The Hero’s Journey Guidebook. Ben Pugh. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Ben Pugh
Издательство: Ingram
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Жанр произведения: Религия: прочее
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781532608377
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pick out what is latently already there in the tales they are creating. This is perhaps why it is such a strong model: it merely picks out and identifies more clearly the elements that tend to turn up in any given story. Writers produce these elements unconsciously because they are already the kind of stuff that life is made up of.

      What I am doing here is simply applying this template to real life from a faith perspective: analyzing real life stories of faith in the same way that screen writers analyze made-up stories to help bring out more clearly the things that life is really made of. This, I hope will help us analyze our own stories to discover a divine purpose in them.

      The reason for the appeal of fictional stories is that they speak to us, and they do this so well because we see ourselves in them. In that sense, fiction is true. Jesus himself knew this as he spoke of the Kingdom of God in made up parables. Fiction is more true than life itself because it hints so strongly at the answers to our “why?” questions. Fiction tells us the meaning of life in a very immediate, intuitive way. This is what I hope The Hero’s Journey Guidebook will do for you as we explore the model in relation to real life in the same way that it has been explored in relation to made-up life.

      Following Vogler, I’m giving your life’s adventures a three act structure: a short beginning, a long middle and a short end. Within Act 1 is your call to some particular action and your initial response. In Act 2, assuming you rise to the call, however falteringly, you face your ordeal, your test, out of which you emerge a better person with your priorities right and your deepest needs met. Towards the end of Act 2, there is a decisive battle. You win the fight. This results in Act 3, the journey back. In Act 3, there are still some obstacles to overcome but, basically, you are now on your way to living happily ever after. I will illustrate all of this with the stories of those that have travelled this way before.

      You are probably right now coming to the end of one adventure, as well as being at the beginning or middle of another adventure. There is often some overlap. Recognizing such an overlap is a useful coping mechanism as it means that you can take courage from the great victories you are winning in one area of your life while you face the more difficult earlier stages of another adventure.

      This very long Tests, Allies, Enemies section underlines a point that I will make when we get there, which is that this long test is entirely true to life. Relatively few fictitious stories alight here for quite so long—the writers don’t want their readers or viewers to lose interest. Exceptions would be those stories that are clearly framed around the idea of an odyssey or quest, such as The Wizard of Oz and Finding Nemo. In these stories the oversized Tests, Allies, Enemies section is made interesting by all the weird and wonderful personalities that are encountered along the way. In real life, the road is every bit as long as Dorothy’s but the characters we meet might not be quite so thrilling or amusing. Great reserves of patience are needed before eventually there is a change of scene: we finally come to the edge of something great. For this reason, I have chosen to call that chapter The Long Road.

      And, perhaps, herein lies my main concern. Sure, I am concerned that readers would not miss their calling, and I am concerned that they would not fail to share the elixir once it is all over, Most of all, though, I want to help you see that this long period of testing you are going through had a beginning which was filled with promise, and that it has an appointed end which will overflow with blessing.

      Discussion:

      1. What are the most striking changes that you have noticed in Western culture during your life time?

      2. What would you say has been the most decisive moment of your life?

      3. Where would you say your life is going at the moment?

Act 1

      1:1. The Ordinary World

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      At the start of any great adventure story there is the “once upon a time. . .” part. This is where everyday life for the hero-to-be is portrayed. It is invariably humdrum. We are given the impression that this day could be any day in the hero’s life. Clark Kent is filing, Neo is working on a computer in a cubicle in a large impersonal office, Alice is sitting beside her sister on a river bank feeling bored, Indiana Jones is lecturing a class of inattentive archaeology students. In the Bible we find Joseph wandering the fields looking for his brothers, or David looking after a few of his father’s sheep.

      The difference, of course, between their ordinariness and our ordinariness, our dead-end job that we’ve been in for twelve years, our unexciting little block of suburbia where we live, our lack of any exceptional talents, is that we already know that the banality of their lives is temporary. In fact, so sure are we that this is the case that, in many ways, those first few minutes of a film are the most exciting part. Those are the minutes that make us stuff our mouths with popcorn in sheer anticipation. The film hasn’t had the chance to fail to thrill us yet. The tension is building with every scene because we know something is about to happen and we are taking note of all the ordinary things that we know the director wants us to take special note of because these will be referred back to later on in the plot.

      The hero’s pre-call life is full of clues about his or her adventure life. All the ordinary things that make up the “once upon a time” of the hero will later be transfigured into the ingredients