A Hero's Journey, You've Had One

Name: VG Date: 10/22/14

Journey of a Hero, It’s Happened to You

The final Action Project for this term is ready for submission, and here’s what it’s about. In the literature class “Stories”, we have the final Action Project which relates to a hero’s journey, a specific series of events. There were many difficult parts such as attempting to find a real hero/idol of mine to interview, but I am proud of my choices for both the fictional hero and the real hero. 

The hero’s journey, according to Joseph Campbell, usually starts with the call to adventure, including a mentor, guide, or ally, that has unfamiliar territory, challenges and trials, an ordeal, a road back (or rebirth at times), atonement of what has been lost, and the return to a normal life. Those are the 8 most basic stages of a hero's journey, but they don’t only happen in stories. This order of events happens in common life too, such as joining a sports team, in which the call is our interest; joining the team, the challenge and unknown would be being nervous, and any ordeal may be not joining the team, or failing the trials (tryouts).

The Heroes

The Fictional Hero:

For my fictional hero, I chose the famed Batman, but which one? Batman has had many adventures, incarnations, and retellings; it would be impossible to cover them all. That’s why I chose the specific journey our hero has in Batman: Arkham City, which is the 2011 video game, sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum. In Batman’s journey, he experiences all of these stages, and all witin the first half of the main focus of Arkham City, too.

Batman's call to adventure happens when Bruce Wayne is abducted and kept in the major penitentiary project known as Arkham City. Professor Hugo Strange is the director of Arkham City and he was the one to order the TYGER guards to take in Bruce Wayne. After obnoxious rambling and going on about Protocol 10 making him a hero, Strange reveals that he knows Mr. Wayne is the Batman. Obsessed with becoming a hero like the Dark Knight, Strange releases Wayne into Arkham City to determine if his plans will succeed. Wayne then climbs the Ace Chemicals building to reach his about-to-be-delivered Batsuit. Batman's allies as of that moment included Alfred, his butler, and Catwoman, who decided that the idea of Arkham was indeed, quite crazy (especially if it interferes with collecting her valuables). Soon after, Barbara Gordon, daughter of police commissioner Gordon, (codename Oracle) has joined the intercom channel with Alfred, assisting Batman in analysis while Alfred takes care of remote deliveries and general advice.

He faced many trials along this extentsive and confusing path. Gang wars for claim of territory between Two-Face, Penguin, and Joker, each one with a grudge against the Night himself. His greatest ordeal was having the Joker's now poisonous blood in him. Joker's blood got infected from the unstable formula for "TITAN" -a chemical that enhanced venom, which is the super steroid Bane uses, TITAN was featured in the predecessor game, Arkham Asylum- which ultimately failed back on Arkham Island when Joker attempted to take it over.




Now, with a great disease, and 9 hours left until Protocol 10, Batman must track down Mr. Freeze so he can synthesize a cure. Unfortunately, the Penguin captured him so his live Iceberg Lounge gallery in the museum is one more exhibit closer to completion. "Penguin" Cobblepot aims to add Batman to his collection, but it's obvious that won't happen.

Of course Batman does what he does and frees Fries (Dr. Victor Fries {fre•ease} aka Mr. Freeze}. Yet another trial awaits him...
The new mission? Batman must retrieve a DNA sample featuring a certain enzyme that only Ras Al Ghul's body contains. To infiltrate the League of Assassins HQ and then get close enough to take a blood sample from the leader himself? Such a smooth evening it's going to be...

Batman's challenges are ever growing, and on a time limit, he needs to stop Protocol 10, find a cure, and shut down Arkham City, all in one night. It will truly be a Dark Knight for the world's greatest detective. And if that's not hard enough, there's a multitude of crimes, murders, assassinations, kidnappings, and hostage taking in Arkham City. If Batman can't do it, who will?

The Real Hero:

Now for my real hero, I chose my father seeing as how I’ve always looked up to him. He believes that assisting others is simply natural; he always knows how to react to things, and he is indeed a hero in my eyes. The following recording tells of when he had a journey of his own, starting when he was washing a car in Brazil when he was just a teenager. ––To air dry the car and make the job go faster, my father drove around the block, but then he saw someone he recognized. His neighbor was on the sidewalk, head down, lying on the ground. His first thought was that the man was drunk, but knowing his neighbor, he dismissed that thought and instinctually went to see what happened. The man's wife and daughter were rushing towards him, telling my father that he was actually sick and is in need of medical attention immediately. My father used common sense and rushed into the car, despite not having a license yet, and transported the man and his family to the hospital. Unfortunately, the closest one that he traveled to was closed, no service was there, and the next one was a mile and a half away. This only drove my father to act even more quickly. Once the man was there, he was treated, or at least, the doctors tried to assist him. The man unfortunately passed away, since nothing close to the idea of our modern technology was available at the time. While in the long run, it didn't affect my father's life too much, he definitely won't forget what happened on that day.––

Explanation Transcript:

VG: "Hello and welcome, today we have a recording which falls along the lines of a hero's journey. Now, you may be thinking a hero's journey is pretty simple; some princess gets captured, and then they go out to save them, but a hero isn't always the same thing. At times a hero can be you yourself. The hero's journey falls along these simple steps; There's always a call, something that inititates the missin or the challenge, something that starts everything. Then there's the mentor, the ally, the guide, someone who helps along the way of the initial quest. As the third step, [or stage], we have the unknown, [sometimes called] crossing the threshhold, this is when we travel through unfamiliar environments or try something new. The 4th stage of the hero's journey [is] the trials and tests, there can be as many trials and tests as possible, but it's essentially the challenges we go through during the journey.

5th stage is the ordeal, essentially what you may have lost [along the way]. [Next] we have the reward and the road back, sometimes known as rebirth. When the hero of the story [completes his objective or gets revived] somehow. The 7th stage, atonement, [--] is when the hero learns to accept what he's lost, and more importantly, how he [overcomes] (goes through about) losing it. Then we have the return, the final stage, [and it's] when the hero -well- returns, when the hero goes back to [their] original life, even if it is a little bit different."

Conclusion/Summarization:

You see, both my father and Batman have common relations, such as both having a call to help (an)other(s) in need. Both also had to get through certain challenges to save the one(s) they know. Another incident they share is the loss of the one(s) they knew and tried to protect, as well as dealing with these losses. You don’t need to be a hero to have a hero’s journey, it’s a part of everyday life sometimes, whether it’s us, or the protagonist in a story.

Thank you for reading, and remember that right now, you could be having a hero's journey.


**Information citations
Batman: Arkham City, Rocksteady, DC comics and Warner Bros., Unreal-Technology, Oct. 2011