Hero's Journey

Hello, I am a sophomore at GCE lab school, and I am in a class called stories. In this class, we learned a lot about Fables, and we even wrote Fables ourselves. In this unit, we have been learning all about "The Hero's Journey". We went over the different stages of "The Hero's Journey", and we looked at many different hero stories to see how they matched up with the stages. We watched "The Matrix" one day for school because it goes very well with the idea of "The Hero's Journey". We also each did a "Hero's Journey" project on a real-life hero. I did Nelson Mandela, where I researched about his life, and then compared everything he did to "The Hero's Journey". "The Hero's Journey" was a concept that was thought of by a man named Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell was an American Professor of literature, and he worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. "The Hero's Journey" has 12 stages. Stage one is the "ordinary world", stage two is the "call to adventure", stage three is the "refusal of call", stage four is "meeting the mentor", and so on. I hope you like my blog post!

For this Unit, our Action Project is to interview a real-life hero. Someone that is a hero to many people, or just a hero to you. Then we have to connect their story and aspects of their life to "The Hero's Journey" that Joseph Campbell thought of. We also have to do the same thing with a fictional hero of our choice. For my fictional hero, I chose Adora/She-Ra, from the show "She-Ra and the princesses of power". I chose Adora because she is a hero that had something she felt she needed to do. She wanted to be the best hero but she also put lots of pressure on herself. For my real-life hero, I chose to interview my grandma A.P., who had a life I couldn't possibly imagine having. I believe she is a real warrior because her life was difficult but she is still so positive. She is someone I look up to because she always gets back up and she never gives up. 

Adora's "Hero's Journey":

STAGE	Description	My fictional hero (Adora)
Ordinary world.	Life as we know it, or life before the journey.	Her ordinary world was when she was a horde cadet in the evil horde, with her best friend Catra. Every day she trained to become force captain.
Call to adventure.	There’s a problem that needs to be fixed, or there is something that makes you want to start the journey.	One day she touched a sword and had a vision that she needed to do something, and that she was important.
Refusal of call.	The refusal of the call to adventure. When you have doubts about the journey.	Adora didn't like the call to adventure at first because she thought that princesses were bad, and the horde was good.
Meeting the mentor.	The meeting of the mentor, who will show you the way.	Then she bumped into an old witchy lady named Madame Razz, who made her realize that she was important.
Passing the threshold.	When there is no turning back, or when you can't turn back.	Adora left the horde. She started living Brightmoon and she told the queen that she was gonna protect her kingdom.
Allies and Enemies.	Who are the friends and foes in your journey?	Adora became allies and friends with Glimmer and Bow, but since Shadow Weaver and Catra were not so happy that she left, they became enemies.
Test or challenges.	Tests and challenges to test if you are worthy, that you will probably make mistakes on.	Adora's first challenge was to heal the nature that was dying in Brightmoon. She wasn't able to do it.
The abyss.	The dark place, the hardest part of your life. The part where you might've almost given up.	Her abyss was when she thought she wasn't going to be able to beat the horde. She was on the ground with deep cuts on her back, she was apologizing to Bow.
Seizing the sword.	When you get back up again and continue on with being a hero.	Right when she had almost given up, a bunch of princesses showed up to join her side. She realized she doesn't have to do it all alone.
Ultimate Ordeal.	Do or die, the biggest challenge that you will give your all to.	The ultimate ordeal was when all the princesses and soldiers fought Lord Prime and his army, even though nobody had ever won against him and his army before.
Resurrection.	Back to life, back to reality. This is when you finish the battle.	They all went back to Etheria, their planet, and decided to live together peacefully.
Returning with the Elixir.	This is after the battle/journey when you have learned and improved yourself because of the challenges.	Catra and Adora are no longer fighting, and they told each other their true feelings. Adora is less stressed about life, since she has her favorite people by her side, and bow and glimmer realized their feelings for each other as well.

