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Odysseus Hero's Journey in Homer's Odyssey

In this activity, activity overview, template and class instructions, more storyboard that activities, this activity is part of many teacher guides.

The Odyssey Heroic Journey - Examples of hero's journey

Related to both plot diagram and types of literary conflict, the "Hero’s Journey" is a recurring pattern of stages that the hero encounters over the course of their stories. Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, writer, and lecturer, articulated this cycle after researching and reviewing numerous myths and stories from a variety of time periods and regions of the world. He found that they all share fundamental principles. This spawned the Hero’s Journey, also known as the Monomyth. The most fundamental version has 12 steps that the hero faces, while more detailed versions can have up to 17.

Teachers may wish for students to collaborate on this activity which is possible with Storyboard That's Real Time Collaboration feature. This can help cut down on the time it takes to complete the entire storyboard while also helping students to develop communication, self-management and leadership skills. Teachers can enable collaboration for the assignment and students can either choose their partner(s) or have one chosen for them. It is suggested that since the Hero's Journey storyboard is 12 cells, it is best if completed by students in groups of 2, 3 or 4.

Hero's Journey Stages

Odysseus Hero's Journey Example

Hero’s journey project examples and more ideas for the odyssey.

Creating a storyboard that illustrates each of Odysseus’ hero’s journey steps is engaging and creative. However, there are lots of other ways for students to show what they have learned about Odysseus’ monomyth! Check out some of our ideas below:

  • Using the timeline layout, make a timeline of Odysseus’ epic journey. You don’t need to include the 12 stages of the hero’s journey for this activity, but be sure to include events in chronological order.
  • Create a the hero’s journey chart for another character in literature that you have read and compare that journey to Odysseus' journey. Use our blank template as the hero’s journey graphic organizer to help you plan.
  • Make a map of Odysseus’ journey.
  • Using one of Storyboard That’s board game templates , create a game based on Odysseus’ hero’s journey for your classmates to play! Think about the setting of the story and use that as the theme of your game.
  • Using one of Storyboard That’s biography poster templates, create a poster about the story’s hero, Odysseus.

(These instructions are completely customizable. After clicking "Copy Activity", update the instructions on the Edit Tab of the assignment.)

Student Instructions

Use the story of The Odyssey and map it to the narrative structure of the Hero's Journey. This can be done in place of The Odyssey plot diagram.

  • Depict and describe how the chosen character's story fits (or does not fit ) into each of the stages of the Hero's Journey.
  • Finalize images, edit, and proofread your work.

TEMPLATE - HERO'S JOURNEY

Lesson Plan Reference

Grade Level 9-10

Difficulty Level 3 (Developing to Mastery)

Type of Assignment Individual or Partner

Type of Activity: The Hero's Journey

  • [ELA-Literacy/RL/9-10/3] Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme
  • [ELA-Literacy/RL/9-10/5] Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise
  • [ELA-Literacy/RL/9-10/6] Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature

(You can also create your own on Quick Rubric .)

How To Encourage Collaboration in Activities

Establish specific goals and objectives, make diverse teams, organize brainstorming sessions, set roles and responsibilities, offer rewards and incentives, reflect and learn, frequently asked questions about odysseus hero's journey, what is the call to adventure in the odyssey .

In The Odyssey , Odysseus’ call to adventure is that he is called to fight the Trojans by King Menelaus.

How does The Odyssey follow the hero’s journey?

The Odyssey hero’s journey follows the 12 steps perfectly. Odysseus is called to adventure, causing him to leave his hometown, and must conquer many challenges and obstacles during his epic journey. Eventually, he makes his journey home after his supreme ordeal.

What is the hero’s journey in The Odyssey ?

Odysseus’ journey begins when he is called to fight in the Trojan War. He goes through all 12 stages of the hero’s journey during Homer’s incredible tale of adventure.

How does Odysseus escape the cyclops cave?

This was one of the many obstacles that Odysseus’ faced, because the blind Polyphemus felt the backs of all the sheep when they left the cave to make sure the men were not riding on them. To escape and continue his journey back, Odysseus and his men tied themselves underneath the sheep to hide from the cyclops.

Odyssey, The

The Odyssey by Homer - Setting Map

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History Cooperative

Odysseus: Greek Hero of the Odyssey

A Greek war hero, father, and king: Odysseus was all of this and then some. He miraculously survived the 10-year Trojan War and was the last of the veterans to return. However, his homeland – a humble island on the Ionian Sea – would evade him for another decade.

In the beginning, Odysseus and his men left the shores of Troy with 12 ships. The passage was not easy, being fraught with monstrosities and gods riled by the war’s aftermath. In the end, only Odysseus – one out of 600 comrades – returned home. And his home, the longing of which had propelled him forward thus far, had become a different type of battlefield.

In his time away during the war, over a hundred youths began lusting after Odysseus’ wife, his lands and title, and plotting to kill his beloved son. These circumstances became yet another trial the hero had to overcome. Now, equipped with naught but his cunning, Odysseus would once more rise to the occasion.

The story of Odysseus is full of twists and turns. Though at its heart, it echoes the story of a man doing whatever it took to make it home alive.

Table of Contents

Who is Odysseus?

Odysseus (a.k.a. Ulixes or Ulysses) is a Greek hero and the king of Ithaca, a small island on the Ionian Sea. He gained renown for his feats during the Trojan War , but it wasn’t until the journey home did he truly establish himself as a man worthy of being an epic hero.

During the events of the Trojan War in Homer’s Iliad , Odysseus was among many of Helen’s former suitors that were called to arms to retrieve her at the behest of her husband, Menelaus. Besides Odysseus’ military prowess, he was quite the orator: both full of guile and savvy. According to Apollodorus (3.10), Tyndareus – Helen’s stepfather – was concerned about bloodshed amongst the potential grooms. Odysseus promised to devise a plan to stop Helen’s suitors from killing one another if the Spartan king helped him “win the hand of Penelope.” 

When Paris kidnapped Helen, Odysseus’ clever thinking came back to haunt him.

He became venerated in the hero cults of Greek religion. One such cult center was located in Odysseus’ homeland of Ithaca , in a cave along Polis Bay. More than this though, it is likely that the hero cult of Odysseus was spread as far as modern-day Tunisia, over 1,200 miles away from Ithaca, according to the Greek philosopher, Strabo.

READ MORE: History’s Most Famous Philosophers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and More!

Odysseus is the son of Laertes, King of the Cephallenians, and Anticlea of Ithaca. By the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey , Laertes is a widower and a co-regent of Ithaca.

What is Co-Regency?

After his departure, Odysseus’ father took over most of Ithaca’s politics. It was not unusual for ancient kingdoms to have co-regents. Both ancient Egypt and Biblical ancient Israel observed co-regency at numerous points in their histories.

Generally, a co-regent was a close family member. As is seen between Hatshepsut and Thutmose III , it was also occasionally shared with a spouse. Co-regencies are unlike diarchies, which were practiced in Sparta because co-regencies are a temporary arrangement. Diarchies, meanwhile, were a permanent feature in the government.

READ MORE: Egyptian Pharaohs: The Mighty Rulers of Ancient Egypt

It would be implied that Laertes would step down from official duties after Odysseus’ return to Ithaca.

Odysseus’ Wife: Penelope

As the most important person in his life besides his son, the wife of Odysseus, Penelope, plays a crucial role in the Odyssey . She is known for her stalwart approach toward her marriage, her intellect, and her role as an Ithacan queen. As a character, Penelope exemplifies ancient Greek womanhood . Even the ghost of Agamemnon – himself murdered by his wife and her lover – manifested and praised Odysseus on “what a fine, faithful wife you won!”

READ MORE: The Life of Women in Ancient Greece

Despite being married to the king of Ithaca, 108 suitors vied for Penelope’s hand during her husband’s long absence. According to her son Telemachus, the suitor composition was 52 from Dulichium, 24 from Samos, 20 from Zakynthos, and 12 from Ithaca. Granted, these guys were convinced Odysseus was super dead, but still moving into his home and accosting his wife for a decade is creepy . Like, beyond so.

For 10 years, Penelope refused to declare Odysseus dead. Doing so delayed public mourning , and made the suitor’s pursuits seem both unjustifiable and shameful.

On top of that, Penelope had a couple of tricks up her sleeve. Her legendary wit is reflected in the tactics she used to delay the hounding suitors. First, she claimed that she had to weave a death shroud for her father-in-law, who was getting on in years.

In ancient Greece , Penelope’s weaving of a burial shroud for her father-in-law was the epitome of filial piety. It was Penelope’s duty as the woman of the house in the absence of Laertes’ wife and daughter. Thus, the suitors had no choice but to lay off their advances. The ruse was able to delay the men’s advancements for three more years.

Odysseus’ Son: Telemachus

Odysseus’ son was just a newborn when his father left for the Trojan War . Thus, Telemachus – whose name means “far from battle” – grew up in a lion’s den.

The first decade of Telemachus’ life was spent during a massive conflict that robbed local wily youths of the guidance provided by an older generation. Meanwhile, he continued to grow into a young man in the years after the war. He struggles with his mother’s ceaseless suitors while simultaneously holding out hope for his father’s return. At some point, the suitors plot to kill Telemachus but agree to wait until he returns from searching for Odysseus.

Telemachus eventually gets sweet revenge and helps his father slaughter all 108 men.

It is worth noting that the original Homeric epic cites Telemachus to be Odysseus’ only child. Even so, that may not be the case. During his exploits back to Ithaca, Odysseus could have fathered up to six other children: seven kids in all. The existence of these spare children is up for debate since they are primarily mentioned in Hesiod’s Theogony and Pseudo-Apollodorus’ “Epitome” from Bibliotheca .

What is the Odysseus Story?

The story of Odysseus is a long one and begins in Book I of the Iliad . Odysseus disembarked for the war effort unwillingly but stayed until the bitter end. During the Trojan War, Odysseus put his all into keeping morale up and keeping casualties low.

At the end of the war, it took Odysseus another 10 years to get home and this journey is described in the Odyssey, Homer’s second epic poem. The first of the books, collectively known as The Telemachy , focuses entirely on Odysseus’ son. It isn’t until Book V do we revisit the hero.

Odysseus and his men earn the wrath of the gods, come face-to-face with horrifying monstrosities, and stare down their mortality in the eyes. They travel across the Mediterranean and Atlantic Seas, even passing by Oceanus at the ends of the Earth. At some point, Greek legend tells of Odysseus being the founder of modern Lisbon, Portugal (called Ulisipo during the Roman Empire ’s heyday).

While this is all going down, Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, struggles to maintain peace at home. Suitors insist that she should remarry. It is her duty, they believe, as her husband is likely long dead.

It is important to note that despite the death and loss that surrounds Odysseus on his journey home, his story is not qualified as a tragedy. He manages to successfully circumvent many of his trials and overcomes all obstacles in his path. Even the wrath of Poseidon couldn’t stop him.

In the end, Odysseus – the last of his crew – makes it home alive to Ithaca.

How are the Gods Represented in the Odyssey ?

Odysseus’ journey home was as tormenting as it was eventful thanks to the influence of the gods. Following Homeric tradition, the Odyssean gods were swayed by emotions and took easily to offense. Duty, pettiness, and lust drove the gods of the Odyssey to interfere with the hero’s journey home to rugged Ithaca.

