This article is adapted from Campbell’s Monomyth: The Quest for the Mythic Hero, our 72-page guide to understanding the monomyth. To preview the guide, visit our Hero’s Journey shop.
Stage One of the Hero’s Journey
The familiar horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for passing the threshold is at hand.
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
by Reg Harris
Joseph Campbell’s monomyth (or Hero’s Journey) begins with the Call to Adventure. The Call is an announcement that something is out of balance in our lives and that we must act to restore balance. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell writes, “[The Call]…signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.”
Mythological heroes might hear the Call when they need to recover something that has been taken, either from themselves or from their people: a treasure, rights or freedoms, a person or honor. For example, Odysseus was called when Paris of Troy abducted Helen of Sparta. Like other Greek kings, Odysseus had sworn to protect Helen, so he was drawn into the Trojan War and the adventures that followed. In Navajo mythology, the twin war gods, Monster Slayer and Born for Water, were called to rid the earth of monsters so that their people could live safely.
In life’s journeys, the Call usually arises when we are relatively well adapted to our environment. We can manage the challenges, and while we may not be content with our situation, we can maintain a sense balance and equilibrium. However, even when we are happy in our lives, an event or insight can disrupt our world. For example, we may lose a job we like or someone close to us may die, and we must embark on a journey of rebuilding or reorganizing our lives.
Often the Call comes from within when we suddenly realize that life is no longer satisfying or fulfilling. For example, we may outgrow our job because our skills and knowledge have developed to the point where we feel constricted or unappreciated. In narrative terms, the story we have become has surpassed the story we are living, and it is time to expand our story. In this sense, the Call to Adventure is an opportunity to let go of an unacceptable reality and an out-of-date self-image. Our Self (capital “S”) is notifying our self that it is time to make some adjustments. We are inviting ourselves to change.
Enter the Herald
In mythology, the Call usually arrives with a herald, a messenger that appears spontaneously as a signal that our psyche is ready for transformation. Joseph Campbell noted that in myth and legend, the herald is “often dark, loathy, or terrifying, judged to be evil by the world.” Using the terms of psychoanalysis, Campbell called this messenger a “representative of that unconscious deep…wherein are hoarded all of the rejected, unadmitted, unrecognized, unknown, or underdeveloped factors, laws and elements of existence.” In other words, Campbell believed that the herald is a manifestation of elements in our unconscious that are struggling to be recognized and resolved.
One of fantasy’s most famous heralds was Gandalf the Wizard, who visited Frodo Baggins to begin The Lord of the Rings. At the time, Frodo was feeling curious and restless, not fully at home in the Shire. Another famous herald was not a person, but the letter Harry Potter received, inviting him to study wizardry at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. At the time, Harry was suffocating in his life with the Dursleys, so he was “ripe” for transformation.
Being “ripe” for a journey means that our psyche or situation is ready for change, ready for the Call. However, in many cases, we hear the Call because we have already begun to change, but are unaware of it. In this sense, the Call may result from what William Bridges (The Way of Transformation) called a “transition deficit”: “We are ripe for the experience because we are…behind the curve of our own development.” In other words, we are “ripe” because we have changed but have not manifested that change in our lives.
When faced with a Call, we have three choices: to accept it, to postpone it, or to refuse it completely. If we accept the Call, we commit ourselves to face and resolve the limitation or problem that triggered the Call. If we postpone the Call, we may be able to return temporarily to our familiar life and work. Eventually, however, as Campbell warns, “A series of signs of increasing force then will become visible until…the summons can no longer be denied” (1949, p. 56). Finally, we may try to refuse the Call altogether, a decision that can have disastrous consequences.
Any undischarged energy held in the body too long becomes poisonous, and the process of self-victimization begins.…As the cycle continues, the pattern intensifies, turning poisonous, almost murderous. We become victims of our own controls.
Paul Ribillot, The Call to Adventure
Refusing of the Call
The Refusal of the Call is not really a stage in the Hero’s Journey; it’s an exit from the journey and a rejection of our need to grow and adapt. Campbell tells us that rejecting the Call, “converts the adventure into its negative.” In this “Shadow Journey,” experiences that would have offered growth and liberation become threats to our ego. They remind us that, by refusing the call, we are sabotaging our future by avoiding a problem or ignoring a potential.
To protect our ego, we build defenses and try to avoid responsibility for our circumstances. Eventually, however, the wall we build to keep painful reminders out becomes a prison that keeps us in. Then our world contracts and, as Campbell writes,
Walled in boredom, hard work, or ‘culture,’ the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland…and his life feels meaningless…All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration (1949, p. 59).
To understand the dire nature of refusing the call, simply consider how the lives several famous heroes would have changed had they refused the Call. For example, consider two real-life heroes, Pakistani women’s rights and educational activist Malala Yousafzai and American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King. Would Yousafzai have been content with her life if she had given up her fight for women’s rights after she was shot? How would Martin Luther King have felt if, after his first arrest, he had given in to the racism and brutality of his time? Think of what these two Nobel Prize winners would have lost if they had abandoned their dreams and settled for the status quo. And think of what their people and the world would have lost if they had abandoned their quests?
Consider, also, fictional and mythological heroes. For example, what would have happened to Odysseus had he not honored his oath to protect Helen? Could he have lived with himself after he broke his code of honor? Would his people have continued to honor and respect him?
In the fictional world, how would Harry Potter have felt if he had rejected his invitation to Hogwarts, knowing that a greater life called him? What would his life have been like if he had stayed with the Dursleys? Could he have continued to live with them and with himself, knowing that he had betrayed his potentials? Consider, also, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. How would he have felt about himself if he had given in to the cultural narrative and not defended Tom Robinson? What lesson would he have taught his children and his community?
It’s safe to say that all of these heroes–real, fictional and mythological–would eventually have fallen into bitterness and regret. They might have spun a web of rationalizations in an attempt to protect their egos and self-respect, but eventually they would have locked themselves into the “Shadow Journey” of the Call Refused.
Fortunately, even when we refuse the Call, our situation may not be completely lost. If we are lucky, some person or event will come along and help us face our fears, giving us another opportunity to restore vitality and flow to our lives. Ironically, the problem we created for ourselves by refusing the Call may trigger an insight or revelation that will open us to the journey we need. As Campbell writes in Hero,
Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required. So it is that sometimes the predicament following an obstinate refusal of the call proves to be the occasion of a providential revelation of some unsuspected principle of release (1949, pp. 64-65).
Should we ignore this second Call, however, we could slide irrevocably into the darkness of the Call Refused: a world of bitterness, frustration, anger, regret and isolation. Without help, self-destruction—physical or psychological—could result.