Week 6: The Hero's Journey

Week 6: The Hero's Journey

I decided to revisit The Lord of the Rings, a novel series I haven’t read in years. In class we talked about a narrative pattern called “The Hero’s Journey”. This follows the cycle of a character growing and experiencing throughout the story. I would love to talk about exactly how this plays out in the Lord of the Rings since it follows this very closely, following the main character of the series Frodo Baggins. In the beginning he is innocent, unknowing of the world outside his shire. Before he is called to leave and adventure out in the world, a moment of awakening. Of course he follows his heart to do the right thing to adventure with his pals, going through trails and hardships. Only to eventually be betrayed by someone close to him. These are all common things in The Hero’s Journey, this is a constant cycle of different challenges a character must face either big of small in some degree in almost all storytelling media.  These tropes usually start with a character that never was privileged, and never had parents. They have a very weird circumstance leading him to give them this unprivileged life like someone out to kill them or something happening when they were born. Frodo was an orphan.  Of course they become the right age,  the age of puberty or maturity to start on their journey or adventure to adulthood. Of course by the end, usually the main character is reborn when the conflict is over a new one continues.