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I find it funny how many people discredit this book considering I mean we all have they same brain and the perceptions that come from our brain, whether we have studied something or not or whether we were influenced or not science explains to use that we will recreate a similar story to fit our understanding of life on earth. Even if outdated, this book has influenced the modern generation more than just about any that has ever been written. I understand that in parts of the world it is night when it is day in another part, or it's a different season even when we celebrate at almost the same time.
You get my drift, Right. I see the differences but we all think alike even if not by intention because we are all on the same planet. We all think the same, we all have the same method of understanding things, we even have similar visions, relate things in a similar way etc.
I understand the northern Hemisphere is dark when the southern hemisphere is light. We have nature, seasons, a universe, man, woman, child, a sun and a moon, we are people with the same brain structure and and organs, we all connect and bond in some way and WE ALL DIE. It is no wonder we are basically the same even if a little different because we all have the same thing in common, we are people.
It's no wonder then that it's common to have Near Death Experiences even if some parts of the world report who haven't even heard of them and not to mention see the Gods of other cultures instead of their own cultural deities.I love the book alot and would give it 10 stars myself. Anything this book has influenced has become just as popular as the message it provides us.
Creative writing instructor recommended this book. It's analysis of people and why they take the actions they do is a great tool in developing characters. I had read the book in college and this was an enjoyable re-read. Excellent book very thought provoking
Estes. This is a perennial classic and as such will continue to sell, but its contents have been repudiated time and again by Campbell's fellow academics. It is good to see that the Introduction to the 2004 Commemorative Edition has been eliminated; it was totally unnecessary and almost constituted a book in itself by the sycophantic Dr. Campbell's obsession with seeing the entire world and all of life through Freudian psychobabble is a discredited approach to mythology that insults most of the civilizations and religions he attacks or tries to undermine. Mythology does not occupy the modern mind or any facet of sociology today except in the ravings of lunatics and prison inmates, for most of whom a sense of identity has been severed from the rest of the human race.
I would highly recommend those first few chapters, though. I enjoyed the book very much and find myself still chewing over Campbell's ideas-- thinking about contemporary movies and stories in relation to the monomyth.
He proposes a structure for the universal hero myth-- the monomyth-- which he sees as holding true for the hero myth in every culture at every time period. In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell seeks to use the concept of Jungian archetypes to explore the mythology of world culture.
It reads kind of like Nietzsche-- poetically written philosophy. And by and large he's correct-- his idea is extremely compelling.
He puts forth this idea within the first chapter or two of the book, then becomes rather rambling and digressive, relating bizarre myths from various cultures and discussing them in relation to ideas that some will find rather New Age-y. I have to say, however, that my interest petered off by the end-- one could read the first few chapters, get the basic idea, and leave it at that.
They will provide you with some excellent and compelling food for thought.
It's difficulty may account for the "snooze factor" some reviewers attribute to it. Instead, he borrows vocabulary from a staggering variety of the world's mythologies to describe that mystery. While the book is not necessarily an easy read, it was written for the general public. Campbell was awarded the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Contributions to Creative Literature for "Hero." As a scholar, he was particularly proud of this fact. So what is "Hero." Campbell is a comparative mythologist, and the original title was "How to Read a Myth." While scholarly in nature, "Hero" is not a formal scholarly paper and should not be read as such. Again, false. This is false. If after you are finished you wish for more depth, I suggest you try his four volume series "Masks of God."If you read some of the negative reviews you will get the impression Campbell tries to provide you with answers to life's great mysteries.
This is also false. Rather than focus on what makes us different, as most comparative religion scholars do, he chose to focus on what makes us similar. Instead, it falls in the realm of literature. You will also get the impression that Campbell thinks he found the one and only way to interpret mythology. "Hero" is a broad survey of what is similar about the world's mythologies, remarkable in breadth for its length. If this interests you I suggest you read it. On page one of the epilogue he says, "There is no final system for the interpretation of myths, and there will never be any such thing." You may also get the impression that Campbell was a mystic or part of the New Age movement. When asked what method of meditation he practices, he once responded, "I underline sentences." In other words, he is a scholar.
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