Much of the time, Odysseus’ passage was barred by some mythological being or another. Some of the Greek gods that play their hand in the story of Odysseus are as follows:

Whereas Athena and Poseidon had a more pivotal role in the story, the other deities were sure to make their mark. The Ocean nymph Calypso and the goddess Circe acted simultaneously as lovers and hostage-takers. Hermes and Ino offered Odysseus aid in his times of need. Meanwhile, the likes of Zeus passed divine judgment with the sun god Helios pulling his arm.

Mythological monsters also threatened Odysseus’ voyage, including…

  • Polyphemus the Cyclops

Monstrosities like Charybdis, Scylla, and the Sirens clearly pose a greater threat to Odysseus’ ship than the others on the list, but Polyphemus shouldn’t be trifled with either. If it weren’t for Odysseus blinding Polyphemus then they never would have left the island of Thrinacia. They’d all probably end up in Polyphemus’ stomach otherwise.

In all honesty, the wringer that Odysseus and his men are put through makes the Trojan War seem tame.

What is Odysseus Most Famous For?

The acclaim Odysseus has is largely in part because of his penchant for trickery. Honestly, the guy can really think on his feet. When we consider that his grandfather was a famous rogue, maybe it is safe to say it is hereditary.

One of his more infamous stunts was when he feigned insanity in an attempt to avoid the draft for the Trojan War. Picture this: a young king plowing salted fields, unresponsive to the world around him. It was going great until the Euboean prince Palamedes threw Odysseus’ infant son Telemachus in the way of a plow.

Of course, Odysseus swerved the plow to avoid hitting his child. Thus, Palamedes managed to disprove Odysseus’ madness. Without delay, the Ithacan king was sent to the Trojan War. Cunning aside, the man was catapulted forward as an epic hero when he remained decidedly loyal to the Greek war effort, neglecting his desire to return home.

Generally, the escapades of Odysseus and his men on their return voyage to Ithaca are what the world remembers the hero for. Though there is no denying that time and time again, Odysseus’ persuasive powers came in clutch to save the day.

Odysseus in the Trojan War

During the Trojan War, Odysseus played a significant part. When Thetis put Achilles into hiding to avoid his enlistment, it was Odysseus’ ruse that gave away the hero’s disguise. Furthermore, the man acts as one of Agamemnon’s advisors and displays great control over swaths of the Greek army at various points in time. He convinces the leader of the Achaeans to stay in a seemingly hopeless battle not once, but twice , despite his own strong desire to return home.

Moreover, he was able to console Achilles long enough after the death of Patroclus to give the Greek soldiers a much-needed break from combat. Agamemnon may have been the Achaean commander, but it was Odysseus who restored order to the Greek camp when tensions rose. The hero even returned the daughter of a priest of Apollo to put an end to a plague that befell the Greek army.

Long story short, Agamemnon was given Chryseis, the daughter of the priest, as a slave. He was really into her, so when her father came bearing gifts and requesting her safe return, Agamemnon told him to kick rocks. The priest prayed to Apollo and boom , here comes the plague.

Oh, and the Trojan horse? Greek legend credits Odysseus as the brains of that operation.

Crafty as ever, 30 Greek warriors led by Odysseus infiltrated the walls of Troy. This Mission Impossible-style infiltration is what put an end to the 10-year conflict (and Trojan King Priam’s lineage).

Why Does Odysseus Go to the Underworld?

At some point on his perilous journey, Circe warns Odysseus of the dangers that await him. She informs him that if he desires a way home to Ithaca, he would have to seek out Theban Tiresias, a blind prophet.

The catch? Tiresias was long dead. They would have to travel to the Underworld, the House of Hades if they wanted to go home.

READ MORE: 10 Gods of Death and the Underworld From Around the World

Himself long-since exhausted, Odysseus admits that he “wept as I sat on the bed, nor had my heart any longer desire to live and behold the light of the sun” ( Odyssey , Book X ). Ithaca seemed further than ever before. When Odysseus’ men discovered their next destination, the hero describes how “their spirit was broken within them, and sitting down right where they were, they wept and tore their hair.” Odysseus and his men, all mighty Greek warriors, are horrified at the idea of going to the Underworld.

The mental and emotional toll of the journey was evident, but it was only just beginning.

Circe directs them to a grove of Persephone across from “deep eddying Oceanus .” She even describes the exact way they had to go about calling forth the dead and the animal sacrifices they would have to make thereafter.

When the crew reached the Underworld, countless wraiths emerged from Erebus : “brides, and unwedded youths…toil-worn old men…tender maidens…and many…that had been wounded…men slain in fight, wearing…blood-stained armor.” 

The first of these spirits to approach Odysseus was one of his men, a youth named Elpenor that died intoxicated in a fatal fall. He was an ataphos , a spirit wandering that did not receive a proper burial. Odysseus and his men had neglected such, being too caught up in their voyage to Hades.

Odysseus also witnessed the spirit of his mother, Anticlea, before Tiresias appeared.

How Did Odysseus Get Rid of the Suitors?

After 20 years gone, Odysseus returns to his homeland of Ithaca. Before going further, Athena disguises Odysseus as a poor beggar to keep his presence on the island on the down low. Odysseus’ true identity is then revealed only to Telemachus and a select number of loyal servants.

By this time, Penelope was at the end of her line. She knew that she could delay the gaggle of admirers no longer. The men – all 108 – were given a challenge by the Ithacan queen: they had to string and shoot Odysseus’ bow, sending the arrow cleanly through several axeheads.

Penelope knew that only Odysseus could string his bow. There was a trick to it that only he knew. Even though Penelope was fully aware of this, it was her last chance to defy the suitors.

Consequently, each suitor failed to string the bow, let alone shoot it. It was a massive blow to their confidence. They began to disparage the thought of marriage. There were other women available, they lamented, but to fall so exceedingly short of Odysseus was embarrassing.

Finally, a disguised Odysseus hobbled forward: “…wooers of the glorious queen…come, give me the polished bow…I may prove my hands and strength, whether I have yet might such as was of old in my supple limbs, or whether by now my wanderings and lack of food have destroyed it” ( Odyssey , Book XXI ). Despite protest from the admirers, Odysseus was permitted to try his hand. The servants loyal to their lord were tasked with locking exits.

In a blink, Odysseus dropped the face reveal of the Bronze Age. And he’s armed.

You could hear a pin drop. Then, slaughter ensued. Athena shielded Odysseus and his allies from the suitor’s defenses all while helping her favorites strike true. All 108 suitors were killed.

Why Does Athena Help Odysseus?

The goddess Athena plays a central role in Homer’s epic poem, Odyssey . More so than any other god or goddess. Such is undeniably true. Now, just why she was so willing to offer her aid is worth exploring.

First things first, Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea , has it out for Odysseus. As the saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Athena has had a bit of a grudge against Poseidon ever since they competed for the patronage of Athens. After Odysseus managed to blind Poseidon’s Cyclops son, Polyphemus, and earns the sea god’s ire, Athena had even more of a reason to get involved.

Secondly, Athena already has a vested interest in Odysseus’ family. For much of the Odyssey , she acts as a guardian for both Odysseus and young Telemachus. While this likely comes down to their heroic bloodline, Athena also makes it known that she is Odysseus’ patron goddess. Their relationship is confirmed in Book XIII of the Odyssey when Athena exclaims, “…yet you did not recognize Pallas Athene, Daughter of Zeus, who always stands by your side and guards you through all your adventures.”

In all, Athena helps Odysseus because it is her duty. She must fulfill her duty just as the other gods must. Truth be told, having her charge cross Poseidon is just a bonus for her.

Who Killed Odysseus?

The epic Odyssey leaves off with Odysseus making amends with the families of Penelope’s suitors. Ithaca is prosperous, pleasant, and most of all peaceful when the story comes to a close. From that, we can garner that Odysseus lived out the rest of his days being a family man.

The man deserves it after everything he went through. Unfortunately, you can probably see where this is going: that just isn’t the case.

In the Epic Cycle – a collection of poems recounting pre- and post-Trojan War events – a lost poem known as Telegony immediately succeeds Odyssey. This poem chronicles the life of Telegonus, Odysseus’ young son born from the hero’s affair with the sorceress Circe.

With a name meaning “born afar,” Telegonus sought out Odysseus when he came of age. After a series of blunders, Telegonus finally came face-to-face with his old man…unknowingly, and in a skirmish.

During the confrontation, Telegonus strikes the killing blow to Odysseus, stabbing him with a poisoned spear gifted by Athena. Only in Odysseus’ dying moments did the two recognize each other as father and son. Heartbreaking, but Telegonus’ story doesn’t end there.

After a possibly very awkward family reunion on Ithaca, Telegonus brings Penelope and Telemachus back to his mother’s island, Aeaea. Odysseus is buried on the beach and Circe turns everyone else present immortal. She ends up settling down with Telemachus and, with her youth regained, Penelope remarries…Telegonus.

Was Odysseus Real?

The fantastic Homeric epics of ancient Greece still ignite our imaginations. There’s no denying that. Their humanness tells a more uniquely human story than other tales of the time. We can look back on the characters – god and man-like – and see ourselves reflected back to us.

When Achilles mourns the loss of Patroclus in the Iliad , we feel his sorrow and desperation; when the women of Troy are separated, raped, and enslaved, our blood boils; when Poseidon refuses to forgive Odysseus for blinding his son, we understand his resentment.

Regardless of how real the characters of Homer’s classic epics are to us, there is no tangible evidence of their existence. Obvious gods aside, even the lives of the mortals involved cannot be concretely verified. This means that Odysseus, a beloved character for generations, likely did not exist. At least, not as a whole.

If there was an Odysseus, his exploits would have been exaggerated, if not borrowed wholly from other individuals. Therefore, Odysseus – the hypothetically real Odysseus – could have been a great king of a minor Ionian island during the Bronze Age. He could have had a son, Telemachus, and a wife that he adored. Truth be told, the real Odysseus may have even participated in a large-scale conflict and was considered missing in action.

This is where the line is drawn. The fantastical elements that adorn Homer’s epic poems would be distinctly lacking, and Odysseus would have to navigate a stark reality.

What is Odysseus the God Of?

Does having a cult dedicated to your triumphs make you a god? Eh, it depends.

It is important to consider what constitutes a god in Greek myth. Generally, gods were mighty immortal beings. This means they cannot die, at least not by any usual means. Immortality is one of the reasons Prometheus could endure his punishment, and why Cronus was able to be diced up and tossed into Tartarus .

In some cases, powerful gods could reward individuals with immortality, but this was uncommon. Usually, mythology only mentions demigods becoming gods since they were already divinely inclined. Dionysus is a good example of this because he, despite being born mortal, became a god after ascending Olympus.

READ MORE: Olympian Gods

The worship of heroes in ancient Greece was a normal, localized thing. Offerings were made to the heroes, including libations and sacrifices. Occasionally, heroes were even communed with when the locals needed advice. They were thought to influence fertility and prosperity, though not as much as a city god would.

Saying that, a hero cult becomes established after said hero’s death. By Greek religious standards, heroes are viewed more as ancestral spirits than any sort of deity.

