This document summarizes Joseph Campbell's monomyth model of the hero's journey and applies it to key events in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It outlines Campbell's three phases of departure, initiation, and return, and focuses on examples of Harry's call to adventure, refusal of the call, meeting his supernatural aid Hagrid, crossing the threshold by receiving his wand, and facing his belly of the whale in the sorting hat ceremony, experiencing a rebirthing as he is sorted into Gryffindor house.

1. Exploring a Common Mythology

2. Cross cultural comparisons
My hope is that a comparative elucidation may
contribute to the perhaps not-quite-
desperate cause of those forces that are
working in the present world for unification,
not in the name of some ecclesiastical or
political empire, but in the sense of human
mutual understanding.”
–Preface to 1949 Edition

3. Departure, Initiation, Return

4. Focus on Departure
 While Campbell describes three distinct
phases of the monomyth – Departure,
Initiation, Return – this presentation will
focus on Harry’s discovery of and first
experiences with the wizard world
 Departure’s sub-stages – Call to adventure,
refusal of the call, supernatural aid, crossing
of the first threshold, belly of the whale

5. Define: Call to Adventure
 JC: “A blunder—apparently the merest chance—
reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual
is drawn into a relationship with forces that are
not rightly understood…The blunder may
amount to the opening of a destiny” (Campbell,
56).
 Psychoanalysis – Blunders are the result of
“repressed desires and conflicts” (Campbell, 56).

6. Call to Adventure in HP
 Harry’s “blunder” – his magical interaction
with the snake at the zoo -results in
confinement to his cupboard. Upon his
release, Hogwarts letters begin to arrive in
the mail.
 Repressed desire: Escape, which manifests
itself when he aids the snake in its own
quest for freedom.

7. Define: Refusal of the Call
 JC – “Walled in boredom, hard work, or
‘culture,’ the subject loses the power of
significant affirmative action and becomes a
victim to be saved” (Campbell, 60).
 Psychoanalysis – Resistance represents “an
impotence to put off the infantile ego, with
its sphere of emotional relationships and
ideals. One is bound in by the walls of
childhood…” (Campbell, 61).

8. Refusal of the Call in HP
 In this case, Harry himself does not refuse
the call but rather, the call is refused for
him. He is quite literally “bound by the
walls of childhood,” in the form of Vernon
Dursley, who first avoids and eventually
forbids Harry’s immersion into the magical
world.

9. Define: Supernatural Aid
 JC: When the hero begins to cross, he first
encounters a “supernatural helper” who is
“masculine in form” and provides “amulets
and advice that the hero will require” to
cross completely (Campbell, 64-66).
 Psychoanalysis: “What such a figure
represents is the benign, protecting power
of destiny” (Campbell, 66).

10. Supernatural Aid in HP
 Rubeus Hagrid
Supernatural – He is “a giant of a man” who
bends Mr. Dursley’s gun “into a knot as easily as
if it had been made of rubber” and saddles
Dudley with “a curly pig’s tail” (Rowling, 46-59).
Provides amulet – Hogwarts letter
Knowledge – “Harry – yer a wizard” (Rowling,
51).
Destiny – “His name’s been down ever since he
was born” (Rowling, 58).

11. Define: Crossing of the First
Threshold
 JC: “The hero goes forward in his
adventure until he comes to the ‘threshold
guardian’ at the entrance to the zone of
magnified power” (Campbell, 68).
 Psychoanalysis: “Beyond [the guardian] is…
the unknown, and danger; just as beyond
the parental watch is danger to the infant
and beyond the protection of his society,
danger to the member of the tribe”
(Campbell, 68).

12. Crossing the Threshold in
HP
 His literal crossing occurs at King Cross
station and then the Hogwarts Express.
 Harry’s “tribe” of protectors is not the
Dursley family, part of the “home” world,
but rather the Weasley family, who
represent the adventure world
 “Threshold guardian” becomes grumpy
porter at King’s Cross
 This does not fit in with Campbell’s theory

13. Crossing the Threshold:
A Proposition
 Harry actually crosses the threshold when he
receives his wand, the defining symbol of a
wizard
 Ollivander then becomes threshold guardian
who tests Harry, by asking him to test several
wands, before he can pass
 Ollivander forces Harry into the darker, more
frightening portion of the adventure world by
telling him about Voldemort, hinting at the
concept of the twin cores, and hinting at
Harry’s status as the chosen one (Rowling, 85).

14. Define: Belly of the Whale
 JC: “The idea that the passage of the
magical threshold is a transit into a sphere
of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide
womb image of the belly of the whale”
(Campbell, 74).
 Essentially, this represents a rebirthing
experience, from which the hero emerges,
ready to embrace the dangers ahead

15. Belly of the Whale in HP
 Harry’s encounter with the sorting hat
represents his greatest fear – the possibility of
being sorted into Slytherin, a house of
potential darkness and evil.
 When Harry is given a choice, he shows his
true colors (“Not Slytherin, not Slytherin”) and is
rewarded with “the loudest cheer yet” from
his future friends and a “thumbs up” from
Hagrid (Rowling, 121-22).
 This experience is not simply a test, but a
reflection of Harry’s true character as he
officially begins his adventure

16. Why we still love a hero
“People who find resonant heroic themes of
challenges and questing in their own lives, in
their goals, creative outpourings, in their day-
and night-dreams—are being led to a single
psychic fact. That is, that the creative and
spiritual lives of individuals influence the
outer world as much as the mythic world
influences the individual.”
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D, Forward to 2004
edition of Hero with a Thousand Faces

17. Sources
 Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand
Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2004. Print.
 Rowling, JK. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s
Stone. New York: Scholastic Inc., 1997.
Print.