Heroic Endeavors—Part Three: Return

“I certainly think Star Trek is an example of a science-fiction franchise that at its heart really possesses a sense of optimism and faith in humanity and I think those are things that are never more relevant than they are today.” –Zachary Quinto

Here we are in the final stages of the heroic journey and the problem is that we have passed the new incarnation of James Kirk. No doubt there will be more stories in this new series, but for now I will have to get creative when it comes to providing you with examples. Luckily, there are many other stories about Kirk to draw from. I’m going to use the movie Star Trek Generations to help me. Being circa 1994, it may seem outdated and those of you who have seen it will have to dig deep into your memory banks, but it has the pieces I need. I’ll be as clear as possible. These are the trickiest steps, yet. Make sure you haven’t missed Part One and Part Two of this series.

Return – 1. Refusal of the Return

Once the heroic quest has been accomplished, what remains is for the hero to return to the real world with his prize. Whether he has attained enlightenment, or has rescued the princess, or found the Holy Grail, it is then up to him to bring his trophy back and share it with the world. As in the beginning, when the hero didn’t want to leave his childhood sphere of relationships and connections, he doesn’t always want to leave the bliss found in the presence of grace. It’s a nice place and it is difficult to leave by choice.

Example: In Star Trek Generations, Kirk finds himself in a place called The Nexus. Guinan describes the Nexus to Picard as:

“Like being inside joy, as if joy was something tangible and you could wrap yourself up in it like a blanket. And never in my entire life have I ever been as content… None of us wanted to go. And I would have done anything, anything, to get back there… If you go, you’re not going to care about anything, not this ship, not Soren, not me, nothing. All you’ll want is to stay in the Nexus; you’re not going to want to come back.”

It is a place where the mind has the power to grant any desire and command time. It is the bliss place and while Kirk is there, he does not want to leave. He sees the chance to live his life over again and do everything differently. When Captain Picard seeks out his help, Kirk refuses to return to the real world with him.

Return – 2. The Magic Flight

If the hero does decide to return to the world, there are two ways it can go. One, he has the blessing of the gods. They have specifically commissioned him to take their grace back to the world and share it with humanity. In that case, his return is supported by all the supernatural forces and goes swimmingly. Or, if the hero has stolen his prize or tricked it from the grasp of the gods, then the return can look like a great chase scene. The hero tosses obstacles behind him to delay his pursuers. His allies attempt to block the path and give him a greater lead. We’ve all seen this play out. But the truth of the monomyth is this: to fulfill its promise, not human failure or superhuman success but human success is what we have to be shown.

Example: Let’s go back to the new film for a moment and consider the red matter as the divine grace our hero steals. Kirk teams up with Spock to steal the ship with the red matter and destroy the Nerada’s drill that threatens Earth. Then Spock flies off, leading the enemy ship to the Enterprise, while Kirk is rescuing Captain Pike—they all beam to safety. The Enterprise destroys the missiles aimed at Spock, he crashes the ship into the Nerada and thus a black hole is created which destroys the “supernatural” enemy. A very magic flight.

Spock In Magical Flight

Return – 3. Rescue from Without

But what happens if the hero maintains the refusal of stage one? Someone has to go get him. The journey is not complete until the hero re-enters, with his boon, “the long-forgotten atmosphere where men who are fractions imagine themselves to be complete.” He has to confront society with his elixir of enlightenment; he has to take the blow of people’s questions and resentment and inability to understand. If he refuses to do so, then the supernatural forces that have been helping him all along, will come to rescue him and set him back on his path.

Example: We’re going back to the Kirk in The Nexus (I apologize for the back and forth—I trust you can keep up). Kirk is enjoying the power of fulfilling all his desires, fixing his mistakes, healing his regrets. He doesn’t want to go back to the world where his life is coming to an end, where his glory days are past. But Picard needs his help. Picard persuades him to come back and make a difference in the world again. He persuades him to put himself at risk again to make the world a better place and save millions of lives, 230 million lives.

