I Missed the Fourth

I missed the Fourth. May the Fourth. (Or is it May the Forth?) Obviously I lived through it because I’m still here, but I missed all the opportunities to say, “May the Fourth (Forth?) be with you.”

Image courtesy of Unsplash

And, equally as devastating, I missed all the occasions to be a good (but snarky) Presbyterian and respond with, “And also with you.”

I was so consumed with grading term papers and finalizing grades for graduating seniors that the significance of the day passed me by. 

My husband, daughter, and stepson will be mortified to read this. Star Wars is an integral part of their lives, maybe even a cornerstone of their connection to pop culture, and I completely overlooked what is perhaps the most important sci-fi holiday of the year. 

To be completely honest, in 1977, I couldn’t wait to see Star Wars. I was seven years old, and I was in my mom and dad’s bedroom, trying to persuade my mom to take me to see “the movie with the robot.” She was having none of it. David remembers seeing it at the drive-in theater and then toddling around the house, singing John Williams’ main themes. 

Besides a trip down memory lane and an opportunity to “nerd out,” what I really missed out on was a chance to celebrate one of the best examples of the hero’s journey in all of literary history. 

In 1949 Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces in which he proposes that every story is a variation of the “monomyth” -- the “one story” in which the hero pursues a quest to obtain a goal or objective of some sort and encounters seemingly insurmountable obstacles along the way. Campbell posits that all stories, at least all good and effective stories anyway, adhere to a primal pattern dating back to our ancestors who carved stories on cave walls featuring strong protagonists who took down large mammals to provide meat for their village. Campbell’s theory is that the “monomyth” has been imprinted upon us for generations and that we respond to the hero’s journey because it’s in our genes. 

Campbell’s theory includes multiple stages of the hero’s journey, including leaving home, facing challenges, attaining a victory and returning home, changed and transformed. 

Several archetypes appear along the way, all perfectly rendered in Star Wars. The “hero,” young, naive, and flawed, Luke Skywalker, receives the call to adventure from the “herald,” a quirky little robot called R2-D2 who delivers Leia’s plea for help. Luke leaves everything behind and moves on to study and grow under the tutelage of his “mentor,” Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

Character evolution is important on multiple levels in the story arc. A “shape shifter” appears in every monomyth. In our sci-fi epic, selfish smuggler Han Solo ultimately turns into a protagonist helper (though Han does appear to abandon his roguish ways with great reluctance and unhurriedness). 

Before meeting the ultimate evil, Luke encounters several “threshold guardians” who try to keep him from completing his journey and development; the Tusken Raiders and Storm Troopers (who are terrible shots, by the way) serve as these “lesser antagonists.”

To relieve some of the tension, comic relief arrives with the “tricksters”: C-3PO (the robot I was so keen to see on the screen when I was a child) and R2-D2. Their relationship reads like that of an old married couple or of Statler and Waldorf (from The Muppets’ balcony) who heckle everyone and each other. 

Image courtesy of Unsplash

Finally (but is it really the end?) Luke must come face to face with the ultimate evil, “the shadow”: Darth Vader. How appropriate that the “dark father” appears as and remains Luke’s consummate antagonist. After he fights Vader and bravely jumps to escape instead of turning to the Dark Side as his father requests, Luke earns mental and physical scars that give credence to his transformation into the “hero.” 

George Lucas himself recognized Campbell’s influence on his storylines and even mentioned The Hero with a Thousand Faces in an interview back in the 1970s. However, some critics discount Campbell’s theory, claiming that he fails to consider many other literary and historical nuances that could add complexity to the monomyth. 

But the monomyth is everywhere, and once you recognize the pattern, you can’t “unsee” it. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Indiana Jones are just a few examples of the hero’s journey in action. David and I plug those seven character archetypes into everything we watch, and it really works! And Campbell supporters contend that books and movies that aren’t successful don’t follow the monomyth. That’s why we have such a hard time accepting experimental fiction. 

So I’m going to do my best to remember the nerdiest of holidays next year. May the force of the monomyth be with you!