Briar Bond, Journal Entry #5, Response to Virginia Press "On Hatred of the Other"

 Virginia wrote a very interesting entry relating to the play "The Laramie Project". I am unfamiliar with the plot of the play and the real-life scenario it is based on, but Virginia mentioned a very interesting idea that stuck out to me.

If I have interpreted this correctly, she said that the Hero'd Journey as we look at it now relates back to very human characters. They are not the godlike figures of mythology, but real people who make mistakes and grow. This relates back to an idea generated in Virginia and I'd previous exchange where we stated that the hero's journey does not actually require a classical hero, but can instead be interpreted as a developmental framework for characters.

So my question now is, how did the idea of the hero's journey evolve? How, when, and why did the protagonists of the stories we treasure switch from the classical hero, like the godlike powerful figures of The Iliad and The Odyssey, to the much more personal, emotional characters we know and love today? I don't have a perfect answer to this, but my best guess is that the priorities of people have changed. The ancient epic myths and poems were supposed to evoke a feeling of power in the listener, be it the power of the gods or a form of national pride. I think as societies of Western culture in particular have shifted to more individual-focused perspectives, so too have our stories. This then would spawn the introspective, growth-based stories we're more familiar with now.

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