Pierce Arnold - Why The Belly of The Whale? 4/27/2026

Something that I found interesting about Joseph Campbell’s archetypal hero’s journey is the inclusion of the “belly of the whale” story as a motif. As a Christian myself, I am of course familiar with the archetype because of the book of Jonah, but before reading Campbell I never knew that this was a type of story that is found so widely across the world. This fact is curious to me, because as far as I can see it there are two possible explanations for why this is. The first is that perhaps this story began at some point in history and spread across the world’s cultures in the years following, and the second is that this story represents a deeper truth than many cultures have come to understand independently. As a Christian I would be inclined to believe the former, because if Jonah was actually swallowed and regurgitated by a big fish I could see how that story could easily be passed along and adapted into other mythologies. But is this the most likely option? Is it more probable that such a thing did not happen and this story about a whale is simply a good way that many cultures have found to share some deeper truth? In most of the archetypes that seems to be the case, the reason that most mythologies have a threshold into the underworld that the hero passes through and comes back from, for example, does not probably mean that at some point this actually happened to someone. What seems to be more likely is that most cultures have some form of afterlife, and thus come up with the idea of entering and exiting that afterlife in their mythologies. It would be worth some further research, because the issue with the belly of the whale archetype seems to be that I see less reason for cultures to come to this story on their own. While belief in an afterlife seems pretty natural for most cultures, being swallowed and regurgitated by a fish seems less so. I personally cannot imagine coming up with such a story without some sort of underlying belief that would make me think such a thing had happened or was possible. This question absolutely warrants future research on my part, because it implicates the reliability of one of my fundamental beliefs.

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