For this project, I decided to do a play on the Google home screen that celebrates the life of Joseph Campbell, the creator of the hero’s journey. It is designed to mimic the time that you open Google and see that its celebrating something and you click on an art image that then brings you to the results on the subject of which is being celebrated. The design of the home screen is a victorious knight after defeating a beast, ready to collect his boon. His sword has the word Google on it, due to the fact in every celebration piece, Googles logo is incorporated into it. After clicking the image, it would then bring you to the image results of Joseph Campbell which includes an example of the Hero’s Journey and a picture of Campbell himself. Before we continue, we first have to discuss what the hero’s journey is and how its shaped the very media we consume today.
The hero’s journey is a troupe that has been used in literacy devices throughout time. The process is what follows; it normally starts with our hero having some sort of call to action, the hero denying the call, the hero then crossing the threshold into uncharted territory, the hero then goes through some sort of trial and might even fail, defeats the monster and gains a reward, the hero then returns the reward and the cycle starts over again. This is a troupe that we have seen in countless literary examples such as The Odyssey, Moby Dick, The Wizard Of Oz, The Hobbit and even the tales of King Arthur and Robin Hood. When it comes to films, it is very easy to come up with examples that follows this troupe so I will include some noteworthy ones and the list is as follows: The Lord of The Rings/The Hobbit, O Brother Where Art Thou, The Matrix, Star Wars, The Goonies, etc. Pretty much every heroic journey i television, film ,or books follows this troupe. We can even see this troupe in some of the texts that we have read so far. Beowulf fights Grendel after being asked to and receives a hefty reward in return. Spenser’s, The Fairee Queen, we see a literal knight who dies and is resurrected multiple times, have to tackle challenge trial after trial, to return a maiden to her homeland. Finally in Shakespeare’s, Othello, we see a shortened version where Othello does everything he can to be with his dearly beloved (Trials), after learning she’s been unfaithful kills her and kills himself. When he kills himself, he never has a rebirth cycle and the journey ends. this troupe in some form or another can be found almost everywhere and the only reason we are aware of it is due to Joseph Campbell.
Joseph Campbell was a literary professor at Sarah Lawrence College, discovered this theory in mythology. He discovered that throughout mythology, the stories follow a certain pattern and they all had it. It was with this new theory combined with what makes a tragic hero a hero by Aristotle, created The hero’s Journey This is what came to be done as the hero’s journey
I enjoyed your description of the Hero’s Journey and then incorporating it into a Google design. It’s really interesting how when you step back and look at the general structure of these famous stories that we consider to be incredibly different, they’re more similar than we think. I never would’ve compared LOTR to the Wizard of Oz, but as you said they both follow the hero’s journey.