Odysseus earned his hero acclaim through his brave and noble feats, but he is not a god. In fact, unlike many Greek heroes, Odysseus isn’t even a demi-god. Both of his parents were mortals. However, he is the great-grandson of Hermes : the messenger god is the father of Odysseus’ maternal grandfather, Autolycus, a famous trickster and thief.

READ MORE: 11 Trickster Gods From Around The World

Roman Opinion of Odysseus

Odysseus may be a fan favorite in Greek myths, but that doesn’t mean he saw the same popularity with the Romans. In fact, many Romans link Odysseus directly to the fall of Troy.

For some background, Romans oftentimes identified themselves as the descendants of Prince Aeneas of Troy. After Troy fell to the Greek army, Prince Aeneas (himself a son of Aphrodite ) led survivors to Italy. They became the progenitors of the Romans.

In the Aeneid , Virgil’s Ulysses typifies a common Roman bias : the Greeks, despite their apt cunning, are immoral. While Hellenism gained traction throughout the Roman Empire , Roman citizens – especially those belonging to the upper echelons of society – viewed the Greeks through a narrow elitist lens.

They were impressive people, with vast knowledge and rich culture – but, they could be better (i.e. more Roman).

However, the Roman people were as varied as any other, and not all shared such a belief. Numerous Roman citizens looked upon how Odysseus approached situations with admiration. His roguish ways were ambiguous enough to be comically applauded by the Roman poet Horace, in Satire 2.5 . Likewise, “cruel Odysseus,” the deceitful villain, was celebrated by the poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses for his skill in oration ( Miller, 2015 ).

Why is Odysseus Important to Greek Mythology?

The importance of Odysseus to Greek mythology extends far beyond Homer’s epic poem, Odyssey . He gained renown as one of the most influential Greek champions, commended for his cunning and bravery in the face of adversity. Moreover, his misadventures throughout the Mediterranean and Atlantic Seas grew into a staple of the Greek Hero Age, equivalent to the maritime feats of Jason and the Argonauts .

More than anything, Odysseus figures centrally as one of Greece’s glittering heroes of ages past. When all is said and done, the Iliad and the Odyssey take place during the Hero Age of Greek mythology. It was during this time that the Mycenaean civilization dominated much of the Mediterranean.

READ MORE: Ancient Civilizations Timeline: The Complete List from Aboriginals to Incans

Mycenaean Greece was immensely different than the Greek Dark Ages that Homer grew up in. In this way, Odysseus – as with many of Greece’s most famous heroes – represents a lost past. A past that was filled with daring heroes, monsters, and gods. For this reason, Odysseus’ tale supersedes the obvious messages of Homer’s epics.

Sure, the tales act as a warning against violating xenia , the Greek concept of hospitality and reciprocity. And, yes, Homer’s epic poems brought to life the Greek gods and goddesses that we know today.

Despite the above, the biggest contribution Odysseus gives to Greek mythology is being a significant part of their lost history. His actions, decisions, and cunning acted as a catalyst for innumerable key events throughout the Iliad and Odyssey , respectively. These events – from the oath sworn by Helen’s suitors to the Trojan horse – all impacted Greek history.

As Seen in O Brother, Where Art Thou? And Other Media

From film adaptations to television and plays, the epics of Homer are a hot topic.

One of the more famous films to emerge in recent years is the comedy-musical, O Brother, Where Art Thou? released in 2000. With a star-studded cast and George Clooney as the leading man, playing Ulysses Everett McGill (Odysseus), the movie was a hit. Pretty much, if you like the Odyssey but would love to see it with a Great Depression twist then you’ll enjoy this film. There are even Sirens!

On the flip side of things, there have been attempts at more faithful adaptations in the past. These include the 1997 miniseries, The Odyssey , with Armand Assante as Odysseus, and a 1954 film starring Kirk Douglas, Ulysses . Both have their pros and cons, but if you’re a history buff then both are uniquely admirable.

Even video games couldn’t resist paying homage to the late Ithacan king. God of War: Ascension has Odysseus as a playable character in multiplayer mode. His armor set is otherwise available for Kratos, the main character, to wear. Comparatively, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is more of a reference to the epic highs and lows of Bronze Age seafaring Odysseus experienced.

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The Hero's Journey in The Odyssey: How Odysseus Transforms the Mythical Landscape

05.14.2023 // By Tome Tailor

The Odyssey, an epic poem by the ancient Greek poet Homer, tells the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his long and perilous journey home after the fall of Troy. This classic work is a masterpiece of world literature and one of the earliest examples of the hero’s journey archetype. In The Odyssey, Homer not only portrays Odysseus as a heroic, courageous figure, but also as a symbol of resilience and transformation. In this blog post, we will explore how The Odyssey is a prime example of the hero’s journey in literature, and how Odysseus’ character enriches the mythical landscape of the classical Greek world.

The Hero’s Journey in The Odyssey

According to schorlar Joseph Campbell, the hero’s journey is a narrative pattern present in many myths and stories from various cultures around the world. It consists of twelve stages that the hero goes through in their quest for transformation or knowledge. In The Odyssey, Odysseus undertakes this journey, and his experiences transform not only himself but also the mythical world in which he lives.

Here are the twelve stages of the hero’s journey as they appear in The Odyssey:

The Ordinary World : Before his journey, Odysseus is the king of Ithaca and a brave, respected warrior. However, he is also proud and arrogant, traits that lead to the beginning of his troubles on his journey home from Troy.

The Call to Adventure : Odysseus receives the call to adventure when he sets sail to fight in the Trojan War. This act marks the beginning of his journey, thrusting him into a realm of danger and uncertainty.

Refusal of the Call : Unlike many other heroes, Odysseus does not refuse the call to adventure. Instead, his hubris and arrogance lead him to believe he can outsmart the gods and make his journey home without their help or interference.

Meeting with the Mentor : Though Odysseus does not have a singular mentor figure, he encounters various characters throughout his journey who provide him with guidance and assistance, such as the god Hermes, the enchantress Circe, and the blind prophet Tiresias.

Crossing the Threshold : Odysseus crosses the threshold into a new and unknown world when he and his crew become lost at sea and are destined to wander for a decade before returning home.

Tests, Allies, and Enemies : Throughout his journey, Odysseus faces various tests and trials. Some of these include battling the Cyclops Polyphemus, resisting the enchanting Sirens, and escaping the clutches of the sea monster Scylla.

Approach to the Inmost Cave : The inmost cave can be seen as the island of the goddess Calypso, where Odysseus is held captive for seven years. Here, he is forced to confront his deepest fears and desires, ultimately realizing the importance of returning home to his family.

The Ordeal : Odysseus’ ordeal is likely his journey to the Underworld to consult the prophet Tiresias. In this dark, terrifying place, he gains crucial insights about himself and his journey’s purpose.

Reward : After his ordeal, Odysseus receives help from the gods to make his way home. They assist him in overcoming the final challenges that stand in his way, such as Poseidon’s wrath and the suitors who have taken over his palace.

The Road Back : The road back is marked by Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, where he must reclaim his throne and restore order to his kingdom.

The Resurrection : Odysseus is ultimately transformed by his journey, having learned humility, patience, and wisdom. With the help of Athena, he defeats the suitors and reclaims his throne, symbolizing his rebirth as a just and rightful ruler.

Return with the Elixir : As king, Odysseus uses the lessons he has learned on his journey to create a more balanced, harmonious kingdom. He has not only transformed himself but has also altered the mythical landscape of Ithaca.

In The Odyssey, Homer masterfully tells the story of a hero’s journey that transcends time and culture. Through his transformation, Odysseus becomes a symbol of resilience and change. His journey home can serve as an inspiration for readers today, reminding us that even in the face of adversity, we too can overcome challenges and grow as individuals.

If you haven’t yet read The Odyssey, consider picking up a copy to experience Odysseus’ transformative journey for yourself. Several translations are available, including the celebrated translations by Robert Fagles View on Amazon and Emily Wilson View on Amazon .

To explore similar works of classical literature, consider checking out the Iliad View on Amazon , also by Homer, which tells the story of the Trojan War and is deeply intertwined with the events of The Odyssey.

If you’re interested in learning more about the hero’s journey, consider reading Joseph Campbell’s seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces View on Amazon , which analyzes the patterns and archetypes found in myths and stories from around the world.

Lastly, if you’re ready to dive into the world of Odysseus, purchase The Odyssey View on Amazon and experience this epic journey for yourself.

Recommended Articles:

  • Discover the Epic Tales: In-Depth Guide to The Odyssey by Homer
  • 5 Essential Themes in The Odyssey: Uncover the Depth of Homer’s Epic
  • Understanding Greek Mythology: The Gods and Heroes of The Odyssey
  • 5 Books Like The Odyssey: Epic Stories of Adventure and Self-Discovery
  • Women in The Odyssey: The Roles and Influence of Female Characters

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Epic Explorations: Teaching the ‘Odyssey’ With The New York Times

hero's journey for the odyssey

By Ryan R. Goble and Elizabeth Wiersum

  • March 21, 2019

Homer’s Muse still sings.

His epic tale follows the wily warrior Odysseus as he twists and turns his way back home to the shores of Ithaca after fighting a 10-year war at Troy. As readers everywhere know, the story’s themes of homecoming and hospitality, hubris and humility, suffering and survival continue to resonate across the centuries.

Three recent books show that much remains to be said and discovered about the epic and its relationship to our lives today. In 2017, the first English translation of the “Odyssey” by a woman, the British classicist Emily Wilson , was published to much acclaim , replacing older translations on some high school and college syllabuses. The same year, Daniel Mendelsohn’s memoir, “ An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic, ” recounted what happened when his 81-year old father decided to sit in on the author’s seminar on the “Odyssey” at Bard College. And in the spring of 2018, Madeline Miller released “ Circe, ” a novel written from the enchantress’s perspective that expands her story both before and after her affair with Odysseus.

Below, five lesson ideas that draw on Times resources to help students navigate the wine-dark seas and discover how the “Odyssey” might speak to their own lives and the world around them.

Five Teaching Ideas

1. The Hero’s Journey

Daniel Mendelsohn explains in his memoir that the word “odyssey” has three meanings: “voyage,” “journey,” and “travel.” As an epic poem, the ”Odyssey” further prepares us for a long narrative told on a grand scale of time and place, featuring a larger-than-life protagonist who is also Western civilization’s oldest hero. Odysseus, whose very name echoes “odyssey,” is often translated to mean “son of pain.” Taken together the man and his journey seem fated for hardship.

At a time when more than 65 million people around the world are officially displaced from their homes by conflict, violence and persecution — the highest figure recorded by the United Nations since World War II — The Times has chronicled many real-life odysseys in reports of those journeys. Invite students to read articles like “ What Refugees Face on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route ” and “ Desperate Crossin g” to learn more, and to find links to themes and ideas in the “Odyssey.” (For more on teaching with this material, you might also consider some of the questions and activities suggested in this Learning Network lesson plan .)

But epic journeys have also been fodder for comedy. Examples include the cartoonist Roz Chast’s take on the hero’s journey , Brian Gordon’s modern take on the Sirens , Lapham’s Quarterly Odyssey Game (tagline: “lose years, gain strength, return to wife”) and the doughnut-fueled “ Lemon of Troy” episode of “The Simpsons” (Season 6, Episode 24), featuring America’s favorite cartoon dad.

