The Hero’s Journey
- Maddie Eigel
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
By: Skye Crump
Introduction
How familiar does the “Hero’s Journey” sound? A hero on a quest to discover himself. A sudden and unexpected voyage that promises danger and adventure. A test of strength, talent, and character. A final struggle that puts the hero's determination to the test. A victorious homecoming.
For ages, mythology and literature has utilized the well-known narrative device known as the hero's journey. By showing a protagonist who undergoes a metamorphosis, it provides a framework that helps authors in crafting compelling storylines that captivate readers.
A few books that use this are The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
You’ve also seen it in films like Star Wars, The Matrix, and Toy Story.
They all use the same basic outline, and yet they’re all unique, captivating audiences over and over again.
When writing, you don't need to go out of your way to use it, but you also don't need to go out of your way to avoid it. A lot of the hero's journey comes naturally. There are several variations of it, as people alter it to suit their own needs. Remember, it’s only one type of story construction, known as the monomyth.
All writers should learn about the hero’s journey because of its influence on storytelling across all kinds of media, and if you’re a new writer, it can be a good place to start learning how to effectively create a narrative with a satisfying (to your readers) plot and character development.
“The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity.” – Joseph Campbell
Hero’s Journey Through the Lens of Toy Story
Ordinary World
The “ordinary world” in this context is Andy’s Room, where the toys live. They come alive when Andy’s gone, and this is how we meet Woody, the cowboy who’s Andy’s favorite toy.
Call to Action
This is when the hero is confronted with a challenge, quest, or opportunity that breaks their usual routine and forces a reaction. It propels the story along and paves the path for the protagonist's transforming journey. In Toy Story, this is when Andy's birthday visitors arrive; his toys stress out, fearing they will be replaced by newer and shinier toys. And, despite Woody’s denial that such a thing could ever happen to him, Buzz Lightyear shows up and unintentionally challenges Woody’s place as “Andy’s favorite.”
Refusal of the Call
The refusal of the call happens immediately after, with Woody doing his best to hold onto how things were instead of accepting the change and Buzz Lightyear himself. All the other toys, despite their initial fear of replacement, welcome Buzz as a part of the toy family. Woody, however, refuses to accept Buzz’s place in the ordinary world and lets his jealousy and fear cloud his judgment.
Meeting the Mentor
This step doesn’t exactly happen in Toy Story in the traditional sense of the hero getting mentored by someone else (and you don’t need to hit every step to emulate the hero’s journey).
Crossing the Threshold
Andy's family plans to have supper at Pizza Planet two days before the big move. To guarantee Andy brings him along rather than Buzz, Woody tries to knock Buzz behind the desk with RC, the radio-controlled vehicle. Instead, Buzz is unintentionally knocked out of the bedroom window.
Now, when we talk about “threshold,” we’re referring to the veil between the known and unknown. This step is seen afterward when Woody leaves the house and ventures out to find Buzz. Woody prides himself on being a good toy, and as such, if he's ever left Andy's Room in the past, he hadn't strayed far from where Andy put him. So, while he might’ve hypothetically been to school or a friend of Andy's house, Woody’s never traveled of his own volition, only ever where Andy put him. This is an entirely new experience for him. The outside world isn’t something he’s delt with alone, if he’s ever delt with it at all.
Tests & Allies
This is where we see how they do out in the “real world.” They face some monsters and have to fight together to survive, even though they’re reluctant to do so and are still fighting each other at this point. They’re also meeting new people (the aliens in the claw machine) and figuring out how this new world works. (In the arcade, and the claw machine specially, this is learning that the alien toys worship “the claw” as their god.)
Enemies
This is where we see Sid again, a kid next door in the beginning of the movie. Woody and Buzz discover that, to their horror, he tortures and mutilates toys. This is their “big battle” that gives them the push they need to becoming heroes. Buzz and Woody have to work together to escape from Sid and help the toys that he’s already tormented.
Ordeal
In the aftermath, Buzz is left with the realization that Woody was right. He is a toy. That leaves him depressed and unsure of his place in the world now.
Death
Woody also comes to a realization that his pride has led him to being alone, without Andy or the other toys, and he’s probably going to die.
Rebirth
Overnight, Woody helps Buzz realize that his purpose is to make Andy happy, restoring Buzz's resolve. Sid takes Buzz out to blow him up, but Woody rallies the mutant toys to "break the rules" and frighten Sid into never harming toys again.
