What Is The Hero Myth Story?

Milton Schorr explains Joseph Campbell’s Hero Myth, by breaking down his hitchhiking novel A Man Of The Road into the twelve Hero Myth parts.

When setting out to write A Man of the Road, it was a deliberate choice from the beginning to leverage the structure of the hero myth. I wanted to harness the transformative power of that classical tale. My goal was for the audience to accompany Little Mikey on his journey and discover who he truly is through the adventures he experiences on the road.

I will now discuss the novel through Joseph Campbell's 12 stages of the hero myth.

1. The Ordinary World

We meet eight year old Little Mikey as a happy young boy living with his single mom in the town of Freeburg. His life seems idyllic, even though it’s clear that his mother is working very hard. We learn that Little Mikey loves to play motocross games with his toy biker, and that his father is not around.

2. The Call to Adventure

Little Mikey’s mother instructs him to take their rent money to their landlord. She explains that it is very important that he deliver the money by a certain time. But Little Mikey, the happy-go-lucky spirit that he is, becomes distracted by a motocross event in the town, and he loses the money.

Little Mikey’s mom is furious, and in her extreme anger we realise she is mentally unbalanced, and that the reality of their poverty stricken life is far harder than Little Mikey realises. Shockingly, she tells him he must leave their house. He must go to find his father in Goldtown, the faraway city. She gives him a letter, addressed to his father, who he has never met.

3. Refusal of the Call

Little Mikey is utterly distraught. He flees to his friend Big Jan’s house, who advises him to go back to his mom in the morning, when she will have calmed down. Little Mikey does so, but discovers that his mom has been taken to debtors jail, as she knew she would. Little Mikey realises that it is his fault. He is crushed by guilt and confusion.

4. Meeting the Mentor

He finds himself sitting beside the highway, the main road out of the little town of Freeburg, which will eventually lead to the great, dangerous city of Goldtown, many days drive away. He opens the letter his mother gave him, seeing her words directing him to his father’s house. In this, the letter becomes the mentor. He decides that he will never disobey his mother again.

5. Crossing the Threshold

Seeing other poor people hitchhiking on the side of the road, Little Mikey gathers his courage, and begins to hitchhike too. Soon, a car stops for him. With a hammering heart he climbs inside, and zooms away, crossing the threshold from his known world of Freeburg, into the great, wide world beyond.

6. Tests, Allies, and Enemies

In the tradition of the hero myth, our hero now acclimatises to the new world by encountering various trials which they must overcome, and in so doing, build the strength and toolkit needed to face the real tests later on. On the road, Mikey faces various challenges:

• He encounters danger when a driver threatens him but manages to escape, learning that some people are dangerous.
• He meets Bryan, a kind truck driver who teaches him about enjoying life and encourages him to continue his search for his mother.
• He experiences a highjacking, and learns about bravery.
• He experiences tragedy when he meets Commander Eugene, witnessing the emotional turmoil of a father whose son has turned to crime.

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

In Joseph Campbell's Hero Myth, the "Approach to the Inmost Cave" is a time of pause, where the hero prepares to confront his greatest fears or challenges. For Little Mikey, this time takes the form of getting picked up by Mother Anna and her daughter, and invited to spend the school holidays with them on their farm.

The nurturing environment he finds himself in, and the thrill of helping Anna realise her dream of becoming a motocross rider, allows Little Mikey to bloom, his strength to grow, and his love for the women of the farm to build - essential to arm him for the ordeal ahead.

8. The Ordeal

The pause in Little Mikey’s journey ends with the terrifying figure of Anne’s abusive father appears, and Anne and Little Mikey flee into the mountains. The figure is a symbol of what is rotten in the world - a place where children are afraid of their parents, and the populace is afraid of its government. But the father was only the catalyst, the real ordeal waits in the mountains, where death itself, the bitter pill of reality, awaits.

Out there they are hunted by a mountain leopard, and the sad truth of Little Mikey’s life is revealed. Anna reads his letter, and discovers (along with the reader), that Little Mikey had in fact already made it Goldtown, that a period of three years had passed after Little Mikey left Commander Eugene, which the reader was not aware of either. Little Mikey had met his father, and found him to be mean, and he had found his mother too, a lonely grave outside the prison. We realise that Little Mikey is one of the many who are forgotten, the poor, who live lives unseen, carrying hard inner burdens.

But, because of the love Little Mikey experienced in the Arendse home with the two Anna’s, he is determined to fight for them, as he was not able to fight for his own mother. He protects Anna with his own body, becoming injured, and faces the ghosts of his own mortality, while he waits for her to return with the strong shepherd.

9. Reward (Seizing the Sword)

‘Seizing the Sword’ is a pivotal stage where the hero gains a significant reward or insight after facing a major ordeal. This stage often symbolizes a turning point in the hero's journey, marking a moment of empowerment and transformation.

For Little Mikey, this happens when he is waiting for Anna to return, and battling with his own feelings of regret and dread at the coming of death. A vision of his mother comes to him, logically as he is between the realm of life and death, and in her he is able to find the peace he has been searching for. She allows him to see the truth, that it is time to let her go, and live for himself.

Little Mikey’s reward is that he is free, and whether his life continues or not, he has conquered the pain that has followed him.

10. The Road Back

For Little Mikey, ‘the road back’ is closely aligned with ‘seizing the sword’. In fact, as is often the case in practice, different stations blur into each other.

Here, Little Mikey slips into a coma, but he does so peacefully, knowing that whatever happens, he is now free to love, whether he lives or dies. He has honoured his mother, and made his mistakes whole. It is this smile on his face that transports him to the next stage, this certainty that he is now not afraid of life, but excited to dance with it.

11. Resurrection

Little Mikey wakes up in the hospital, having been physically taken care of by the hospital staggf, as an extension of Mother Anna, who now understands how injured the boy was, and after her own awakening, is now willing to love him as he loves them.

Because Mother Anna has had her own awakening. In the fierce way that Little Mikey fought for her daughter, she has found the strength to make her own changes, and his divorcing the abusive father.

Both are ready to be reborn, as this stage asks for.

12. Return with the Elixir

Armed by the truth of both of their awakenings - Little Mikey that he can now trust himself as someone who fights for his own, and Mother Anna the same, she invites Little Mikey to live with them permanently, offering him the home he once lost, and an end to his journey on the road.

In the tradition of the Hero Myth, Little Mikey reaches the end by coming back to the beginning. He is home again, and now, because of his adventure in the unknown, fully A Man Of The Road. 

Further Reading: What Are The Jungian Archetypes?