It is impossible to underestimate the significance and impact that Joseph Campbell’s structuralist approach has had on our modern story-telling tradition (i.e. seeing fundamental cultural structures in the myths, fables, and legends from all over the world). Through the narratives told on screen and in theatre, Americans have been bombarded with the archetypes of success by formula since “failure is not an option.” But why isn’t it an option? For every Rocky, Edison, Stephen Curry, or Lebron James, there are hundreds more who never succeed at all.
4¶Do they all respond with Rocky-like fierceness, willing to enter the ring with Clubber Lane? Do they have the patience of Edison on his 800th attempt at a filament? Or are most challengers who lose simply weaker, a product of not having trained or strained enough? Surely these antagonists who fail didn’t desire success sufficiently to put in the necessary effort!
5¶The answer, as is often the case, is far more complicated and greyer than first appears. Indeed, the path for success—in any field—is often one of fits and starts that doesn’t correspond to the exact journey-of-the-hero trope proposed by Joseph Campbell.