My grandma's "Hero's Journey":

STAGE	Description	My real-life hero (A.P.)
Ordinary world.	Life as we know it, or life before the journey.	Her ordinary world was working hard and working well in Colombia. She was in an intern school with nuns. She worked in an office, then she worked in making clothes for companies. She did very well with making uniforms.
Call to adventure.	There’s a problem that needs to be fixed, or there is something that makes you want to start the journey.	Her husband was invested in the politics of Colombia, so he was writing geopolitics, all about the war at the time. The people that were being exposed by his writing kept coming after him to try and kill him. This is when she decided to run away with him to somewhere outside of Colombia.
Refusal of call.	The refusal of the call to adventure. When you have doubts about the journey.	She didn’t have a refusal of the call, she knew what she wanted to do. She did have some worries about how she was going to get a job and learn the language, but that didn’t stop her.
Meeting the mentor.	The meeting of the mentor, who will show you the way.	Her youngest daughter and her youngest daughter's husband were her mentors. It was because of them that she was able to live in the United States. They helped her learn the language, they helped her get citizenship, and they helped them settle into the United States.
Passing the threshold.	When there is no turning back, or when you can't turn back.	Her passing of the “threshold” was once she moved to the United States. They couldn’t go back to Colombia because her husband was going to be searched for to be persecuted in Colombia.
Allies and Enemies.	Who are the friends and foes in your journey?	Her biggest allies were her youngest daughter and her youngest daughter's husband. They helped her through everything and they were by her side. Once she was in the United States she didn’t miss Colombia much, and she was happy to see some of her family that was already living there.
Test or challenges.	Tests and challenges to test if you are worthy, that you will probably make mistakes on.	A challenge she had was when her mom left her alone when she was very young. Her mom worked so much every day and didn’t have any time for her. So she worked hard to make food and study at school.
The abyss.	The dark place, the hardest part of your life. The part where you might've almost given up.	What she did was she moved to Medellin and got a job as a kid to help her mom. That was the biggest/hardest part of her journey. She worked very hard to help her mom. Her mom was always working and she had to help.
Seizing the sword.	When you get back up again and continue on with being a hero.	Her first time having an actual family-like family was when she married her husband. He had enough money for them and their family, so he told her to stop working so much and instead raise a family with him. That was when she fell deeply in love and felt a lot better.
Ultimate Ordeal.	Do or die, the biggest challenge that you will give your all to.	The biggest thing that happened to her was when she moved to the U.S. because it was a very big change.
Resurrection.	Back to life, back to reality. This is when you finish the battle.	She bought land, and then she bought a house. She learned to try to visit family as much as possible and not work too much. She knows that she should work hard but not work so much that she can’t spend time with her family. This is a big thing she learned from her Journey.
Returning with the Elixir.	This is after the battle/journey when you have learned and improved yourself because of the challenges.	Now every day she has been spending time with her family. Even though life is hard, she looks at it positively. She wants to spend time with her kids that she hadn’t spent much time with before. She wants to appreciate the time she has.

After writing out the two hero's stages of the "Hero's Journey",  I have realized that the ways these two are similar are, that they both are very determined, and they always keep ongoing. They also have people they love that they want to spend their time with. Another way that they are similar through their journeys is that they put pressure on themselves to be the best and keep working. Though a difference is that A.P. has learned the lesson to not do too much work and Adora hasn't yet. An example of their similarities is A.P. worked hard in the office, making clothes, and so on in her "ordinary world". Adora's "ordinary world" was similar because she was also working very hard every day at a young age, she was training to be force captain in the horde. For their "refusal of call", they both didn't exactly refuse, but they had some worries. Like how A.P. was worried about how she would get a job in the U.S. and how Adora was worried about how becoming Brightmoon's hero might not be the "right" thing to do. Both of these heroes' "passing the threshold" stages were going somewhere and leaving someplace behind. Adora left the horde to go to Brightmoon. A.P. left Colombia to live in the U.S.

Here I made a comic strip of my grandmother's life as a whole. I drew her in Colombia when she was unhappy because of how her mother was never around since she was always working. Then I drew computers because A.P. started working so hard as a kid in order to help her mother. Then I drew when she started working with sewing clothes and uniforms, for her job as an adult. Then I drew when she got married to a man that told her he would take care of her, and that she shouldn't be working her butt off so much. Then I drew her now, when she is settled down, and telling me how she always just wanted to run away to go dancing.

"A.P. walking to her house in Colombia" N.M, 2021

"Computers in an office" N.M, 2021

"A.P. sewing uniforms to sell" N.M, 2021

"A.P. getting married" N.M, 2021

"A.P. telling me about her life" N.M, 2021

In the end, I had a lot of fun working on this class and this project. This unit was very interesting because we got to look at lots of characters, and each stage of their lives. We looked at fictional characters, and we looked at real-life hero's. I think it was very interesting to compare each person's "hero's journey". With this project, I got to hear my grandmother's whole life story, and I am very happy I did. I hope you liked my blog post, thank you for reading it!

Cites:

Stevenson, N. (n.d.). She-Ra and the princesses of power. Netflix. cartoon, https://www.netflix.com/.

P, A. (n.d.). Hero's Journey. personal.