Kirk and Picard in The Nexus

Return – 4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold

Ah, another one of those thresholds! I’ll let Joseph explain this one:

“The two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other—different as life and death, as day and night. Nevertheless—and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol—the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero. There must always remain, however, from the standpoint of normal waking consciousness, a certain baffling inconsistency between the wisdom brought forth from the deep, and the prudence usually found to be effective in the light world. The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the word. How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind’s prudent folly? That is the hero’s ultimate difficult task. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world.”

I think the last few lines are the most important to understand. There have been heroes making this journey throughout time. We know of some and not of others. But they come back and try to tell us what is true about ourselves. They try to tell us that we are all capable of this journey, that we all have this potential within ourselves—and we close our ears and ignore them. Most of us cannot accept that as possible. We call it myth. We put it on a big screen and call it a movie. We put it in a book and call it fiction. And then we ignore it as irrelevant to our own lives. That is our mistake.

Example: In the film, there is an energy ribbon that travels through the universe that acts as a doorway to the Nexus. This is the threshold Picard and Kirk must cross to return to the world. The Nexus also allows them to choose which moment to return to, so they are both masters of crossing space and time.

Threshold

Return – 5. Master of the Two Worlds

The hero has been blessed with a new perspective. He has seen beyond the scope of normal human destiny and been granted an awareness of the essential nature of the cosmos. His personal fate is now only part of the fate of mankind, the fate of life, the solar system, the atom. All of this knowledge has opened to him. He transcends personal ambition and stops resisting whatever may come to pass. He accepts the truth that there is nothing to gain or fear because all things are one. If that’s hard to grasp, consider this metaphor: just as an actor is always a man, whether he puts on the costume of his role or lays it aside, so is the perfect knower of the Imperishable always the Imperishable, and nothing else. That is the hero, whether in the state of perfect enlightenment or not, he remains at one with the imperishable force. The truth is that we are all at one with that force, we just don’t know it.

Example: After successfully returning from the Nexus and saving part of the galaxy, Picard ruminates on time with his first officer.

Captain Picard: Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives, but I rather believe that time is a companion that goes with us on the journey, reminds us to cherish every moment, because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we’ve lived. After all, Number One, we’re only mortal.

Commander Riker: Speak for yourself, sir. I plan to live forever.

Return – 6. Freedom to Live

The goal of the myth is to reconcile the individual consciousness with the universal will (The Force). Once the hero has completed his journey, he is able to recognize his own relationship with the passing phenomena of time and the imperishable life that is within everything. As Joseph says:

“The Self cannot be cut nor burnt nor wetted nor withered. Eternal, all-pervading, unchanging, immovable, the Self is the same for ever. The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is.”

It is tricky to explain these last pieces. They are deeply spiritual states of being that I certainly have not achieved myself. I have not passed beyond my own attachments to this world of duality where life and death are different things. I perceive change everyday. But the hero is beyond thoughts of permanence or attachment. He does not fear change or loss. He knows that nothing retains its form forever. Nature, the great renewer, is always making up forms from forms. Nothing perishes, it simply varies and renews its form. That is the lesson.

In the broad sense, what does it mean that we have “rebooted” the series? Our vision of time and events is altered because the mythology continues to grow and change. What came before is intact for all who experienced it and it is there for anyone who wishes to experience it in the future. But the great thing about mythological heroes is that they vary and renew their forms to teach us yet again what has been taught a thousand times. We see Kirk die to this world twice in Generations. But he lives again! The lessons transcend time and space. The stories are meant to grow and change as we do. Long live Star Trek!

