Emma Swan’s Hero Journey
Through the Goggles of Joseph Campbell
by Manny

” A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from his mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man” – Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell, an enthusiast of novelist James Joyce, borrowed the term “Monomyth” from Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”, in which Campbell held that numerous myths or stories from disparate times and regions share fundamental structures and stages, and that classic myths from many cultures follow this basic pattern.

Through out his life’s work, Campbell identified and labeled this monomyth’s 17 stages or steps along this journey. Very few stories or myths contain all 17 stages…. some myths or stories contain many of the stages, while others contain only a few; some may focus on only one of the stages, while others may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order.

These 17 stages are often divided into three sections: Departure, Initiation, and Return. “Departure” deals with the hero’s adventure prior to the quest; “Initiation” deals with the hero’s many adventures along the way; and the “Return” deals with the hero’s return home with knowledge and powers acquired on the journey.

Here we’ll focus on the stages acquired and those yet to be, if any, by our heroine of “Once Upon A Time”, Emma Swan…

Departure
“The Call to Adventure”
Campbell: “The first stage of this mythological journey, which we have designated the, ‘call to adventure’, signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his/her spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his/her society to a zone unknown. This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight.”
Our region of treasure and danger takes place in a distant forest land named Storybrooke found on the nearby shores of Maine. Shores yet to be visited by our heroine Emma Swan, a bailbonds “person”, presently hunting bail jumpers in the ctiy of Boston, Mass. Emma’s call to adventure knocks on her Boston apartment door in the form of her 10yr old son Henry Mills, whom she gave up for adoption at birth and who is not only a willing participant and initiator on his own hero’s journey but has recognized and accepted his role as who Campbell would refer to as the “Helper.” Henry then becomes the initiator of Emma’s journey by persuading her to return with him to the “zone unknown”,Storybrooke, of which she in turn becomes the reluctant hero and thrusts her into the next stage of the monomyth.