The archetypal hero’s journey takes many forms and is particularly accessible for students through film. Have them read Times reviews of a favorite superhero film, like “ Black Panther ,” “ Wonder Woman ” or “ Iron Man ,” then write their own review explaining how the hero develops. They can do this either using the stages of Joseph Campbell’s hero cycle , or compare the journeys of their chosen protagonist to Odysseus’ journey.

While any Marvel or DC Comics hero should suffice, students can also look to animated films such as “ The Incredibles ” and “ Wall-E ,” dramas like “ The Natural ,” “ Glory ,” “ A Better Life ,” or classic comedies like “ Coming to America ,” “ Goonies ,” “ Back to the Future ” or even “ Some Like It Hot .”

2. On Xenia

Xenia is the Greek concept of hospitality. In the “Odyssey,” it is both a civic responsibility — serving the weary traveler who landed on the shores of one’s front door — and a spiritual duty, for it would always be entirely possible that the weary traveler could end up being a god in disguise.

The Learning Network runs an annual Connections Contest , in which students are invited to link anything they’re studying in school with something in the news. This year, one of the winners , Alex Iyer, a student from San Antonio, linked Homer’s “Odyssey” with the Times piece, “ As Rich Nations Close the Door on Refugees, Uganda Welcomes Them ” and talked about the role of xenia in both. Here is his essay:

In literature, we learned that in Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey,” Homer uses the tribulations of the hero Odysseus to illustrate the Ancient Grecian custom of xenia. This custom focused on extending hospitality to those who found themselves far from home. As Odysseus navigates the treacherous path back to his own home, he encounters both morally upstanding and malevolent individuals. They range from a charitable princess who offers food and clothing, to an evil Cyclops who attempts to murder the hero and his fellow men. In class, we agreed that Homer employs these contrasting characters to exemplify not only proper, but also poor forms of xenia. For the people of its time, the “Odyssey” cemented the idea that xenia was fundamental for good character; resulting in hospitality becoming engrained in the fabric of Ancient Grecian society. I saw a parallel to this in a New York Times article called “As Rich Nations Close the Door on Refugees, Uganda Welcomes Them” published on October 28, 2018. Similar to the prevalent custom of xenia in Ancient Greece, Uganda has made hosting refugees a national policy. The country is now occupied by up to 1.25 million refugees, many of whom are fleeing the violent unrest of South Sudan. The xenia of Homeric times implied a mutually beneficial relationship between host and guest. We see this in Uganda, where villagers share land with South Sudanese refugees. Grateful for this generosity, the refugees gladly help out with farming, carpentry, and even translation. Many Ugandans remember when they themselves had to look to Sudan for sanctuary. During the murderous rampages of Idi Amin and Joseph Kony, the Sudanese provided critical support to Ugandan refugees. These memories are motivating modern-day Ugandans to assist refugees, bringing the world a little closer to what xenia strived for over 2,000 years ago. Uganda and South Sudan are by no means wealthy utopias. However, xenia was never about the rich blindly giving to the poor. It aspired to foster symbiotic relationships of openness and inclusivity that would endure through time. It’s interesting that a quaint Greek ideal from thousands of years ago would find a practical application in Uganda. When Amos Chandiga was asked why he lent two acres of his own land to refugees, he simply responded “They asked me, and I gave it to them.” He then patted his chest and said “It comes from here, in my heart.” Perhaps this can serve as a lesson to Americans, as we grapple with modernizing our own asylum policies. Teaching us that, whether rich or poor, open borders give way to open hearts.

You might challenge students to find more articles in The Times that relate to xenia, the spirit behind welcoming the stranger — pieces like “ Refugees Encounter a Foreign Word: Welcome ,” “ Love Thy Stranger As Thyself, ” “ A Lesson on Immigration From Pablo Neruda ,” “ Texas Pulls Up the Welcome Mat ” and “ Where Companies Welcome Refugees .”

And since school functions as students’ September-through-June “home,” they might then work with their counselors and student government to develop a welcoming committee, mission statement, and a set of resources that would have them sharing their hospitality to all those who make their way to the shores of the school, whether incoming freshmen, transfer students, parents at an open house, or athletes visiting the school for a sporting event or competition. They may also work to propose programs and extracurricular activities to ensure that students from diverse backgrounds have a welcome place at the school.

3. Epic Music Playlists

The British author and screenwriter Nick Hornby explained the art of the mixtape his 1995 novel "High Fidelity,” which was later adapted into film . His protagonist, Rob Flemings, explains:

To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention … and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch … and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and … oh, there are loads of rules.

In the digital age, we still use the analog concept of a “mixtape" to talk about digital playlists or a compilation of related songs. (For example, consider the “ Hamilton Mixtape .”) Many of the playlists streamed on Pandora, Spotify and Apple Music are curated by algorithms based on listener data . That said, these services and others like Mixcloud and SoundCloud also celebrate human curation.

The Times has covered many notable playlists. A Vows column explored how songs texted between a Hollywood couple became the Spotify “mixtape” for their Palm Springs wedding; the Food section wrote about a musician who curated a soundscape for a restaurant ; Politics covered a presidential playlist ; and the Arts section featured the playlist one nonfiction writer created to accompany his book on hip-hop. (Meanwhile, this piece in The Guardian covers the playlists that fiction writers like Stephen King create that are inspired by their books’ characters or themes.)

The New York Times Music section shares weekly playlists of notable new music and videos, and they maintain a Spotify profile with playlists related to their criticism and reporting. The Learning Network has even asked students to share their favorite playlists in the past.

Inspired by these, we created a playlist for the “Odyssey,” which focuses on allusions or retellings of Homer’s epic poem.

See what you think, then tell us: What playlist might you make? Your tracks can be informed by a character’s point of view: How would Telemachus’ playlist differ from Athena’s? Would Calypso’s playlist sound anything like Penelope’s? Students might also create a playlist that addresses a theme like courage or deception, or design one that mirrors the plot in some way, as does a movie soundtrack. Whatever songs you think will capture a unique musical point-of-view of Homer’s epic tale, we invite you to share them as a comment on this lesson, or by tagging us on Twitter @NYTimesLearning .

Finally, you might check out the Learning Network lesson plan “ Nine Teaching Ideas for Using Music to Inspire Student Writing ” to find even more ideas for creating playlists related to topics you are studying in class.

4. Here Be Monsters

Monsters are here, there and everywhere in film and literature. Many Times articles have explored monsters as metaphor. Film Critics have written about what movie monsters teach us about our cultures , childhoods or, most recently, how racism ise the monster in director Jordan Peele’s award-winning film “Get Out .”

Literary and historical monsters are also rich sources for discussion. During Odysseus’ journey he encounters a wide range of supernatural creatures, including the Sirens, Cyclops and the Lotus Eaters. He is caught between the famous Scylla and Charybdis and, at Circe’s behest, visits the Underworld. Many of these places and characters can be read as metaphors for large challenges we face in life.

The New York-based nonprofit organization Artolution recently asked students, “What would creatures in a world without violence look like?” Their short film shows elementary students imagining and creating peaceful creatures. We’d like to suggest a Homeric riff on this idea. Ask students, “What type of monsters would a school-aged Odysseus encounter if he were to spend three years in your middle school or four years in your high school?” Students can draw or use a free monster-making app like this one to create their creatures. You might also share Andrew Bell’s ‘Creatures in My Head ’ website for inspiration. Artwork should be accompanied by a creative narrative or poem about their monster and how it was inspired by “The Odyssey.”

5. Lasting Legacies

It is a minor character in the “Odyssey” who develops one of its most vital themes — the importance of one’s legacy.

Elpenor, one of Odysseus’ men, suffers an unremarkable death, meeting his demise when he falls from a rooftop in a drunken stupor. His story becomes poignant when he meets his leader in the Underworld, and begs to be properly buried and remembered. He pleads:

Don’t sail off and desert me, left behind unwept … No, burn me in full armor, all my harness, heap my mound by churning gray surf — a man whose luck ran out — so even men to come will learn my story (11.79 - 85).

Elpenor’s desire for his story to outlive him highlights the human desire to achieve some mark of the immortality reserved for the gods. At The Times, a team of obituary writers does the important work of summing up those legacies, both for the famous and for those less well-known whose lives nonetheless “ put a wrinkle in the social fabric .” The 2016 documentary “ Obit ” follows that team, as you can see in the film’s trailer , embedded above. In it, Margalit Fox, one of the team, suggests that “obits have next to nothing to do with death and in fact absolutely everything to do with the life.”

While Benjamin Franklin and others did write their own epitaphs, students need not imagine their own deaths in order to ponder the legacy they would like to leave behind. Students can read a selection of Times tributes that commemorate those who have made a lasting impression on the world. Recent tributes include reflections on Aretha Franklin , John McCain , Stan Mikita , and Mac Miller , as well as a collection of tributes The Times put together called “ Overlooked ” that celebrate remarkable people, mostly women, who did not receive a Times obituary when they died.

Students can jigsaw those we suggested or choose someone who interests them . In groups, students might then use these learning experience organizers to think about what makes a life well lived. (Organizers for “cartoonist,” “framer” or “lawyer” work nicely here.) After this process students can brainstorm their life goals for school using the WOOP (Wish-Outcome-Obstacle-Plan) goal-writing method . The “Hidden Brain” podcast and related book explain the science behind the method.

Have students imagine that, 25 years after their graduation, they have been chosen to receive the distinguished alumnus or alumna award for their class. What will the nominating committee say about them? How will they describe what they have achieved and the legacy it will leave for their chosen field? Or, if students would rather write about someone else, have them reflect on the legacy of someone they know personally, such as a friend, parent or mentor.

Let students have fun and focus on making meaning of a life well lived for whatever legacy they choose to write. If they would like to muse about their own lives, invite them to contribute comments to a recent Learning Network Student Opinion question, What Legacy Do You Want to Leave Behind? They could also consider making a mixed media collage about their own or someone else’s legacy, as suggested in this lesson plan by the artist and teacher Clara Lieu.

Selected Additional Resources

From Around the Web:

• To give your students a useful summary before reading scenes and excerpts from Homer’s poem, try this resource from The Conversation that describes the story and its themes, as well as its links to films like “ O Brother Where Art Thou? ” and, more loosely, “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” and “ Paris, Texas .”

• Creative visual retellings include Gareth Hinds’s graphic novel “ The Odyssey ,” Marvel’s comic series from 2008-2009 and the Eisner Award-winning cartoonist Eric Shanower’s multivolume Trojan War series, “ Age of Bronze .” Readers of all ages will benefit from Marcia William’s beautiful and succinct picture book retelling of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey.” And here is a rubric designed by the instructional coach Nessa Slowinski and the English teacher Lauren Schewe, our colleagues at Glenbard West High School , to help students do comic annotations of the “Odyssey,” as modeled by Nick Sousanis ’s comics studies class at San Francisco State University.

• Brandon Bourgeois has been working on a hip-hop version of the “Odyssey” since he was a graduate student in classics, while students at the University of Michigan have made modern interpretations of Homer’s work the subject of “ The Translation Game .” An anthropomorphic take can be found in Gwen Cooper’s “ Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat .”