Our Hero

Heroic Endeavors—Part Two: Initiation

Attention, crew of the Enterprise. This is James Kirk. Mr. Spock has resigned commission and advanced me to acting captain. I know you were all expecting to regroup with the fleet but I’m ordering a pursuit course of the enemy ship to Earth. I want all departments at battle stations and ready in ten minutes. Either we’re going down or they are. Kirk out. –James T. Kirk

In my last post (Part One: Departure), I described the Departure stages of Joseph Campbell’s heroic journey theory using examples from James Kirk’s story in the latest Star Trek film. This will be part two of three in which I will cover the Initiation stages. So without further delay…

Initiation – 1. The Road of Trials

The heading for this stage should give you the basic idea. The path is fraught with danger and pain. Obstacle after obstacle must be fought and overcome. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and perilous path of initiatory conquests. There will be momentary victories, glimpses of the promised land, unretainable ecstasies. Anyone who undertakes the journey into the crooked lanes of the spiritual labyrinth will find himself surrounded by symbological figures, any of which may swallow him. From Campbell:

“The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, ‘enlightened’ individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.”

Example: This should be a bit self-explanatory. All of the obstacles and conflicts that Kirk faces are his Road of Trials. Some moments include: the space jump onto the drill above Vulcan, Spock banishing him from the ship and exiling him on Delta Vega, provoking Spock so he could take command of the Enterprise, the fight on the Nerada to save Earth and rescue Captain Pike, etc.

Kirk's Road of Trials

Initiation – 2. Meeting with the Goddess

“She is the paragon of all paragons of beauty, the reply to all desire, the bliss-bestowing goal of every hero’s earthly and unearthly quest… She is mother, sister, mistress, bride… Incarnation of the promise of perfection… The soul’s assurance that, at the conclusion of its exile in a world of organized inadequacies, the bliss that was once known will be known again.” I think you probably get the point. The goddess in this stage is the Universal Mother, a source of desire but also a nourishing and protecting presence. But she also has a destructive aspect. Life and death are both necessary. The goddess is not meant to be greater than the hero, but she can seem to be beyond him at a certain point. She is part of what must be earned in the process of the journey. She is luring him, guiding him, motivating him to rise above his current state and achieve greatness. The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love, which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity.

Example: This is my favorite example, because it’s pure symbol. Kirk’s goddess is the Enterprise. Often, ships are referred to using feminine pronouns. Scotty refers to the Enterprise as a “well-endowed lady.” But here’s an excerpt from the novelization that illustrates this point nicely:

“He only had eyes for one of them, its markings stood out clear and sharp against the ivory-hued metal and composite skin: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701. He remembered the first time he had set eyes on her, unfinished, skeletal, with gaping holes in her sides where her multiple outer hull had yet to be completed. She had been striking then, awkwardly balanced within a web of construction scaffolding on the hard, cold plain of central Iowa. Incomplete and out of her element she had appeared ungainly and graceless, an adolescent starship. Finished and sitting in her service dock she was a thing of beauty. He could not wait to embrace her.”

Kirk Meeting His Goddess

Initiation – 3. Woman as the Temptress

Here enters a different kind of feminine energy. This woman is all about the desire of the flesh. She keeps the hero’s focus on the physical world and the pleasures to be experienced here. Not in a good way. This temptation distracts the hero from his quest and delays his success. “Not even monastery walls, however, not even the remoteness of the desert, can defend against the female presences; for as long as the hermit’s flesh clings to his bones and pulses warm, the images of life are alert to storm his mind.” Sometimes, once the hero has broken free of the spell, there is a feeling of revulsion that’s directed toward all the acts of the flesh, the acts of life. Then woman becomes a symbol of defeat and sin instead of life and glory. But this is a diminishment of her role. The hero must find a way to balance the goddess and the temptress, love and accept both as pure and natural.

Example: Kirk is a legendary lothario. He’s well in touch with the pleasures of the flesh, a consummate flirt. I learned from the novelization that it is Kirk’s affair with Gaila, Uhura’s Orion roommate, which allows him to “cheat” on Spock’s test, thus landing him on probation. Uhura is another temptation for Kirk, but she is the unattainable one.

