Famously Introduced and Explained By Joseph Campbell
The Hero’s Journey Stages were created as a dominant story structure that pervades the world’s cultures, myths, and legends. Campbell recognized that despite the variations that make stories shared and told throughout history unique, those that tell of an individual’s heroic adventure share a common structure and story arc: the hero departs, is transformed by great trials and tribulations, and in the end the hero returns having grown, learned, and changed as a result of his/her experiences. This outline has been successfully used in movies, books, and screenplays alike and can be most famously identified in epic pieces of work, such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and the Wizard of Oz.