• If you are teaching the “Odyssey” as part of a humanities course you might explore the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Resource for Educators: Greek Art from Prehistoric to Classical and the Art Institute of Chicago’s resource packet that puts the African-American experience in dialogue with Homer through the Harlem Renaissance artist Romare Bearden’s collage “The Return of Odysseus (Homage to Pintoricchio and Benin).”

• Poems that consider the “Odyssey” from different angles abound. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “ Ulysses ” imagines Odysseus years after his return to Ithaca, bored and longing again for adventure. Margaret Atwood’s much-anthologized “ Siren Song ” transfers attention to the half-female half-bird mythical creatures. And Louise Glück ’s 1996 collection, “Meadowlands,” is a poetic exploration of the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope. Teachers might also join a Twitter discussion about poems to teach with the “Odyssey.”

From The New York Times:

1997 Arts Article: All-Nighter With the ‘Odyssey’ Two Stamford High School English teachers gave their freshmen students a challenge: How about spending 17 hours overnight at the school to study nearly 500 pages of Homer’s “Odyssey,” hearing it aloud as the epic poet might have offered the adventures of Odysseus to his hungry listeners 2,700 years ago?

1998 Op-Ed: An Odyssey The children who sit before me saw in Homer’s hero that one person can be both powerful and foolish, equally full of influence and errors. When my students learn to see this in themselves, they will become — at last — good leaders.

2007 Op-Ed: The Odyssey Years There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.

2008 Science Article: Homecoming of Odysseus May Have Been in Eclipse Two scientists have concluded that the homecoming of Odysseus possibly coincided with a solar eclipse in 1178 B.C.

2008 Book Review: A Long, Strange Trip A British classics professor traces the lengthy shadow Homer’s “Odyssey” casts across Western culture.

2009 Op-Ed: Back From War, but Not Really Home A sense of dislocation has been shared by veterans returning from war since Homer conjured Odysseus’ inauspicious return some 2,800 years ago. ( Related Learning Network lesson plan )

2010 T Magazine Article: Speak Easy | Laura Marling An interview with a musician inspired by The “Odyssey.”

2011 Travel Article: Lost in the Odyssey Inspired by Odysseus, who took 10 years to get to Ithaca from the coast of Turkey, an 11-day journey of epic beauty, hospitality and frustrating ferry schedules.

2011 Video and Article: Odysseus in Socrates Sculpture Park and Odysseus Is Parading Into Queens Using puppets and much imagination, two artists are bringing “The Odyssey” to a riverfront park in Long Island City.

2015 Theater Review: ‘The Odyssey’ Takes a Populist Turn as a Musical Professional actors like Brandon Victor Dixon and amateur entertainers combine to turn this adaptation of Homer’s poem into a vibrant tapestry.

2016 Book Review: ‘Why Homer Matters,’ by Adam Nicolson For the voyager Adam Nicolson, Homer is impossible to understand while sitting behind a desk.

2017 Magazine Article: The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English The classicist Emily Wilson has given Homer’s epic a radically contemporary voice.

2017 Science Article: A Grecian Artifact Evokes Tales From the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ An engraved stone with a finely detailed battle scene was found in the grave of a warrior buried about 1450 B.C.

2017: Book Review: A Version of Homer That Dares to Match Him Line for Line Emily Wilson’s landmark translation of the “Odyssey” matches the original’s line count while drawing on a spare, simple and direct idiom.

2018 Book Review: Turning Circe Into a Good Witch In Madeline Miller’s latest adaptation of Greek myth, “Circe,” we encounter a thoughtful and compassionate woman who learns to love unselfishly.

Ryan R. Goble is the Teaching & Learning Coordinator at Glenbard Township High School District 87 Public Schools in Glen Ellyn, IL. and the co-author of Making Curriculum Pop: Developing Literacies across Content Areas .

Elizabeth Wiersum teaches English at Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn, IL.

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Joseph Campbell & The Hero’s Journey

In 1949, scholar  joseph campbell published his 1st book, the hero with a thousand faces. in this book, campbell introduced us to his theory that myths from around the globe share a fundamental structure, the monomyth ..

C ampbell formulated this theory over 5 years, spending 9 hours a day reading mythology from around the world. The Monomyth structure is divided into 3 events with additional stages in between. The stories of Osiris, Prometheus, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, and many other tales from history use this structure. It has inspired many artists and storytellers, such as, Jim Morrison of The Doors, Bob Dylan, creator of Star Wars George Lucas, Bob Weir, and Jerry Garcia of the band, The Grateful Dead. While countless stories follow this Monomyth structure, we will use the original Star Wars Trilogy as an example for exploring this process.

The Seventeen Stages of the Monomyth

The Seventeen Stages of the Monomyth

The Cycle of Mythology

Stage 1: Separation

I n the first stage of the hero’s journey, we find our protangonist living life in a typically mundane situation. The  Star Wars , Luke Skywalker lives as a talented yet lowly and pretty damn whiny moisture farmer on Tatooine.

Until…

1. Call to Adventure – By some chance the hero will become aware of information or actions that call for them to go on a quest. The lovable and recently acquired droid R2-D2 plays a holographic message of Princess Leia pleading for Luke’s soon to be mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s assistance.

2. Refusal of the Call – Overwhelmed by the information, the hero refuses the call and makes excuses as to why they cannot answer it. Luke refuses Obi-Wan’s request to join him on his mission, stating that he has responsibilities at home.

Luke's Supernatural Aid is in the form of a Lightsaber

Luke’s Supernatural Aid is in the form of a Lightsaber and newfound Knowledge of the Force

3. Supernatural Aid – Once a commitment to the quest is made by the hero, they are provided with a special weapon or power that will assist them along the way. Obi-Wan gifts Luke his fathers lightsaber and explains some Force 101.

4. Crossing the Threshold – The moment when the hero actually embarks upon the journey. After Luke discovers that his family has been murdered and that nothing is left for him at home, he decides to join Obi-Wan on the quest to save Princess Leia, cause that sounds way cooler than hanging at the farm where your entire family was just massacred.

5. Belly of the Whale – The final separation between the hero and their home. Luke and Kenobi bail out from Tatooine with their new bros Han Solo and Chewbacca.

Stage 2: Initiation

The Empire Strikes Back is nothing but a road of trials for our hero, Luke

The Empire Strikes Back is nothing but a road of trials for our hero, Luke.

6. The Road of Trials – A series of usually 3 trials and tests, the hero often fails one or more of these test. In Luke’s journey the destruction of the Death Star is his first test and one that he passes. His second and third tests do not end so well. While training with Yoda on Dagobah, Luke fails in his truly mastering himself and the force. Thirdly, in the duel between himself and his newly revealed father, Darth Vader, he is defeated, injured, and almost killed.

7. The Meeting with the Goddess – Our hero experiences a love that has the power and significance to that of a mother. Luke begins to have strong feelings for Leia, his unbeknownst sister.

8. Woman as Temptress – The temptation to abandon the journey for material or other gain. Luke is close to being seduced to the dark side as the Emperor feeds his rage against his father and especially with the prospect that if he will not turn, perhaps his sister will.

9. Atonement with the Father – In this stage, the hero must confront and be initiated by whoever holds the ultimate power in their life. Luke battles Darth Vader and once again is on the losing side of the fight. Nearing death from the Emperor’s attacks, Luke begs his father to help save him from certain death.

Star-Wars-Trivia-Original-Ending-Luke-Dark-Side

Anakin & Luke Meet for the 1st Time

10. Apotheosis – The spiritual death and rebirth of the hero. Darth Vader hears his son’s cries for help and returns to the light, deciding to destroy the Emperor in a self sacrificial action. By bringing his father back to the light, Luke has finally become a true jedi.

11. The Ultimate Boon – The stage of achievement of the goal. Luke is a jedi, has defeated the Empire, the dark side, saved his father, and all his friends and family are safe.

12. Refusal of the Return – The hero basking in their newly found bliss, may not want to return to their previous life and share this bliss with his fellow man. Luke does the opposite of this, upon his reunification with his friends, he shares with Leia that they are siblings. He then goes on to train her and new jedi in the ways of the force.

Stage 3: Return

13. The Magic Flight – The daring escape made after obtaining the boon. Luke carries his fathers body onto a transport and flees the Death Star before its complete destruction.

The Return

The Millennium Falcon in Magical Flight

14. Rescue from Without – When powerful guides or mentors help bring the hero back to normal life. When Anniken, Obi-Wan, and Yoda appear from the ether to acknowledge Luke and his newfound jedi knighthood.

15. Crossing the Return Threshold – Retaining, integrating, and sharing wisdom learned on the quest. Luke shares his knowledge of the force with future jedi.

16. Master of Two Worlds – The hero has achieved a balance between the material and spiritual world. Luke has sorted all of his family issues, become a man and a jedi.

17. Freedom to Live – By becoming a master of the two worlds, the hero is free from regrets of the past and worries of the future, this leaves them to live in the moment. Luke has resolved all the  conflicts in his life, he is free to live at one with the force.

Each of Us are the Heroes in Our own Journey

The Monomyth is a method of story telling that is innate to humans. Cultures from around the world share it’s structure in their stories. Every human, whether they are aware of it or not, is on their own hero’s journey. By studying Joseph Campbell’s work we can better our own understanding of the tests, trials, and progress along our journey.

About Author

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Tamlorn Chase

Tamlorn Chase hails from the coastal town of Santa Barbara, where he works as a wilderness guide, wildlife filmmaker, and environmental activist. Protecting the natural world is his profession and passion.

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Mythological Storytelling: Classic Stages of the Hero’s Journey (The Modern Monomyth Book 1)

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  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B077D1RQXT
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Story Ninjas (November 12, 2017)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 12, 2017
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  • #153 in Mythology & Folk Tales Literary Criticism
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About the authors

hero's journey for the odyssey

Josh is a military veteran, public speaker, and father of three. Josh has published multiple science fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction books. When not writing, Josh plays video games like Mass Effect, God of War, and Mortal Kombat. Growing up as a comic book geek in the 80s, Josh has an affinity for superhero stories. He's also a huge fan of classic Star Wars and owns multiple lightsabers. His other hobbies include powerlifting, roller skating, and beach bumming.

He is also the author of the Modern Monomyth series and is a co-founder of Story-Ninjas Publishing. He's the creator of online courses such as Reciprocal Narrative Infrastructure, Thematic Resonance, and Subconscious Storytelling.

Josh is known as a writing mentor and consultant, exclusively serving authors in the commercial fiction industry. He is also known for creating successful story narratives that increase audience engagement while delivering impactful thematic lessons. For the last 15 years, Josh has been writing, publishing, and researching fiction. He has helped outline, write, edit, publish and market hundreds of books.

Learn more about Josh here: https://linktr.ee/joshcoker

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Story Ninjas Publishing is an independent book publisher with fiction stories that range from science fiction to romance. Our goal is to create stories that are not only entertaining, but endearing. We believe engaging narrative can lead to personal growth. Through unforgettable characters and powerful plot we portray themes that are relevant for today’s issues. Our hope is that readers find lessons they can apply to their everyday lives, so that the stories live on through the actions of each person they touch. Additionally, we provide creative non-fiction books that are meant to serve as tools to help people solve everyday problems. We hope you find our products entertaining and helpful.

