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bobbylovesyou 's review for:
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
by Joseph Campbell
5+ stars for concepts and supporting evidence. 3- stars for readability. When expressing ideas that are brilliant and simple Campbell found it necessary to use 18-syllable words and sentences that require GPS to navigate.
Despite his tendency to overwrite, The Hero with a Thousand Faces contains ideas that are terribly important. Campbell's hypothesis is that all mythologies follow the same blueprint and cover the same ground. Every religious tradition is based on the same ideas. Each mythology is constructed to provide order to the chaos that is the experience of being human and, since all mythologies are created by humans, all mythologies are alike at the core. It is fascinating to see how many common themes there are across the mythological stories from different cultures. For example, there are 3 different stories that find the hero trapped inside the belly of a whale. There numerous parallels like that and Campbell does a fantastic job of laying out his evidence without connecting the dots for the reader, allowing them to have the pleasure of "ah-ha!" moments.
Read this book. Read it in the morning. Just don't read it in bed at night. His labyrinthine paragraphs might knock you out.
Despite his tendency to overwrite, The Hero with a Thousand Faces contains ideas that are terribly important. Campbell's hypothesis is that all mythologies follow the same blueprint and cover the same ground. Every religious tradition is based on the same ideas. Each mythology is constructed to provide order to the chaos that is the experience of being human and, since all mythologies are created by humans, all mythologies are alike at the core. It is fascinating to see how many common themes there are across the mythological stories from different cultures. For example, there are 3 different stories that find the hero trapped inside the belly of a whale. There numerous parallels like that and Campbell does a fantastic job of laying out his evidence without connecting the dots for the reader, allowing them to have the pleasure of "ah-ha!" moments.
Read this book. Read it in the morning. Just don't read it in bed at night. His labyrinthine paragraphs might knock you out.