Andres Munoz
Blog Prompt Week 2
Star Wars: A New Hope
Determining a Hero
There are many vague ways to identify who is a
hero in a movie, story or in real life. Some may say soldiers are the true
hero’s but many times they refuse that title. Other hero’s present a more
fictitious journey or challenge in many movies. Joseph Campbell came with a
three-stage cycle, which identifies of an existing hero in his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces As an
example Star Wars: A New Hope presents the three stages proposed by Joseph
Campbell. Though in my opinion there could be two heroes taking the same
journey though for different reasons. The most dominant hero is Luke Skywalker
who undertakes and accomplishes all three stages though for the first movie we
can only identify the departure of the hero being the first stage.
Luke Skywalker first seen in
Tatoonie living with his uncle and aunt. Living a farm life. Luke desires and
dreams of a bigger and meaningful life as joining the rebellion in help of
liberating the planets form the Empire.
Ben Kenobi a hermit once one of the best Jedi’s tells Luke he has to
learn the way of the force to help the rebellion and defeat the Empire. This is
what Joseph Campbell defines as the call to adventure. Ben Kenobi is the guide
in Lukes Journey and then becomes as well the supernatural guide. But Luke denies
this call and goes back to his family, once he arrives to his house a pile of
burning corpses catches his eyes while destroying every emotion he returns to
Ben Kenobi with a broken heart and a set mind to destroy the evil that has
killed his family. So the journey begins
and they set off to Alderaan, which represents the crossing of the first
threshold.
Luke isn’t only a hero because of a meaningful
departure, but rather for the characteristics portrayed by Joseph Campbell. The hero is usually a male, the hero often
times is a lowly birth, but may secretly have a special powers or a high
birthright he is unaware of. The hero’s
parents are often dead, absent, or uncaring. Finally the things he does and the
way he reacts and relates to people judge a hero.
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