Kirk with His Temptress

Initiation – 4. Atonement with the Father

The son must grow in to his birthright and take his father’s place. One cannot be reliant upon a parent’s nurturing or protection, nor can one suffer their judgments or punishments. The time has come for the hero to be fully his own person. This requires accepting the dualities of the father—vengeful and merciful, arbiter of justice and wrath. For the son, the father is a sign of the future task. For the daughter, he’s a sign of the future husband. The father can’t pass along the duties of his office to a child who isn’t ready. The son must be able to rule justly without motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference, or resentment. This is the moment where the hero achieves a perspective on the tragedies of life and lets go of his judgment about them.

Example: Since his real father is dead, we’ll use the moments when Kirk rescues Pike from the enemy ship and then relieves him as Captain of the Enterprise, thus taking on the role that his father assumed just before he died.

Initiation – 5. Apotheosis

Boom. Hero achieves his godlike potential. He transcends ignorance, fear, change. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them—and with profound repose. God is love, that He can be, and is to be, loved, and that all without exception are his children. This is not a state that is necessarily meant to be maintained. We are still talking about a human journey. Some of us have experienced moments of illumination, moments of broadened perspective and understanding. But we don’t stay there. These moments are meant to be drawn upon later, reminders to us of what is possible to achieve. But this isn’t a way of functioning in the world on a day-to-day basis. Once the hero attains this place, the task becomes holding onto it as best he can. Reminding himself that the people he encounters are merely lost souls and that we all have this godlike potential, we’re just not all aware of it, or in the same place along the path. But the truth is that the sufferer within us is that divine being as well. We and the protecting father are one. And, that protecting father is every man that we meet. So the “hero does not abandon life—he perceives without the same ocean of being that he found within. And he is filled with compassion for the self-terrorized beings who live in fright of their own nightmare.” The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth.

Example: I’m not sure Kirk has one of these moments during the course of the film. But there are two places near the end where a more experienced and level-headed Kirk is shown. One, after escaping from the Nerada with Captain Pike, upon observing a moment between Spock and Uhura:

“The briefest of glances was exchanged between the Enterprise’s science officer and its communications chief. No one noticed it but Kirk. Varying from the sly to the snide several suitable comments took shape in his mind. Ultimately he voiced none of them. Like lightning, maturity can strike anyone unexpectedly and at the most peculiar moments.”

And then when he offers assistance to the crew of the Nerada as their ship is going down. A show of mercy. Not exactly an apotheosis, but a sign of a broader perspective. There are undoubtedly more films to come in the series. I am sure he will get there.

Initiation – 6. The Ultimate Boon

Gods and goddesses in the mythical realms are not meant to the be the end in themselves. They are guardians or bestowers of power. They have the elixirs of life, the creative fire, the grace of immortality to give the hero. What the hero seeks from them is their grace, the power of their sustaining substance. The gods can either choose to give the power to the hero who has overcome all his obstacles to reach them, or he may have to trick them in order to get it, as Prometheus did to Zeus. “When is this mood even the highest gods appear as malignant, life-hoarding ogres, and the hero who deceives, slays, or appeases them is honored as the savior of the world.”

Example: At the end of the film, James Kirk is made captain of the Enterprise by the threshold guardians—Starfleet Academy Administration—who were operating against him at the beginning. And Spock, who was his accuser, has become his friend and first officer. The Enterprise, his goddess, is under his command.

That’s it for the stages of Initiation. Think we’re done? Not yet! There’s still one phase left: The Return. I’ll continue next time…

Kirk as Captain of the Enterprise

Heroic Endeavors–Part One: Departure

Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path. –Joseph Campbell

The first time I read the above quotation my brain gave a hearty and resounding YES! I have never been one for following any kind of traditionally prescribed path. The idea that most people do something in a particular way has never seemed like a valid reason for me to do it that way. Guess I haven’t grown out of my rebellious stage, yet. I will do as Robert Frost suggested and choose the less-traveled road. We don’t need no stinking path!

And yet… And yet…

For many years now I have been fascinated by Joseph Campbell’s work on the heroic journey. Once I learned how to see the underlying structure, I suddenly couldn’t help but see it everywhere. And not just in fiction or mythology either. A few years back I wrote out my best friend’s personal heroic journey using the outline. He hasn’t achieved godhood, yet, so it’s not done, but he has time and the potential. We all have the potential. That’s kind of the point. It’s a path for everyone, as well as Christ, Buddha, Shiva, Frodo Baggins, Anakin Skywalker and Harry Potter.

