The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Joseph Campbell was an American professor of literature, celebrated lecturer, and author who lived from 1904 to 1987. As the author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell takes an ambitious approach to an expansive topic. With a confident, professorial tone, Campbell shares his theories about the origins of the monomyth and its many iterations throughout world history. Selections from his extensive research come from sources such as the Upanishads, the Koran, the rituals of native Australian tribes, the Bible, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. He juxtaposes these many sources to analyze elements of the monomyth. Campbell argues that no myth should be taken literally and that the goal of mythology is to unleash the boundless potential of the human spirit. He writes, “The mighty hero of extraordinary powers [...] is each of us: not the physical self visible in the mirror, but the king within” (365). A similarly effusive tone persists throughout the text, as Campbell shares his wonder about the world of myth and the humans who create it.