Why do some Stories Contain within them a Miracle Power to Heal? And What is that Story?

This month I continue my review of Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (Third Edition).

Christopher Vogler's thesis underscoring his entire body of work is that a certain kind of story has magical powers to attract readers and viewers and make them feel extremely comfortable with and warm about that story.

In addition, Vogler believes that "all stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams and movies. These are known collectively as The Hero's Journey."

Vogler first became aware of the power of The Hero's Journey as a story structure when he was a child reading nursery tales, ancient myths, and the like. As an adult he read a best-selling book about mythic tales entitled The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell first published in 1949. That book changed Vogler's  life.

Today Vogler is one of Hollywood's premier story consultants, and a popular speaker on the subjects of screenwriting, movies and myth. He has often consulted for Disney Studios and other major industry players on the story structure of major releases.

In The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Vogler has brought Joseph Campbell's concepts up to date and made them accessible to an audience that is larger and more diverse than ever. Vogler's incomparable gift for intuitively understanding and being able to express the powerful magic at the heart of The Hero's Journey has been responsible for making his book, "The Writer's Journey" an indispensible guide for novelists and screenplay writers.

Vogler writes, "Understanding these [story] elements [of The Hero's Journey] and their use in modern writing is the object of our quest. Used wisely, these ancient tools of the storyteller's craft still have tremendous power to heal people and make the world a better place."

Vogler wants all writers of every stripe to become aware of the Hero Story structure so that they can tap into its magical powers. Addressing writers, he says:

By tapping into this story-myth, you can leave this world a better place than you found it; You have the power to heal peoples' hurts, traumas, fears, recurring nightmares, etc., everything that keeps people down, that keeps them from feeling whole and integral (just by the way you, the writer, choose to tell your story) You have the power to help people grow emotionally and live on a higher plane. You can help your readers find renewed self-respect and affirm their human dignity, live in a more authentic way and bring more mastery to the way they live their lives. Through the way you choose to tell your stories, you have the ability to inspire and instruct people on how to deal with difficult problems in life; how to create better and more trusting relationships; how to become more human and vulnerable; and how to grow one's humanity.

Vogler exalts the role of the storyteller as a creator working with the ultimate creator, God, to improve and/or fix the world.

 

It should come as no surprise: Vogler sees the role of a story writer as far beyond that of a scribbler of public entertainments who sells his stories in exchange for income. Rather, in Vogler's view, a writer embarking on "the hero's journey" takes power into his or her hands to, as I've already mentioned, literally improve and fix the world and, by so doing, upgrade every one of his readers' quality of life. 

"Oh, come on," you might respond. "Isn't it a little naïve to twist a writer-creator-screenwriter into a spiritual partner of the Godhead, able to redeem mankind with his creative output?" My answer to that is, no, not at all. In my opinion that's what it means to be a creator.

What is The Hero's Journey?

According to an excellent summary I've found online (no author given), "The Hero's Journey is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar, Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual and psychological development. It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of a group, tribe or civilization."

Last month I mentioned that the word "hero" comes from the Greek; it means "to serve and protect."

The emotional journey of the hero is always one that begins with the hero fulfilling his ego-driven needs ("me, me, me") but who, in time, begins working to help either his group, tribe or civilization. In that respect, the hero story eventually becomes in one way or another the story of self-sacrifice. The hero's "job" (if one can think of it as a job) is to become an integrated human being, to discover his true and authentic self throughout the course of the story.

The reason the hero myth has such wide appeal comes from the hero inevitably having flaws of one kind or another. He or she has inner-conflicts and is torn between love and duty, trust and suspicion, or hope and despair.

As you can see, The Hero's Journey is just that, a journey from point A to point B that mirrors the complexity of many real people's lives, and the maturity many people attain as they move from a purely material and ego-driven view of life to discover that life is ultimately about serving others while holding out against overwhelming odds, fighting for higher principals, and facing up to our worse fears, ultimately, to death itself.

Next month, we'll delve into the twelve story "stations" or stages of the Hero's Journey, and how these stations divide into three major dramatic "acts" (Act I, Act II and Act III) that one finds (in one form or another) in every play, opera, novel and memoir.

Why Do Some Stories Contain within them a Miracle Power to Heal?

Are you on a Life Journey, Searching for a Secret De-Coder Ring? You've found it.