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The Write Practice

The Ordinary World: The First Step in the Hero’s Journey

by David Safford | 0 comments

From The Odyssey  to Star Wars  to Toy Story , the Hero's Journey is the foundation of millennia of storytelling. But before any hero can embark on their journey, they must start in the ordinary world.

How can you leverage this world and the hero's journey in your own writing?

the ordinary world

In storytelling, the hero's journey has to do with the stages of the hero as researched by Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler. Decades ago, these two storytelling experts identified several common trends that appear in great works from every generation and every culture.

One of those trends is structure. 

Thankfully this structure has a proven track record of success. This successful record is so long, in fact, that we don't know when it started.

And it all begins with a person living an ordinary life.

What Is the Hero's Journey?

The Hero's Journey is a timeless combination of characters, events, and symbols frequently structured as a sequence of twelve steps. It is a storytelling structure that anyone can study and utilize to tell a story that readers will love.

You can learn all about the twelve steps that make up the universal structure of great stories in this article . Today, I'd like to take you even further into the first of those steps.

Let's take a look at the beginning: The Ordinary World.

Hero's Journey Step #1: Start Ordinary

We have Hollywood screenwriter and executive Christopher Vogler to thank for our condensed version of the Hero's Journey. If you're curious, his most notable credit is a film that makes explicit use of the Hero's Journey: The Lion King. 

In Vogler's simplification of Campbell's theory, there are twelve steps to the Hero's Journey (I cover each one in-depth in a detailed Hero's Journey blog series, this article being one of those special articles).

The first step of the Hero's Journey involves establishing your hero's day-to-day ordinary life, all so it can be disrupted by the impending Inciting Incident. This is the Ordinary World.

This is when you establish the hero's day-to-day life, all so it can be disrupted by the impending Inciting Incident. Tweet this

David Safford

You deserve a great book. That's why David Safford writes adventure stories that you won't be able to put down. Read his latest story at his website. David is a Language Arts teacher, novelist, blogger, hiker, Legend of Zelda fanatic, puzzle-doer, husband, and father of two awesome children.

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Life as a Spiritual Journey

The Hero’s Journey

Richard Rohr uses the framework of the “hero’s journey” to describe the path of spiritual transformation. He points to The Odyssey as a powerful metaphor:

The universe story and the human story are a play of forces rational and nonrational, conscious and unconscious, involving fate and fortune, nature and nurture. Forces of good and evil play out their tragedies and their graces—leading us to catastrophes, backtracking, mutations, transgressions, regroupings, enmities, failures, mistakes, and impossible dilemmas. The Greek word for  tragedy  means “goat story.” The Odyssey is a primal goat story, where poor Odysseus keeps going forward and backward, up and down—but mostly down—all the way home to Ithaca.  [1]

The hero’s journey is a key myth that keeps repeating in different cultures. I learned about it from mythologist Joseph Campbell. The hero or heroine—the gender really doesn’t matter—must leave home or business as usual. They have to leave what feels like sufficiency or enoughness. There is a sense of necessity in discovering the bigger world. We’ve got to know there’s a bigger world than my home state of Kansas, or wherever we’re from. In The Wizard of Oz , Dorothy has to leave Kansas—and she’s taken away by a tornado. We usually don’t leave home willingly. More often than not, we’re taken there by some circumstance, shipwreck, accident, death, or suffering of some sort. That’s called the departure . The hero has to lose or walk away from their sense of order and enter some kind of disorder. 

Then there’s the encounter . After the hero leaves their castle or their stable home, they have to experience something bigger, something better, something that is more real and more demanding of their real energies. Of course, that takes different forms. In the Gospels, after his baptism, Jesus goes into the desert for forty days.

Surprisingly, the third stage of the hero’s journey is the return . The hero’s journey is not to just keep going to new places, making the trip a vacation or travelogue. We have to return to where we started and know it in a new way and do life in a new way. We are not somehow “beyond” the order and disorder of our lives; we’ve learned how to integrate both of them. This stage of return is so rarely taught. What is good about the order, what is good about the disorder, and how do we put them together? That is the “reorder” or the return.

We have the departure , then we have the encounter , which will always lead to some kind of descent away from status, away from security, away from ascent. Eventually something happens, something gets transformed, and then there’s the return . [2]

References: [1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life , rev. ed. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2024), 36.

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: Life as a Spiritual Journey (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2020–), online course.

Image credit: Jeremy Bishop, Untitled (detail), Australia, 2016, photograph, public domain . Click here to enlarge image .

The desert and the new sprout of spring green are part of the journey.

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I am part of a group of 6 friends who have started our own “journey” within the mystery of God. Fr. Richard’s Daily Meditations and CAC’s podcasts are beautiful guides as each of us walks different phases of our spiritual growth. Our next adventure is a discussion on Radical Resilience. Thank you from Canada. —Richard P.

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Odysseus becomes first US spacecraft to land on moon in over 50 years

By Elise Hammond and Jackie Wattles , CNN

This is the NASA instrument that saved Odysseus' mission

From CNN's Jackie Wattles

NASA's Navigation Doppler Lidar.

Odysseus has now officially made history with its successful lunar touchdown — and none of it could have happened without some fast work from engineers on the ground and a breath-catching save from a NASA payload.

Before descent, Intuitive Machines, which developed the Odysseus lunar lander, revealed crucial pieces of the vehicle's navigation equipment were not working.

Fortunately, NASA — which considers itself one of many customers on this mission — had an experimental instrument already on board Odysseus that could be swapped in to make up for the malfunctioning equipment.

Engineers were able to bypass Odysseus' broken pieces and land using two lasers that are part of NASA's Navigation Doppler Lidar, or NDL, payload.

Here's how the NDL is described in IM-1's press kit:

The NDL is a LIDAR-based (Light Detection and Ranging) sensor composed of an optical head with three small telescopes and a box with electronics and photonics. NDL uses lasers to provide extremely precise velocity and range (distance to the ground) sensing during the descent and landing of the lander. This instrument operates on the same principles of radar, similar to a police radar detector, but uses pulses of light from a laser instead of radio waves and with very high accuracy. This will enhance the capabilities of space vehicles to execute precision navigation and controlled soft landings.

Odysseus is "upright and starting to send data"

After some intense waiting, Intuitive Machines, the company behind the Odysseus lunar landing mission, has confirmed the spacecraft is "upright and starting to send data."

That's a major milestone.

An upright landing potentially puts Odysseus in a better position than even Japan's SLIM "Moon Sniper" mission. SLIM was deemed a success as it made a soft touchdown , but later was revealed to have landed in a position that left its solar panels pointed in the wrong direction, causing that spacecraft to quickly lose power.

"Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface," Intuitive Machines said in a post on social media platform X.

Art in space: Sculpture hitches a ride to the moon on Odysseus lunar lander

From CNN's Jacqui Palumbo

Jeff Koons' "Moon Phases" is seen on the Odysseus lunar lander as it flies over the near side of the moon on Wednesday.

Exchanging the gallery space for a transparent box in  space, the American artist Jeff Koons now has one of his works of art on the moon .

On Thursday, a sculpture called “Moon Phases" hitched a ride on the Odysseus lunar lander as it touched down on the moon. It marked the United States' first landing on the lunar surface in more than 50 years.

The artwork depicts 125 mini-sculptures of the moon contained in a box, measuring about one inch in diameter. “Moon Phases" shows 62 phases of the moon as seen from Earth, 62 phases visible from other viewpoints in space, and one lunar eclipse.

Jeff Koons holds "Moon Phases" before it was attached to the lunar lander.

Each sculpture is inscribed with the name of a groundbreaking figure in human history, including Aristotle, David Bowie, Leonardo da Vinci, Gandhi, Billie Holiday, Gabriel García Márquez, Andy Warhol and Virginia Woolf. Koons “has drawn inspiration from the Moon as a symbol of curiosity and determination,” according to a statement from his gallery, Pace.

But the art market wouldn’t be able to do much with far-flung sculptures "exhibited" in outer space, so there’s a commercial component to Koons’ project as well. Pace Verso, the NFT wing of Pace, is also offering NFTs of each sculpture, while Koons has produced larger, coinciding physical sculptures of his “Moon Phases” to remain on Earth.

NASA reacts to lunar landing: "Great and daring quest"

NASA posted a reaction to the moon mission on social media, saying "Your order was delivered… to the Moon!"

"(Intutive Machines') uncrewed lunar lander landed at 6:23pm ET (2323 UTC), bringing NASA science to the Moon's surface. These instruments will prepare us for future human exploration of the Moon under #Artemis ," the space agency posted on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson added during the webcast: "Today for the first time in more than a half-century, the US has returned to the moon." "Today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA's commercial partnerships," he added. "Congratulations to everyone involved in this great and daring quest."

Applause and celebrations could be heard on the Intuitive Machines webcast of the event before the live coverage concluded.

CNN is standing by for additional updates on the spacecraft's status.

Odysseus becomes first US lander to touch down on the moon in over 50 years

Intuitive Machines mechanics, friends and family cheer after confirmation the lunar lander made a touchdown on the moon, in this still from the webcast.

The US-made  Odysseus lunar lander  has made a touchdown on the moon, surpassing its final key milestones — and the odds — to become the first commercial spacecraft to accomplish such a feat, but the condition of the lander remains in question.

Intuitive Machines, however, says the mission has been successful.

"I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting," Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus just announced on the webcast. "Welcome to the moon."

Odysseus is the first vehicle launched from the United States to land on the moon’s surface since the  Apollo 17 mission  in 1972.

Mission controllers from Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that developed the robotic explorer, confirmed the lander reached the lunar surface Thursday evening.

The uncrewed spacecraft traveled hundreds of thousands of miles from its Florida launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the moon before making its final, perilous swoop to the lunar surface.

Odysseus: "Welcome to the moon"

The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed  “Odie” or IM-1 , is on the moon's surface and transmitting, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus just announced on the webcast.

"I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting," Altemus said. "Welcome to the moon."

The exact state of the lander is not yet clear. But the company has confirmed it has made contact.

The Odysseus lander is "not dead yet"

Mission control is seen in this still from the livestreamed webcast.

Lunar landing missions typically offer moments of uncertainty. And though we're waiting for confirmation of communications, there have been some promising updates:

"We have an onboard fault detection system for our communications that after 15 minutes with lack of communication will power cycle the radios and then after that for another 15 minutes it will then switch antenna pairs, so we have some time here to evaluate," an Intuitive Machines flight controller said on the stream.

"We're not dead yet," they emphasized.

The company has also confirmed a "faint signal" — potentially representing signs of life from the spacecraft.

Intuitive Machines is troubleshooting communications after the expected landing time passes

The 6:24 p.m. ET landing time has come and gone.

Intuitive Machines knew it couldn't make contact with the lander right at the moment of touchdown, but expected to potentially have an answer shortly after.

It's now a waiting game to see whether Intuitive Machines can establish communications.

A good performance from Odysseus' engine

The webcast just announced that the engine is "nominal" — aerospace parlance for working as expected.

The spacecraft is functioning all on its own.

The expected landing time is 6:24 p.m. ET, though there could be wiggle room.

