The Reluctant Hero Part I

I have been thinking about stories and why they matter, why we listen and want more. No matter how old we are, we want to hear the end of the story. And why do the best stories stay with us?

Tolkein believed that it had something to do with the way the human imagination is shaped, that as humans we are, to use a modern word, programmed to respond to stories because they echo something already familiar to our imaginations; the best of stories remind us of something buried deep in our collective unconscious, the pattern of the archetypal hero.

It’s easy to trace the hero pattern through our common myths and fairy tales. An ordinary man receives a call in his everyday world; it might be Gandalf at his door, an owl bearing a letter, but it comes unexpectedly, and this is very important, from the magical world to our ordinary lives right in the middle of the morning paper or the commute to work, or right into our homework papers and catches us by surprise. And we must respond. The ordinary man faces a threshold that he must cross to answer the call, but something always prevents him from responding- a mean stepmother or maybe something inside himself, a comfortable routine or fear of risks. Whatever the obstacle, the call is difficult to answer no matter how compelling. We can’t begin the journey because it makes no sense in the ordinary scheme of things; it happens right in the middle of life.

But in the story the hero does respond despite the obstacles and begins a journey. The journey might be across town, through misty mountains or just through the mirror in the living room. And of course things get very interesting. There are even greater obstacles and they’re usually not the predictable kind. After passing a few difficult tasks he is confronted with an abyss, a potentially deadly challenge. The abyss is the darkest night of despair when the wolves are literarily howling at the door and no one knows if the hero will survive. It is at this dark point that a transformation takes place- the ordinary everyday man suddenly becomes something more, Harry a wizard, Bilbo a real burglar, or Cinderella a princess. They each become more of what they are meant to be, and they begin to see themselves differently.