5.3 The Hero’s Journey in Action & How To Write Your Own

George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, called Joseph Campbell an old friend. He modeled his initial Star Wars film, A New Hope (1977), on the Hero’s Journey as applied to Luke Skywalker. It’s a great example for anyone looking for a model of how the Hero’s Journey can work.

What follows is each stage of the journey, with examples from the film. Spoiler alert!

Departure

1. Call to Adventure – There are several calls to adventure in the film. The first several minutes details the arrival of the droids R2D2 and C3PO on the planet Tattooine. When R2D2 runs away from the Skywalker moisture farm, Luke goes after him. Later, when Luke is introduced to the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, the old Jedi tries to persuade Luke to come with him to the planet Alderaan and become a Jedi.
2. Refusal of the Call – Luke refuses both calls. He only went into the desert after R2D2 because he fully intends to bring the droid back to his uncle’s farm. He turns down Obi-Wan’s request to become a Jedi, stating he has to get back to his aunt and uncle.
3. Supernatural Aid – Nothing seems to change Luke’s mind about going home—until he gets to his house to find that stormtroopers pursued the droids and destroyed the farm. Beholding the charred remains of his aunt and uncle, Luke tells Obi-Wan he will go the stars with him and become a Jedi like his father.
4. Crossing the First Threshold – Luke and Obi-Wan leave what is known and enter the world of adventure immediately after when they enter Mos Eiseley, a spaceport town on Tattooine. As they blast off into space after a scuffle with local stormtroopers, Luke enters the unknown as the Millennium Falcon goes into hyperdrive.
5. In the Belly of the Whale – Coming out of hyperdrive at Alderaan, Luke and his comrades discover there is no more Alderaan. It’s been destroyed by a moon-sized space station called the Death Star, and the Millennium Falcon is sucked into one of its hangar bays by a tractor beam. Talk about being in the belly of the whale—Lucas took that part literally!

Initiation

6. The Road of Trials – Luke’s many tasks to make him into a hero begin here and continue throughout the movie. He has to leave the Falcon without getting caught by impersonating a stormtrooper, he has to rescue Princess Leia, he has to escape the prison block and then escape the trash compacter, and he has to endure watching his new mentor and father figure Obi-Wan Kenobi die at the hands of Darth Vader. Escaping the Death Star only to find that it is heading straight toward him at the Rebel base on Yavin IV, Luke then has to face the biggest task of all—destroying the Death Star with a one-man starfighter, at seemingly impossible odds.
7. The Meeting with the Goddess – It’s easy to see that Leia is director George Lucas’s goddess figure, and Luke is taken with her from the start of the film.
8. The Woman As Temptress – Leia, however, turns out to be quite spiteful and difficult. While Han Solo in particular wrestles with this and is tempted to abandon the quest because of how difficult Leia is to work with, Luke also feels this temptation and frustration, arguing with her from time to time and asking himself if the journey he’s taken for her is really worth it.
9. The Atonement of the Father – Luke goes on to make his attack against the Death Star, which involves using a special navcomputer to fire two proton torpedoes into a hole only six feet wide, at the end of a long and difficult trench on the Death Star’s surface manned by powerful guns. As the battle begins, Luke begins hearing a voice—it is none other than his father-figure and mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, speaking to him through the Force even though he is dead. Obi-Wan counsels Luke to use the Force and trust his instincts, and when Luke is in the trench headed toward the target, he embraces the coaching Obi-Wan provides him.
10. Apotheosis – Luke has reached his full potential and confidence in his abilities when, trusting his instincts and the Force, he turns off his navcomputer. He will now shoot the torpedos blindly and without help. His team doubts him, but he reassures them.
11. The Ultimate Boon – Luke makes the shot, and destroys the Death Star. He’s won!

Return

12. Refusal to Return – Remember, not every stage of the Return is present in every story. Luke doesn’t refuse to return, because he doesn’t have a home on Tattooine to return to; his family is dead. Instead, he has a new family and a new life.
13. The Magic Flight – Rather than give the story the time that was given to the buildup of the battle against the Death Star and the planes going into space, Luke seems to land back at the Rebel base almost immediately.
14. The Rescue from Without – This stage is not present either. Sometimes a case is made that Han Solo’s surprise return during the battle counts as rescue from without, because Han helps Luke escape the clutches of Darth Vader, but this happens too soon in the story to count as the rescue from without. And, the rescue from without is really intended to happen when the hero doesn’t want to return but is forced to return by outside influences—and Luke is not returning to the ordinary world of Tattooine.
15. Crossing the Return Threshold – Luke’s closest return threshold crossing comes when he gets out of the starfighter after landing and is embraced by Leia and his fellow Rebels. The battle and struggle are over; Luke is back in a conflict-free world like Tattooine, even if it isn’t the planet he started on.
16. Master of Two Worlds – George Lucas makes this as obvious as possible. The movie ends with an awards ceremony, where Luke along with Han and Chewbacca are awarded medals by Leia for their bravery. It’s hard not to see that this humble moisture farmer from the Outer Rim has become a master of the star wars!
17. Freedom to Live – The last shot of the movie features Luke and his fellow award winners beaming, looking over the crowd as the crowd applauds them. They are now free to pursue whatever adventure comes next.

With time and practice, it can get easier and easier to see elements of the Hero’s Journey, both in mythology and in film and modern narratives today. But one of the tasks of this module is to write a Hero’s Journey of your own. Are there any special tricks or steps to writing a story according to this pattern? Let’s find out next.

Writing Your Own Hero’s Journey

A Campbellian Hero’s Journey starts with a hero. To write your own, find a hero character who may be powerful but already has a nice life. Perhaps the hero is young and needs to mature, or perhaps the hero is powerful but doesn’t know it yet. Perhaps the hero is something else entirely. In the end, the hero you choose needs to be a character who has a ways to go in order to win at anything.

Next, pick a setting—what’s the ordinary world like that the hero finds themselves in? What’s the “Once upon a time?” It can be any kind of setting; it just needs to be one the hero finds themselves at home in, without reason to leave.

With these two elements in place, someone writing a Hero’s Journey could go in a couple directions. They could think of the antagonist, the villain, and from there think about how the hero gets dragged into a larger conflict the villain started. Or, the writer could imagine something out of the ordinary that the hero refuses to be interested in—and then the thing that forces the hero to be interested. These equate to Campbell’s call to adventure, refusal of the call, and supernatural aid. With these established, the hero can’t help but cross the first threshold next.

The important thing to wrap up the departure with is to remember that the hero, once they’ve crossed the first threshold, is in over their heads. They are not yet competent enough to resolve the conflict and they need to be demonstrably overwhelmed.

From there, the composer of a Hero’s Journey needs to envision the steps the hero needs to take to resolve the conflict—what it’s going to take to get to the ultimate boon. Then, find and insert a goddess/temptress character to increase the tension, and find the coach/mentor figure who will provide the atonement when the hero is at their weakest. All that remains after that is to select the stages of the return phase that are the most appropriate and fit them into the story.

Stories with this type of pattern have been composed from perhaps the beginning of the human species, and they’re still being composed today. With trial and error any storyteller can do it, too.

Sources:

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Commemorative edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Star Wars: A New Hope. Dir. George Lucas. 1977.

To cite this reading, use the following format:

“The Hero’s Journey in Action & How To Write Your Own.” Colorado Community College System, 2023.