The Hero's Journey of Faust

By Penny Peterson

Goethe’s Faust depicts a man torn by a changing modern society and how Faust ultimately meets and deals with these changes. The play does follow the Hero’s Journey as Faust is unsatisfied with life and agonizes over his decision to sell his soul to the Devil. Faust ends up making a deal with the Devil and he takes the role of an antihero. Through his adventures Faust has his loyal servant Wagner beside him. Wagner is the one that tries to pull in Faust and help him see the error of his ways.

The ordeal that Faust encounters that changes him forever is love. His love for a woman not only wakes up his human feelings but Faust eventually seduces Gretchen. When Gretchen’s brother finds out, Faust is called out to fight and Faust wins the fight with the Devil’s help. Now Faust must leave Gretchen and run for his life as the townspeople want him arrested.

Much later in the play, Faust finds out that Gretchen has given birth to his child out of wedlock and has been scorned by the town. Faust returns to the town to find that Gretchen, in grief died along with his child. After this horrific event, Faust turns his talents to better mankind. He continues his good deeds until he is old and feeble. As his last hours are slipping away, the Lord asks Faust if he will repent giving Faust a chance at salvation. Faust repents and his guilt and love in life, is his salvation in the end.

The Soul of Weaponry

by Leroy Martinez

Contemplating the soul of weaponry is capitalization upon fear that motivates each and every one of us. The Iron Man is an archetype that has been defined in our society through movies and stories. The hero's journey of self transformation models from higher development from mythology and this is a way that humans were believed to think. 

There are many different ways to think about the Iron Man persona and why it is bred into our society as a developed sense of the human being. Industrialization and modernism have changed the way we believe to think, developing us into futuristic human beings. But the gladiator and warrior still linger in all of us in one form or another. This now affects the mainstream population at large. Mindless violence, warlike violence and authoritarian personalities. This was some kind of inhumanity that humans should have conquered in this day and age, but it seems that we are going backwards in time to barbarian ways. Peace is hard work and killing is the coward's campaign as we see in our present day society. Give a soldier or cop a gun and they will us it. 

Heroism comes in many forms and there is an alternative to violence. Iron Man's heart is at the center of this story and is an emerging machine consciousness which is tension between self and persona. Are we afraid that creation will replace the creator? It takes a dramatic event in one's life to make them reflect on what they have become through imperfect, biological, and emotional turbulence.

Sequential art is a part that may give us some insight into our own personal reality. "With great power come's great responsibility," it says in Spider Man. Yet humans still don't know how to contain this.  Take, for example, the ongoing problem of killings and the Albuquerque police department. Worlds of imagination can be useful to give us great insight to the actions that we might take, for instance in The Iron Giant by Ted Hughes is a great example. This is an extraordinary action of humanity by an Iron Man (machine) to save the world by not using his weapons of mass destruction but uses his heart and mind to save the world. This is the possible world that we all want to live in, the perfect world of love and peace.

The Iron Giant vs. The Iron Giant

We were recently assigned to read the book The Iron Giant by Ted Hughes, and then we watched the movie The Iron Giant in class.

Well, I'll admit...I didn't read the book before we watched the movie! Bad me! But I loved the movie, and I went and rented it that night and watched it again with my three year old son, and then we watched it again, and again, and again (as it tends to go with three year olds when they love a movie).

I then read the book. It's a relatively short, easy read and very different from the movie. In the movie, Hogarth, the young boy who befriends the Iron Giant is the main character, and the relationship that they have is so sweet and well formed, they become good friends and at one point Hogarth even expresses his love for the Giant, and the Iron Giant clearly loves the boy.

In the book, they hardly even have a relationship. In fact the story is completely different. The Iron Giant appears one day as a nuisance to the community, eating machinery and fences and other metal objects (okay, that part is similar to the movie) until the town's people capture and bury him (with Hogarth's help). The Giant eventually frees himself, and with Hogarth's help once again the town's people are able to find a solution by pacifying the Iron Giant at a junk yard, where he can eat all of the scrap metal he wants.

Then, unlike the movie (which is more of a parallel to the fears of the cold war) one day a giant “space-bat-angel-dragon” literally the size of Australia lands....well, on Australia, and terrifies the entire planet by demanding living things to eat. The people of Earth band together to try and destroy the “space-bat-angel-dragon” and when they are unsuccessful Hogarth goes to the Iron Giant and asks for help. Only when Hogarth explains that there will be nothing left for the Iron Giant to eat if he does not help, does he decide to help! In the movie, he helps Hogarth, because he loves him!