Reward/Seizing the Sword
Woody and Buzz’s reward is their newfound friendship. They’ve patched things up between them and are ready to live together with Andy.
The Road Back
Woody and Buzz desperately chase the moving truck to reunite with the other toys. But the other toys still don’t trust Woody, and when Woody pushes the RC toy car out to help buzz, the rest of the toys think that Woody killed another one of their own and kick him out of the moving truck. It’s not until they see Buzz and Woody riding RC together that they realize their mistake and help them both into the moving truck.
Return With the Elixir
In the end, Andy’s new bedroom is filled with both Woody and Buzz Lightyear merchandise, and they are happy to live together as Andy’s toys.
Why Do People Like It So Much?
The hero’s journey serves as a metaphor for what it means to be human. It demonstrates how, in our quest to understand our position in the world, we all experience comparable phases of life. The familiar pattern can be used to map out our own transformational paths over the courses of our lives. Because it depicts a hero's journey through adversity and recovery, we can learn from their experience and apply it to our own life.
Audiences also connect better with heroes who face challenges, make sacrifices, and experience personal growth.
Without a desire and cause, your character has no motivation.
Without a pursuit of those desires, your character never takes action.
Without a struggle, they immediately get what they want.
Without a solid outcome, usually involving change or reaffirmation, the story was for nothing.
Where Did It Come From?
The phrase "hero’s journey,” specifically, was initially used by Joseph Campbell in 1949 in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which was later turned into the television series The Power of Myth. The hero's journey was described by Campbell in this book in three basic stages and seventeen detailed steps.
Although he popularized it, similar ideas have previously been put out by individuals such as psychoanalyst, Otto Rank, and British soldier, author, and amateur anthropologist, Lord Raglan. Both Raglan and Rank examine hero story patterns in terms of ritualism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and they provide lists of cross-cultural characteristics frequently seen in the stories of mythological heroes.
“The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know.” – Joseph Campbell
The Hero’s Journey and Writers
The Hero's Journey serves as a guide for storytellers. It's not a strict formula that your story has to adhere to exactly. There are many valid reasons why some authors may choose to deviate from this narrative, not the least of which is the widespread use of this framework. However, beginners may find it helpful to use the Hero’s Journey as a template to help structure their plot points and character development.
Below, you’ll find a few links to templates for such uses:
The Hero's Journey: 12 Steps to a Classic Story Structure, written by the Reedsy Editorial Team
Hero's journey fill-in-the-black templates by Teachers Pay Teachers
How to Use ‘The Hero’s Journey’ to Plot Your Novel by Darlene Panzera
Although the Hero's Journey model may serve as a basis, it's crucial to allow your own thoughts to flow without putting all your focus into checking each step off of a list.
Keep in mind that any story ever told can be broken down into various parts and examined. You’ll find similarities in them all, no matter how different they may appear at surface level. Use that understanding to craft your own story.
Conclusion
Whether or not you want to use the Hero’s Journey is entirely up to you. But there’s no denying it’s profoundly influenced storytelling across all kinds of media, creating narratives that captivate viewers.
I wish you all the best in your writing journey, and if you have any questions at all, free to shoot us an email or leave a comment below!
Resources
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) – Campbell describes the Hero's Journey, a universal theme of adventure and transformation that appears in almost all of the world's epic traditions. He also investigates the Cosmogonic Cycle, a mythical pattern of planet creation and annihilation.
The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: Psychological Interpretation of Mythology – The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, written by Otto Rank and first published in German in 1909, provides psychoanalytical interpretations of mythical tales to help understand the human mind. Like his professor Freud, Rank saw a symbolic fulfillment of suppressed desire in both everyday dreams and the stories of characters like Sargon, Oedipus, and Moses. Rank doubled the size of this classic work thirteen years later by making significant revisions that included new findings in mythology, ethnology, and psychoanalysis.
The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama (Dover Books on Literature & Drama) – Raglan identifies 22 recurring elements or patterns in the heroic stories and uses incidents from the lives of people ranging from Oedipus (21 out of 22 points) to Robin Hood (a meager 13) to support his argument.
The Hero's Journey of Odysseus: A Monomyth Guide to the Iliad and Odyssey (The Modern Monomyth) – This book covers Odysseus' journey through the lens of the Monomyth. By analyzing the Iliad and the Odyssey, Josh Coker identifies each classic stage of the Hero's Journey.
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