We could learn right at that time if Odysseus made a safe touchdown, or it could take a few minutes, according to the webcast.

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Moon landing goes sideways: Odysseus mission will be cut short after craft tipped over

The private u.s. spacecraft made it to the moon thursday and ushered in a new era of lunar missions since nasa's apollo program ended five decades ago. but the craft's sideways landing spelled doom..

hero's journey for the odyssey

Flight controllers are expected to lose contact Tuesday or Wednesday with the Odysseus lunar lander – just days after it toppled over while completing a historic moon landing .

The private U.S. spacecraft made it to the moon last Thursday and ushered in a new era of lunar missions since NASA's Apollo program ended five decades ago.

Then things went, well, sideways.

Intuitive Machines, the Houston space company that built Odysseus, said it's likely that the 14-foot-tall lander tipped over when it touched down on the moon after its foot caught on a rock . Fortunately for Intuitive Machines – and for NASA, the mission's primary customer – the lander maintained limited function even though its antennas were not pointed at Earth.

Mission controllers at the company rushed to gather as much data as they could, but they knew time was not on their side. Now, the energy-deprived spacecraft is expected to soon cease operating as its batteries drain and the sun moves across the sky away from its solar panels, Intuitive Machines said Monday .

On Tuesday morning, the company said the spacecraft had about 10 to 20 hours before losing contact.

Supermassive black hole: Massive sun-devouring quasar with black hole found 'hiding in plain sight'

What caused the lunar spacecraft to land on its side?

Odysseus was able to enter lunar orbit last Wednesday after separating from the SpaceX rocket, establishing communications with ground controller and powering onward to the moon .

When it finally came time to attempt a landing Thursday evening, the spacecraft failed to land on its six legs and instead came down on its side.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later confirmed the precise location of Odysseus' landing site, which serves as the southernmost location where any craft has ever landed on the moon, Intuitive Machines said. Based on the orbiter's photos, Odysseus landed within about a mile of its intended target near the Malapert A crater, just 185 miles from the moon’s south pole.

Officials at Intuitive Machines believe that the craft landed too fast and may have caught one of its six landing pads in the lunar surface, forcing it to topple. The landing strut may also have snapped. The overturned lander covered some antennas and left others near the ground, delaying the rate at which data can be received on Earth, Intuitive Machines said.

Lander sends back photos, collects data before demise

As of Monday, Odysseus was still in communication with flight controllers in Houston and was able to beam back the first images from the lunar surface, Intuitive Machines said.

Visuals: Odysseus tipped over and landed on its side on the moon's surface

Flight controllers intended to collect data until the lander's solar panels were no longer exposed to the sunlight and and the craft died, which was initially projected to be Tuesday morning, the company said. Even if it landed upright, Odysseus only had a week to operate on the surface before the long lunar night replaced the sun and brought in negative temperatures.

“Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light,” Intuitive Machines  posted Monday on social media site X .

NASA sent cargo aboard Odysseus for its own moon missions

As the primary customer on the lunar mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to take its scientific payloads to the moon for its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS.

The U.S. space agency has a budget of  $2.6 billion in contracts  available through 2028 to pay private companies like Intuitive Machines to transport scientific payloads on private robotic landers like Odysseus bound for the lunar surface.

Among the cargo were tools to test plume-surface interactions and measure both radio astronomy and space weather interactions with the lunar surface.

NASA had hoped the scientific instruments would be able to collect valuable data as it prepares to send astronauts back to the lunar surface for its  since-delayed  Artemis program. Now that the mission was cut a few days short, it's unclear how much valuable intel NASA was able to receive.

“This feat from Intuitive Machines, SpaceX, and NASA demonstrates the promise of American leadership in space and the power of commercial partnerships," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement a day after the landing. "Further, this success opens the door for new voyages under Artemis to send astronauts to the Moon, then onward to Mars.” 

Odysseus made landing near moon's south pole

The uncrewed Odysseus spacecraft touched down late Thursday on the surface of the moon , one week after launching aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Appropriately named for the Greek hero of Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey," the lander became the first built by a private company to make it to the moon. The landing also signaled America's return to the moon for the first time since NASA's Apollo program came to an end in 1972.

Intuitive Machines built and operated Odysseus to carry cargo for NASA and other private customers to the lunar surface for its  IM-1 mission . Formally called a Nova-C, the lander is a  hexagonal cylinder  with six legs that the space company  has operated  from a mission control center in Houston.

It landed near  Malapert A , a small crater about 190 miles from the moon's south pole region where water ice is thought to be abundant.

The substance's presence would be vital as NASA looks to establish a permanent human presence on and around the moon ahead of future  missions to Mars . Water ice would not only sustain astronauts on the surface, but would also be be a source of hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.

The landing came about a month after another U.S. company, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, attempted an uncrewed moon landing of its own with its Peregrine lander. However, the doomed mission encountered a critical fuel leak that ended with the spacecraft  burning up in Earth's atmosphere  days later.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

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CPH:DOX Competitor, Apache Doc Tribute ‘Phantoms of the Sierra Madre’ Added to DR Sales Slate

By Annika Pham

Annika Pham

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Phantoms of the Sierra Madre

Danish sales outfit DR Sales , attached to the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning doc “A New Kind of Wilderness,” has boarded another high-quality Norwegian documentary – “Phantoms of the Sierra Madre” by the multi-awarded Håvard Bustnes (“Raging Grannies,” “ Golden Dawn Girls ”).

The epic and self-reflective film, made in partnership with the Mescalero Apache Tribe, is due to world premiere in the main DOX:Award competition of Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX festival, running March 13-24.

In the film, established Danish screenwriter Lars K. Andersen (“The Sommerdahl Murders,” “Flame & Citron”) embarks on a quest to locate a disappeared Apache tribe in Mexico. His odyssey filmed by Bustnes is juxtaposed with rich archive material from Andersen’s childhood hero, Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad, who himself set out on the same adventure in 1937. Joining the eccentric Dane on his search for the lost Apache tribe is Pius, Geronimo’s great-grandson. Along the way, they encounter a Mexican family who suspiciously claim to be Geronimo descendants, and a Mexican intelligent agent who warns them against their endeavor. Why go on a quest to find a tribe which simply doesn’t want to be found?

Gradually Andersen and the director himself – occasionally in front of the camera – start to wrestle with ethical issues. As westerners and cultural outsiders, do they have the right to dig into the Apache’s past, present and engage in their narrative? Their project gets a further blow when the Danish Film Institute refuses to support it, on the ground of political correctness.

Their filmmaking journey takes an unexpected turn when they make an extraordinary and shocking find in the attic of Ingstad’s house in Norway: Apache sacred relics. The discovery reshapes their narrative, with its loaded truth about white men’s appropriation of indigenous culture and representation. It also gives the filmmaking team a chance to make amends.

But being naïve is also perhaps his strength, argues the director, who sees it as a way to stay open, let the magic of documentary filmmaking happen and sometimes uncover – as with this film – unexpected blind spots. “The hard thing is when we think we hold the truth,” Bustnes observes. “In Norway we tend to believe we were always on the right side of history, that we were never wrong – but looking back, it’s easy to see mistakes.“

Turning on Ingstad and his controversial confiscation of Apache relics, Bustnes says the legendary Norwegian explorer “was a humanistic and most certainly loved Apache people, yet he stole their sacred artefacts, and today we know that it was wrong and a show of disrespect for their importance – that’s unquestionable.”

“It’s the same with us filmmakers,” continues Bustnes, who bounces back on filmmakers’ right – or not – to tell certain stories. “There is a big risk that we forget our own blind spots and we need to be aware and honest about that. We need to be more conscious about performing with both caution and respect,” he says.

While admitting that “Phantoms of the Sierra Madre” was perhaps his most difficult and challenging film ever, the director pays tribute to Pius, who kept the project alive. “Pius had the legitimate right to look for his people in Mexico, and he insisted all along to get going. He also spoke to elder Apaches on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico, who wanted this film. They felt it was important for the next generation who aren’t familiar with the Apache people’s history.”

Until the end, at post-production stage in Finland, Bustnes searched for Pius’ approval to decide, whether or not “Phantoms” could exist. “We did a rough-cut screening with him; I was extremely nervous, but then he said: ‘This is a good movie!’”

A second decisive seal of approval came from the influential Runningwater, who was raised on the Mescalero reservation and has championed indigenous storytelling for more than 25 years. “He said it’s a great film, important to screen to the world. We were honored when he accepted to serve as executive producer,” Bustnes says.

Commenting on DR Sales’ pick up, Kim Christiansen, executive producer, in charge of documentaries and co-productions says: “Håvard is in our opinion a true documentary auteur, with a very progressive film language that always keeps his audience very engaged.”

In “Phantoms of the Sierra Madre,” Håvard is on uncertain ground in a new world order, making a reverse “Borat.” “The modern-day encounter between the two white Scandinavian guys [Bustnes and Andersen] with Native Apache Indians is beyond just a cultural clash,” argues Christiansen, for whom “the meeting peels off many layers of the post-modern discussion of cultural appropriation. We’re so proud of showcasing the film at CPH:DOX and anticipate a lot of hype around it,” he says.

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Two African Migrants’ Fantastical, Harrowing Odyssey in “Io Capitano”

hero's journey for the odyssey

By Justin Chang

People standing on sand dunes.

At one point in “Io Capitano,” a deeply moving drama about an odyssey through unknown lands, the Italian director Matteo Garrone undermines his own realism, to startlingly lyrical effect. Seydou (Seydou Sarr), a sixteen-year-old from Senegal, is one of several African migrants who have been walking for hours across a great stretch of the Sahara Desert, bound, they hope, for Italy. Some distance behind him, an older woman (Beatrice Gnonko) collapses from exhaustion, wailing, “ Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi! ” (“Help me! Help me!”) Seydou runs back to help, offering the woman water from his canteen and urging her to keep walking. But his cousin, Moussa (Moustapha Fall), tells him to keep moving, and suggests there’s nothing more that Seydou can do. If they lose sight of their party up ahead, they’ll be abandoned to a similar fate.

Here’s where that lyrical flourish occurs. Seydou does leave the woman behind, but before long he sees her, alive and well, smiling happily, and making her way through the desert alongside him. She isn’t walking; she’s levitating several feet above the ground, her hand clasped in Seydou’s as he leads her along. It’s quite a vision, a desert mirage—enchanting, funny, and perched riskily on the border of kitsch. But it’s a beautiful vision, too, not just because of a harmonious juxtaposition of wafting green garments, golden sand, and deep blue sky but also because of what it reveals about Seydou. He’s determined to help others even when he’s badly in need of help himself.

The moment surprised me, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. Garrone, now in his mid-fifties, made his reputation years ago as a purveyor of unsparing cinematic grit. He vaulted to international acclaim with “ Gomorrah ” (2008), a fearsome drama about the violence and destruction wrought by the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia. Its many admirers hailed it as, among other things, a stark corrective to the glamorizations of Mob life found in American gangster films and TV shows, from “ The Godfather ” to “ The Sopranos .”