Imagine for a moment that you are in the middle of a journey that doesn't always make sense to you, but, nevertheless, is one that you have always felt was important, and still feels important even today. You wish to remain on this path until the journey ends. No, you're not bored with being on this journey. In fact, you have a sense of anticipation and excitement about where the journey may lead. For the sake of this essay, let's imagine that you can't wait to see how your journey turns out.

That journey is your life.

And now let's imagine that you are traveling along a road, and that one day you happen to look down and there by the side of the road you find a secret de-coder ring (in the form of a book). Someone left it there. Could someone have left it expressly for you?

You pick up the book and open it, and from the first moment you cast your gaze upon its first page and begin reading or de-coding the messages written there, you find this work helps you make sense of all the mysteries you've been struggling with all these years. You can use it to understand your journey at a deeper level. But that's not all.  What if this secret de-coder ring explained everything about life and even explained how to live, while at the same time allowing you to interpret and make sense of everything so that the explanations and your interpretations are always aligned. They never work at cross-purposes. If you came upon such a secret de-coder ring (only it is actually a book) you would exclaim, "Eureka!" You would extoll this book's praises to all your fellow wayfarers who are also journeying on trails and over trodden paths of their own making.

Well, that's how I feel about The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (Third Edition) by Christopher Vogler.

"Eureka!"

In crafting his book Vogler not only gives us tools to understand our own life stories better; he also gives storywriters of all kinds valuable guidance on how to tap into powerful myths as they go about structuring their stories.

Vogler sets out the communication objective for this book in the Preface to his Second Edition: "In this book I describe the set of concepts known as 'The Hero's Journey,' drawn from the depth psychology of Carl G. Jung and the mythic studies of Joseph Campbell. I tried to relate those ideas to contemporary storytelling, hoping to create a writer's guide to those valuable gifts from our innermost selves and our most distant past. I came looking for design principals of storytelling, but on the road I found something more: a set of principles for living. I came to believe that the Hero's Journey is nothing less than a handbook for life, a complete instruction manual in the art of being human."

Vogler believes that try as we writers might, it is difficult for us to resist the temptation of casting either ourselves or a stand-in character in our work as a hero. As any successful writer will tell you, simply undertaking and surviving the creative adventure-journey of writing one's inner story qualifies the author for hero-status. But Vogler goes further, saying that those of us who are not writers can't help but create a hero's journey for ourselves, a journey that tugs at our heartstrings far deeper than any sentimental romance ever could. He says that casting ourselves for such a story is part of being human. Or, conversely, as we weave our story or myth and tell ourselves our story, we create the truly whole, human being that we become as we grow into that role.

"The Hero's Journey is not an invention, but an observation," writes Vogler. " It is a recognition of a beautiful design, a set of principles that govern the conduct of life and the world of storytelling the way physics and chemistry govern the physical world."

Let's focus in on this term "hero" for just a moment. I'll bet we all think we know exactly what we mean when we use that term. It comes from the Greek word heros, that means "To Serve and Protect," which also happens to be the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department. Clearly firemen and police officers can or should always be heroes to us.

However, in real life, as well as in novels, and movies, things can be a bit more complicated. I'll bet you've run across the terms "tragic flaws" or "tragic hero" before. You may even have reason to believe that in your own hero epic story that you are living out, your hero may be flawed in one way or another. No one's perfect.

When you read The Writer's Journey, you learn there are many kinds of heroes, and all of them are exemplified in movies and novels that we are familiar with and dearly love to watch again and again because they mean so much to us. Here is a list of heroes that are discussed in this remarkable book:

-Willing and unwilling heroes

-Anti-heroes

-Group-oriented heroes

-Loner heroes and

-Catalyst heroes

This is just one example of the depth of insight that Vogler gives us. Indeed, I propose to provide you with additional depth over the next four months. Each month I will go into detail about one aspect of the content of Vogler's work and how it illuminates so much about the kind of hero journey each of us is creating for ourselves as we, hopefully, figure out what our lives are all about, as well as the lives of our characters either in the novels, comic books, songs, screenplays, operas or plays that we write.

In next month's EWA, I'll detail a key mythical journey-story that runs through so many great novels and movies that we know and love. You will understand how these works reflect, in one way or another, the writer's journey and why they are so endearing and valuable to us.