Cultural Background

Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" monomyth is a template of a broad category of tales that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, and in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed.

Popular Hero's Journey Examples

• Homer's Odyssey
• Star Wars
• Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
• Greek Mythology: Jason and the Argonauts
• Divergent

Culturally Relevant Hero's Journey Examples

• The Story of Moses (Jewish, Christian)
• Journey to the West (China)
• Star Wars (United States)
• Papa John’s Tall Tale (African American)
• Kirikou and The Sorceress (African)**

This project makes a distinction between Western narrative structures and non-Western ones such as:

• Indian - The traditional starting point (especially in Hindi) is a religious ritual invocation that establishes an emotive, spiritual sensibility for what follows. The ensuing narrative form is dendritic and offers multiple world views designed to accommodate many differing perspectives.
• West and Central African - Unlike many other narrative forms, the environment is privileged over a single protagonist, the social context is privileged over the individual protagonist, and the spiritual centre is privileged over the individual. All of the action — the ‘journey’ if you will — happens concretely within clearly defined parameters (see example below).

Mapping culturally-specific narrative forms onto the monomyth makes the content more culturally situated and, arguably, more relevant to students from diverse backgrounds.