Anyway, as I plan to spend a good deal of time talking about Campbell’s outline here in this blog, it seems appropriate to offer a kind of beginner’s course for those of you who are unfamiliar. In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell theorized that mythologies from around the world and throughout history share a fundamental structure, which he called the monomyth. The monomyth has three main stages: Departure, Initiation, Return. Some classic examples of the monomyth that Campbell used to illustrate his ideas include the stories of Osiris, Prometheus, the Buddha, Moses, and Christ, although Campbell cites many other classic myths from many cultures which rely upon this basic structure. Here’s a snippet from his introduction:

“The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero’s passage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for men and women, wherever they may stand along the scale. Therefore it is formulated in the broadest terms. The individual has only to discover his own position with reference to this general human formula, and let it then assist him past his restricting walls. Who are his ogres? Those are the reflections of the unsolved enigmas of his own humanity. What are his ideals? Those are the symptoms of his grasp of life.”

Remember that myths speak in a symbolic language. They’re metaphors, not to be taken literally. I’ll be dividing this into three separate blog posts in hopes of making it accessible. And I’ll be taking my examples from James Kirk’s journey in the new Star Trek film because it’s fresh and convenient and I think it will make sense even if you haven’t seen the movie. So, we begin with the five stages of the Departure.

Departure – 1. The Call to Adventure

Fairly self-explanatory, the first step is to call the hero. Some event marks a shift in the unsuspecting hero’s life. This is the beginning of a transfiguration—a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage. When the passage is complete, it amounts to a dying and a birth. For the hero, his familiar life has been outgrown. It is time for him to let go of old patterns, beliefs, concepts, ideals, emotional connections, etc. Sometimes it appears as a blunder, apparently the merest chance, reveals another world. Other times, a herald may appear who calls the hero forth.

Example: Kirk gets into a bar fight and serendipitously runs into Captain Christopher Pike, who urges Kirk to get out of his own way and enlist in Starfleet.

Departure – 2. The Refusal of the Call

So, maybe the hero isn’t too excited about giving up everything he’s ever known in order to go on some dangerous adventure whose reward is uncertain. Joseph says: this refusal represents “an impotence to put off the infantile ego, with its sphere of emotional relationships and ideals.” But, not all who hesitate are lost. And sometimes, the refusal is about being unwilling to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the question of destiny.

Example: Kirk tells Captain Pike that he has no interest in joining Starfleet. As “the only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest” Kirk is safe and unchallenged.

Departure – 3. Supernatural Aid

This is the wizard, hermit, shepherd, smith, Jedi, guide, teacher, ferryman, conductor of souls to the underworld. He comes along to give the hero amulets and talismans of protection so that he can complete his journey. Even to those who have apparently hardened their hearts, the ageless guardians will appear to get them on their way. Sometimes they even come along for a bit of the ride. Their purpose is to show the hero what he is capable of achieving, giving him the opportunity.

Example: Pike responds with: “Do you feel like you were meant for something better? Something special? Enlist in Starfleet… You understand what the Federation is don’t you? It’s a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada. It’s important.” Later, when Pike is leaving the ship under Spock’s command, he raises Kirk to second-in-command, helping him on his way to becoming captain of the Enterprise.

Departure – 4. The Crossing of the First Threshold

I’ll let Joseph’s words sum this stage up:

“With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the “threshold guardian” at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. The first, or protective aspect of the threshold guardian: one had better not challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet—it is only by advancing beyond those bounds, provoking the destructive aspect of the same power, that the individual passes, either alive or in death, into a new zone of experience. The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown.”

