all go through this process everyday if we realize it or not. We might not complete the process; we may just stop at the refusal of the call. We may continue on to another step and stop there, or we might take all of the steps and complete the monomyth. With every great story have great characters.

Every character, every person plays a certain role in whatever they are doing. This is where the different archetypes come into play. There is an archetype for every character out there. The main ones are, innocent, orphan, warrior, caregiver, seeker, lover, destroyer, creator, magician, ruler, sage, and the fool. Every story has these archetypes in them. Without them there would be no story, or with just a few would make for a pretty boring story. I am not going to discuss all of them, just for the fact of space, but I will discuss the Warrior and the Caregiver because those are two dominate archetype within me. The warrior fights for what matter, has tremendous courage, discipline, and skills. They are very competitive and are use to getting their own way. If they encounter a problem, they either defeat it or solve it. Their fears tend to be powerless or weak. They are pretty much the go getters of society; they get stuff done when it needs to be done. They are trust worthy and dependable. I see this one as my dominate archetype because I am a very determined person, and once I set my mind to something, nothing will stop me until I accomplish whatever I set out to do. The Caregiver loves to help others, and to make a difference. They are very compassionate, and are very generous. This is also a huge part of my personality, because I love to help people whenever I can. I can see how these two archetypes go together, with them both wanting to make a difference in what really matters. Although there are specific archetypes in every story, they are not always set in stone. In a good story, you can see the character transform from one archetype to another. Watching them grow as a person makes for an emotional connection between yourself and the character.

From everything that we have learned so far from the monomyth, and all of the different stages that it goes through, to the many different types of archetypes that make up the monomyth, all of these concepts have to come together to make a great story. I not only learned about the basics of a story, but I have started to learn who I really am. I knew that I was always aggressive and competitive and all that jazz. I didn’t know my other main Archetype would be the caregiver, but it also makes sense, since I love to help people whenever I can. I also never thought that I could apply this much of my English class to everyday life. With my new found knowledge I am starting to see life in a different light, and I now have a newfound respect for literature.