Memo from the Story Department. Christopher Vogler

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      CHAPTER SIX

      THE MEMO THAT

      STARTED IT ALL:

      A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO

      THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES

      —— VOGLER ——

      From time to time people ask me for a copy of the original seven-page memo that was the foundation of The Writer's Journey. For many years I lost track of the original version and could only offer to send people the longer versions that evolved later, or point them to my book, where the memo was embedded in the first chapter, but they weren't satisfied with these solutions, apparently believing there was something almost magical about that original terse, blunt statement of my beliefs. They had to have the “legendary seven-pager” which I had called “A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” but I was never able to lay hands on the original short version. Until now, that is.

      After upheavals of home and office, and sifting through many files and boxes, I have finally come across the raw, original text of The Memo, and I offer it here to you, with the hopes it will have some of the magical effect on you that people attribute to it.

      A Practical Guide to Joseph Campbell's

      The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Christopher Vogler

       “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”

      —Willa Cather

      INTRODUCTION

      In the long run, one of the most influential books of the twentieth century may turn out to be Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

      The book and the ideas in it are having a major impact on writing and storytelling, but above all on movie-making. Filmmakers like John Boorman, George Miller, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Coppola owe their successes in part to the ageless patterns that Joseph Campbell identifies in the book.

      The ideas Campbell presents in this and other books are an excellent set of analytical tools.

      With them you can almost always determine what's wrong with a story that's floundering; and you can find a better solution almost any story problem by examining the pattern laid out in the book.

      There's nothing new in the book. The ideas in it are older that the Pyramids, older than Stonehenge, older that the earliest cave painting.

      Campbell's contribution was to gather the ideas together, recognize them, articulate them, and name them. He exposes the pattern for the first time, the pattern that lies behind every story ever told.

      Campbell, now 82,^* is a vigorous lover of mythology and the author of many books on the subject. For many years he has taught, written, and lectured about the myths of all cultures in all times. The Hero with a Thousand Faces is the clearest statement of his observations on the most persistent theme in all of oral traditions and recorded literature—the myth of the hero.

      In his study of world hero myths Campbell discovered that they are all basically the same story—retold endlessly in infinite variations. He found that all storytelling, consciously or not, follows the ancient patterns of myth, and that all stories, from the crudest jokes to the highest flights of literature, can be understood in terms of the hero myth; the “monomyth” whose principles he lays out in the book.

      The theme of the hero myth is universal, occurring in every culture, in every time; it is as infinitely varied as the human race itself; and yet its basic form remains the same, an incredibly tenacious set of elements that spring in endless repetition from the deepest reaches of the mind of man.

      Campbell's thinking runs parallel to that of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, who wrote of the “archetypes”—constantly repeating characters who occur in the dreams of all people and the myths of all cultures.

      Jung suggested that these archetypes are reflection of aspects of the human mind—that our personalities divide themselves into these characters to play out the drama of our lives.

      He noticed a strong correspondence between his patients' dream or fantasy figures and the common archetypes of mythology, and he suggested that both were coming from a deeper source, in the “collective unconscious” of the human race.

      The repeating characters of the hero myth such as the young hero, the wise old man or woman, the shapeshifting woman or man, and the shadowy antagonist are identical with the archetypes of the human mind, as revealed in dreams. That's why myths, and stories constructed on the mythological model, strike us as psychologically true.

      Such stories are true models of the workings of the human mind, true maps of the psyche. They are psychologically valid and realistic even when they portray fantastic, impossible, unreal events.

      This accounts for the universal power of such stories. Stories built on the model of the hero myth have an appeal that can be felt by everyone, because they spring from a universal source in the collective unconscious, and because they reflect universal concerns. They deal with the child-like but universal questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where will I go when I die? What is good and what is evil? What must I do about it? What will tomorrow be like? Where did yesterday go? Is there anybody else out there?

      The idea imbedded in mythology and identified by Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces can be applied to understanding any human problem. They are a great key to life as well as being a major tool for dealing more effectively with a mass audience.

      If you want to understand the ideas behind the hero myth, there's no substitute for actually reading Campbell's book. It's an experience that has a way of changing people. It's also a good idea to read a lot of myths, but it amounts to the same thing since Campbell is a master storyteller who delights in illustrating his points with examples from the rich storehouse of mythology.

      Campbell gives a condensed version of the basic hero myth in chapter IV, “The Keys”, of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I've taken the liberty of amending the outline slightly, trying to reflect some of the common themes in movies, illustrated with examples from contemporary films. I'm re-telling the hero myth in my own way, and you should feel free to do the same. СКАЧАТЬ