Example: Kirk’s first threshold is probably leaving the Midwest via shuttlecraft to join Starfleet, thus leaving his previous life behind. But, to use an example with threshold guardians, I’ll use the example of his journey to the Enterprise. He’s on academic probation at that point, so there are forces trying to keep him on the ground. He risks a great deal by joining with Dr. McCoy in a subterfuge that gets him on board. But that is the moment that he truly leaves Earth for space, the final frontier. Space is one of our greatest unknowns. But he is the bold adventurer and he has allies. Pike is on that ship.

Departure – 5. The Belly of the Whale

This is the point where we head deep into metaphoric waters. Remember the story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale? That’s where we get our heading. The belly of the whale is a symbol of the worldwide womb, which is itself a symbol of a zone of rebirth. It is a place where one goes to realize or remember one’s true nature. A worshipper passes into a temple to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, dust and ashes, unless immortal. It is a form of self-annihilation. “Allegorically, then, the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both denoting, in picture language, the life-centering, life-renewing act. No creature can attain a higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist.” Many times the hero is severely physically wounded at this stage, dismembered, even slain, scattered over land and sea.

Example 1: Kirk descending into the hall for a trial in front of all of his peers. He is accused of cheating, placed on academic probation, and stripped of his privileges. He is reminded that he is under the power of the Starfleet administration.

Example 2: A slightly more interesting and provocative example of this stage might be when Spock banishes Kirk from the Enterprise and exiles him on the ice planet, Delta Vega. This is a more complete separation from his world. He is alone and threatened by the great red crab-squid from hell. He finds refuge in a cave with a wizened elder who tells him that his place is on the bridge of the Enterprise as her captain.

That’s it for the Departure stages of the monomyth. I’ll leave you with that for a few days before continuing with the Initiation stages.

Chris Pine as James T. Kirk Before Joining Starfleet

Playing in the Promethean Fields

“A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source”
-Lord Byron, “Prometheus”

I have recently finished drafting my first novel, so it is time for me to start putting myself out there and creating a presence. I must crawl out of my cave. This place will help me to promote my work and develop a readership as I begin trying to sell the book to agents and publishers. So, welcome to the launch!

This will not be a blog about me or my life. As a writer, I find my internal life far more interesting and worthy of circumspection. Or perhaps, more accurately, the way I internalize the things I find inspirational in my experience of the world is what’s interesting. So this will be a blog about story, the germination, the roots, the evolution, the actualization of story. I will pull apart the works that interest me so that I can forge tools for my own use.

I like the idea of using Prometheus as a metaphor for that forge. According to myth, he brought the creative fire of art and technology to mankind. He suffered Zeus’s wrath and a millennium of unspeakable torment in order to do so. Prometheus’s theft of fire signified his enlightenment of primitive men, rescuing them from the mental darkness of ignorance and savagery. That is the field on which I want to play. I want to be a participant in the creative world, one of the people who provide entertainment, escape, and sometimes insights that change people. I certainly don’t want to write anything easily forgotten. I want to create moments that will stick with my audience, as so many great writers have done for me. So this blog is going to be about how I mine the work of the people who inspire me and through a magical alchemy turn it to my own kind of gold. That’s what the tagline means by searching for the creative fire. Find it in others and it will ignite in you. What you do with it from there is entirely up to you.

I chose the name Promethean Fields because for me it invokes an image of place, a place that is a tabula rasa right now. I can fill it with anything that I want and invite others to dwell here as well. It’s a place where we can sit around the campfire and trade stories. Then what? What can we do with a story once we’ve experienced it? I will use it to fuel my own storytelling. But even more than that, I can abstract ideas and themes from stories in order to enhance my own life experience. I find science fiction and fantasy to be a virtual playground for philosophy and lessons about human natures. And the more I understand about human nature, the more able I am to create human characters that resonate. Here I can show you how to dig down into characters that ignite my imagination and show you how to use their motivations to create new characters. Not only do I use books, movies and television shows, I use the stories I hear from people I know, that I see on the news. All these things are tools and inspiration.