In both the book and the movie the Iron Giant is willing to sacrifice himself to save others, that is clear. Both stories are entertaining, I won't argue that. The book is definitely a classic and I would surely recommend it as a good, short read (as I mentioned before). However, the movie absolutely captured my heart. The relationship between the robot and the boy, and the realization that a machine could “love” is a theme that I have grown up with and I loved it, but the book and the movie were shockingly different, and I just haaad to blog about it.

This is my first blog, I don't know how to end it.

The End.

Sincerely,
Shadow Dove

The Hero's Journey in Stories

By Cortnie Gurno

I love movies. The movies I enjoy most are action and adventure. However I like historical movies as well. Movies that use action and adventure to bring a story to life is a great interpretation of that historical event. An example would be the Trojan War and Odysseus and his journey.

I was always intrigued by Greek mythology so studying Odysseus and his journey brought my back to that time. You could never go wrong with Ancient Greece. It is such a beautiful time full of beautiful architecture and stories of Gods, Goddesses and Monsters.

This class is perfect to explore the realms of books and movies. I found that some of my favorite movies were based on books. I am reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which is a great movie but also a great children’s book, one that I never took the time to read. The character of Dorothy is one I feel young women can connect to. Digging deep into her story also lead me to another brave young girl named Alice. Alice in Wonderland is a story of pure imagination and creativity. Both of these stories are well known and popular movies that came from the pages of books. Both characters are heroes in their own journey to find themselves and who they are.

Exploring the model of the Hero’s Journey exposed how many classic stories and tales follow this model. After learning more about the Hero’s Journey I believe this is the key to a successful storyline

Heroic Youth in Peril

By Hallie Taylor

Growing up, I read a lot of things. From science fiction to historical classics, I always had a book in my hand. It seems contradictory that I would start to read young adult novels once I became an adult, but that's how it happened. As a child, I mostly read “grown-up” books, and as an adult, I mostly read young adult books. There is something fetching in these tales of young love, heroes and heroines triumphing over evil and bonding over personal struggles. They draw me in and catch my attention, but at the same time, I'm constantly running into a personal struggle of my own: what is the fantasy these books are providing for the readers?

What does living in the myriad worlds of these novels say about the readers? It seems to me that a reader of young adult fiction is living within a specific kind of fantasy world. From the vampire fantasy of Twilight, to the dystopian tragedies of the Divergent and The Hunger Games series, an avid reader of young adult fiction is constantly consuming what almost all young adult genre books have in common: young love and young violence. All of these books, invariably, include a romance of some sort between two teenage protagonists, who, throughout the course of the novel, engage in multiple battles with their perceived enemy. In our culture, I've heard it said that we have a fixation with youth: reading young adult novels transports the readers to a fantasy land, where the characters remain forever young, forever triumphant, and forever in love.

I Will Meet You on the Hero's Journey

By Brenda Bauer

Sitting in a coffee shop, I watch people. It is a favorite pastime of mine. There are coffee shops that I avoid because they have become internet cafes. I like people and when I step into a coffee shop filled with people that have only the awareness of the screen in front of them I am left feeling alone and disconnected, but they have a story too. I wonder why they go out into the world and then not take a part in it. The stage for people watching is not isolated to coffee shops.

My voyeurism has an element of storytelling. I tell myself the story. Taos, New Mexico is a perfect setting for this pastime. There is a rich diversity of people here that fires my imagination. In the laundromat one day a beautiful woman came in dressed in old but well designed clothes. She stepped into the middle of the rows of washers and dryers and began to sing in a clear lovely voice a sad sweet ballad. Immediately I began to tell myself her story. What had prompted her to break out in song in this unusual setting? What did her journey look like? I tell myself the story of what barriers she had to face and what battles she had had to fight. What choices had she made to bring her to this town , to this state of being, to this laundromat? I tell myself the story of her sadness, her humor, her brokenness and her laughter.

I believe that we are all on hero's journeys and in telling myself the story of others' journeys I no longer feel alone in my own. So my people watching is not just about observation. It is about connection with the whole of humanity.