He discovered that all story-telling, 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.Ĭampbell was a student of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, and the ideas in THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES are often described as Jungian. What he discovered in his study of world myths is that THEY ARE ALL BASICALLY THE SAME STORY - retold endlessly in infinite variation. He exposed the pattern for the first time, the pattern that lies behind every story ever told.Ĭampbell is a mythographer - he writes about myths. The ideas in it are older than the Pyramids, older than Stonehenge, older than the earliest cave painting.Ĭampbell’s contribution was to gather the ideas together, recognize them, articulate them, name them. With them you can always determine what’s wrong with a story that’s floundering, and you can find a better solution to almost any story problem by examining the pattern laid out in the book.

With them you can compose a story to meet any situation, a story that will be dramatic, entertaining, and psychologically true. The ideas in the book are an excellent set of analytical tools. Aware or not, filmmakers like John Boorman, George Miller, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Coppola owe their successes to the ageless pattern that Joseph Campbell identifies in the book. It’s certainly true that the book is having a major impact on writing and story-telling, but above all on movie-making. In the long run, the most influential book of the 20th Century may turn out to be Joseph Campbell’s THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES.

The hero with 1000 faces book