Something else that you will find here is an ongoing fascination with mythology and how it influences our lives and stories. In his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell talked about the universal underlying themes of myths and stories that cross the boundaries of time and culture. With his work I can wrap modern stories into a larger context and give them even broader-reaching lessons. The lessons we take from stories and apply to our own lives can help us to achieve greater things, reach higher and realize more potential within ourselves. The world-transcending deed of Prometheus follows Campbell’s nuclear unit of the monomyth: a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return. So let’s go back to him for a moment. Hesiod’s works Theogony and Works and Days depict Prometheus as a wily trickster who deserved Zeus’s wrath. Later, Aeschylus revised the myth in his play Prometheus Bound. There, Prometheus becomes a heroic rebel and savior. Zeus is a despot, an embodiment of amoral power that rules without justice or mercy. This is an amazing piece of character evolution. Suddenly, Prometheus is a champion of freedom and savior of mankind. He gave us the celestial fire and taught us the arts and skills of civilization, raising humanity from primitive savagery to a place of greater potential, narrowing the gap between gods and men. The hero’s function is redemptive: by his half-divine nature, his glorious deeds, and his relentless pursuit of immortality, the hero uplifts humanity from its dismal condition and reminds it of its godlike potential. No wonder Zeus was mad.

We’re told that Prometheus could have escaped Zeus’s punishment by simply taking his gift back. But he had a free mind, a consciousness that could distinguish between absolutes of good and evil and he would not corrupt his awareness by conforming to Zeus’s demands. That act would extinguish the light he had brought to earth. In this respect, Prometheus’s intellectual honesty—a virtue—is the quality that occasions his suffering.

Aeschylus was certainly not the last to find inspiration in the Prometheus myth. In the Romantic period, his heroic rebellion against oppressive authority ignited the imagination of a generation being reborn into a new age unleashed by the French Revolution. Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his Prometheus Unbound, saw the suffering of the Titan as an image of the human mind remaining free to explore the universe and liberation despite a physical bondage to tyrannical rulers.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To live, and bear, to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This alone is Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

Percy’s wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley gave her master work the title Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Her protagonist defies conventional moral limits in order to release the human spirit, attempting to take the power of god and create life. So what is it that we learn from all these stories that are connected to a single source? For myself, I see what power rebellion has to save us. You’ll see a healthy questioning of authority showing up as common theme in my work. I encourage everyone to question all kinds of authority. Make your own decisions about what you will accept and believe. Honoring your own truth is what will set you free.

That leads me to one final note about Prometheus and my connection to him: According to David Keirsey’s temperament sorter I am an ENTJ (though an extremely borderline extrovert.) Keirsey chose Prometheus to represent the Rationals (NTs). The Rational personality generally has little respect for authority, simply because it is authority. Our respect must be earned and we will willingly act against the majority if our internal moral compass points away from the mainstream. We question everything. I find Keirsey’s work fascinating and I think his book Please Understand Me is an invaluable tool for character development. It is so crucial to understand the different ways that people think, the different motivations people act upon, the wondrous variety of values possible in this world. Understanding others also has the added benefit of promoting tolerance. Bonus.

Gaston Bachelard, a psychologist from the University of Miami proposed to place under the name of Promethean complex all those tendencies which impel us to know as much as our fathers, more than our fathers, as much as our teachers, more than our teachers. I’m pretty sure I have that complex. And here is where I will share the treasures of my never ending search for knowledge through character deconstructions, plot analysis, drawing correlations to the monomyth, exploring personality types and more.

Finally, here’s a personal photo of Paul Manship’s sculpture of Prometheus that resides in the heart of Rockefeller Center, here in New York City. Funny thing, I had no idea this was Prometheus until I did the research for this blog. One of the great things about this city is how it can surprise you; it breathes story.

Prometheus at Rockefeller Center, New York City

*See my More Resources page for links to information about Joseph Campbell and David Keirsey.

*For more information about Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days
en.wikipedia.org/Hesiod

*For more information about Aeschylus and Prometheus Bound
en.wikipedia.org/Aeschylus

*A full copy of Lord Byron’s poem “Prometheus” is available at:
www.poetry-archive.com/b/prometheus