Since then, though, Garrone has drifted indecisively between realism and fantasy, with erratic results. He has twice dipped into the wellspring of the extravagantly unreal, first with “ Tale of Tales ” (2015), a lavish, unwieldy English-language fantasy drawn from the writings of the seventeenth-century author Giambattista Basile, and then, in 2019, with a live-action adaptation of “Pinocchio,” with Roberto Benigni as Geppetto. In between came a return to scuzzy, sombre realism with “ Dogman ” (2018). Trickiest of all to classify was his 2012 effort, an amusing if curiously defanged satire of the Italian “Big Brother” TV craze, shot through with ostentatiously vulgar notes of Felliniesque decadence. Its title? “Reality.”

Now we have “Io Capitano,” which is nominated for an Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and which strikes me as Garrone’s finest, most trenchant and fully realized work since “Gomorrah.” It’s stirring not just as an intimate closeup of a migrant’s experience but as a reconciliation of dramatic and stylistic modes—a dexterous balancing act that speaks to a new ease and mastery in the director’s work.

There’s stealth in Garrone’s approach: for the most part, the story sticks to a low-key, rough-hewn verisimilitude. The film, which Garrone wrote with three others (Massimo Ceccherini, Massimo Gaudioso, and Andrea Tagliaferri), is mostly in Wolof, the most widely spoken language in Senegal, and was shot on location, primarily in Senegal and Morocco. It features a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors, chief among them Sarr, who won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor at last year’s Venice Film Festival.

Even from the start, however, when we encounter Seydou living in Dakar with his weary mother (Khady Sy) and rowdy younger siblings, there’s an unexpected shimmer of vibrancy. However bad things may get, and they will get very bad indeed, we sense that we will be held, even cradled, by a storyteller’s touch. The assurance is there in the exquisitely lit and richly hued images composed by the director of photography, Paolo Carnera, and also in the swift but faintly dreamlike dissolves that the editor Marco Spoletini employs as transitions between even the story’s most harrowing scenes. Those will come later; at the beginning, Seydou’s life in Dakar seems hard but bearable, even festive. An early scene of celebration finds him banging happily on the drums, his mother dancing ecstatically before a crowd.

But, as we soon learn, Seydou and Moussa have been planning to leave for some time. They dream of musical stardom, earning more money, making something of themselves. Not even the angry protests of Seydou’s mother, or a stranger’s ominous warnings of the dangers that lie ahead, can ultimately bar them from setting off on the long, arduous trek across the desert. Travelling by bus, in a desperately rickety truck, and on foot, they make their way through Mali and Niger to Libya, where their plan is to catch a boat that will carry them to Italy. The title (which means “I Captain”) hints at the momentous final leg of the journey.

Garrone tilts the story gradually toward inconvenience, discomfort, and deprivation, then sends it free-falling, with stomach-lurching intensity, into extremity and despair. Seydou and Moussa, who have been hoarding money for months, find their savings swiftly depleted as they pay for false Malian passports and bribe a border guard not to arrest them when the passports are spotted as fakes. But everything changes in the desert: suddenly, under the hot glare of the Saharan sun, the improbability that they will survive hits home, and the ensuing passages amount to a nearly unbroken survey of horrors. The cousins are threatened, menaced, and forcibly separated, and Seydou, his face battered and bloodied, lands in a Libyan prison, complete with a torture chamber. But, even here, Garrone keeps hope alive, introducing an older man (Issaka Sawagodo), who takes Seydou under his wing at his moment of gravest need.

This blessed deliverance may make you weep, and also hate yourself and Garrone a little for the weeping. It’s fair to ask if the filmmaker might be sentimentalizing, and thus trivializing, an experience that should exist beyond the reach of easy storytelling trickery. Those dissolves often seem to gloss over a not inconsiderable measure of intense suffering: backbreaking manual labor, beatings, possible torture. But we understand these reprieves, these cinematic breathers, as concessions to a classical narrative framework, and this has the effect of expanding rather than limiting our experience of Seydou’s struggles. We aren’t only witnessing a migrant’s ordeal; we’re also swept up in a hero’s journey.

Garrone, of course, is an Italian filmmaker telling a Senegalese migrant’s story, an incongruity—or, as I prefer to think of it, a welcome act of empathetic imagination—that he has made no attempt to hide in interviews: “I’m Italian, I’m white. This is not my world,” he told Variety last fall. “There was a risk of getting it wrong, or of seeming like I was exploiting it.” But, if “Io Capitano” sometimes evades, it never exploits. It keeps us close beside Seydou, and it discovers its most lasting impressions and deepest meanings in Sarr’s wondrous performance. An effortlessly commanding screen presence, Sarr articulates, through nimble physicality and extraordinary openness of spirit, so much of what defines Seydou: his peacemaking temperament, his refusal to tolerate other people’s suffering, his ability to take root and thrive in new soil. His final moments onscreen are marked by a tremendous release of emotion, and the end of Seydou’s journey reveals itself, in a burst of anxiety, relief, and hard-won joy, to be just the beginning. ♦

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IMAGES

  1. The Odyssey Hero's Journey

    hero's journey for the odyssey

  2. Follow Odysseus on his Journey with this Epic Teacher Guide!

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  3. Odysseus's Hero Journey Storyboard by cschatz

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  4. The Odyssey

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  5. 🌷 Odyssey heros journey. Hero’s Journey Steps: 10 Stages to Joseph

    hero's journey for the odyssey

  6. THE Story of Our Time (Emergence of the Unimyth from Monomyth)

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VIDEO

  1. The Hero's Journey

  2. Todd Edwards

  3. BTD6 Odyssey || Hard Mode Guide || No Monkey Knowledge + No Hero (Obyns Gardening Tour)

  4. Andreas M. Resch

  5. Tribute to Journey Odyssey Road Tech Rehersal

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COMMENTS

  1. The Odyssey Hero's Journey

    The Odyssey hero's journey follows the 12 steps perfectly. Odysseus is called to adventure, causing him to leave his hometown, and must conquer many challenges and obstacles during his epic journey. Eventually, he makes his journey home after his supreme ordeal. What is the hero's journey in The Odyssey?

  2. Odysseus and The 12 Stages of a Hero's Journey

    After our hero angers Poseidon, a storm throws him off course. Odysseus is faced with many tests as he travels back to Ithaca, Polyphemus, Circones, the Lotus eaters ,Lastrygonians, Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the Cattle of the Sun God. Athena, a goddess, constantly saves Odysseus from death and gives him gifts to help on his journey.

  3. Odysseus

    Feb. 23, 2024, 10:16 PM ET (AP) Odysseus, hero of Homer 's epic poem the Odyssey and one of the most frequently portrayed figures in Western literature. According to Homer, Odysseus was king of Ithaca, son of Laertes and Anticleia (the daughter of Autolycus of Parnassus), and father, by his wife, Penelope, of Telemachus.

  4. Odysseus: Greek Hero of the Odyssey

    Odysseus' journey home was as tormenting as it was eventful thanks to the influence of the gods. Following Homeric tradition, the Odyssean gods were swayed by emotions and took easily to offense. Duty, pettiness, and lust drove the gods of the Odyssey to interfere with the hero's journey home to rugged Ithaca.

  5. The Hero's Journey in The Odyssey: How Odysseus Transforms the Mythical

    The Hero's Journey in The Odyssey. According to schorlar Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey is a narrative pattern present in many myths and stories from various cultures around the world. It consists of twelve stages that the hero goes through in their quest for transformation or knowledge. In The Odyssey, Odysseus undertakes this journey ...

  6. Epic Explorations: Teaching the 'Odyssey' With The New York Times

    Examples include the cartoonist Roz Chast's take on the hero's journey, Brian Gordon's modern take on the Sirens, Lapham's Quarterly Odyssey Game (tagline: "lose years, gain strength ...

  7. Odyssey

    Odyssey, epic poem in 24 books traditionally attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer.The poem is the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who wanders for 10 years (although the action of the poem covers only the final six weeks) trying to get home after the Trojan War.On his return, he is recognized only by his faithful dog and a nurse. With the help of his son, Telemachus, Odysseus destroys ...

  8. Heroism in the Odyssey: Through the Epic Hero Odysseus

    One of the indelible marks of an epic is the heroes it celebrates. The Odyssey highlighted the heroic pursuits of Odysseus, who, because of his gumption and bravery and with a little help from gods and goddesses, surmounted the grueling and demanding tasks he needed to accomplish. Heroism in the Odyssey was shown in the following: Odysseus ...

  9. The Odyssey: Full Poem Summary

    Full Poem Summary. Ten years have passed since the fall of Troy, and the Greek hero Odysseus still has not returned to his kingdom in Ithaca. A large and rowdy mob of suitors who have overrun Odysseus's palace and pillaged his land continue to court his wife, Penelope. She has remained faithful to Odysseus. Prince Telemachus, Odysseus's son ...

  10. The Odyssey: Full Poem Analysis

    The Odyssey tells the story of a heroic but far from perfect protagonist who battles many antagonists, including his own inability to heed the gods' warnings, on his arduous journey home from war. Along the way the poem explores ideas about fate, retribution, and the forces of civilization versus savagery. While The Odyssey is not told chronologically or from a single perspective, the poem ...

  11. Odysseus Character Analysis in The Odyssey

    Odysseus. Odysseus has the defining character traits of a Homeric leader: strength, courage, nobility, a thirst for glory, and confidence in his authority. His most distinguishing trait, however, is his sharp intellect. Odysseus's quick thinking helps him out of some very tough situations, as when he escapes from the cave of the Cyclops in ...

  12. A Hero's Journey: The Odyssey Flashcards

    Palamedes convinces Odysseus to fight. Later (20 years), Athena advocates for Odysseus' release from Ogygia, mentors Telemachus, and oversees Odysseus' journey home. Crossing the First Threshold: The hero commits to adventure, fully enters Special World, no turning back. Odysseus agrees to honor his oath and leaves Ithaca to fight the Trojan War.

  13. Archetypes in the Odyssey: What Are Their Unique Differences?

    There are three kinds of key archetypes in the Odyssey: hero, monster, and search for love. The story of the poem revolves around the struggles that the main hero, Odysseus, faced on his journey back home. With this, there are also a lot of supporting character archetypes present throughout the poem.

  14. Joseph Campbell & The Hero's Journey

    Stage 1: Separation. In the first stage of the hero's journey, we find our protangonist living life in a typically mundane situation.The Star Wars, Luke Skywalker lives as a talented yet lowly and pretty damn whiny moisture farmer on Tatooine. Until… 1. Call to Adventure - By some chance the hero will become aware of information or actions that call for them to go on a quest.

  15. The Odyssey and the Hero's Journey by Gregory Smith

    The Journey - Odysseus is called to the Trojan War. Seeing as the war lasted for upwards of 10 years, Ithaca needed a new ruler. Many suitors came to try and take the throne by marrying Penelope. Through his journey Odysseus learns that he needs patience for certain situations.

  16. The 12 Steps of the Hero's Journey, WIth Example

    The hero's journey typically involves a series of specific steps that the hero must take to achieve their goal or complete their quest. The fundamental steps include: ... The Odyssey by Homer; The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin; The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien; The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins; The Lion, ...

  17. Hero's Journey: Odyssey Flashcards

    Freedom to Live. When Athena refuses the suitors to get revenge on Odysseus, he finally has the free will to live with out fighting or having any trouble. Hero's journey that Odysseus (hero) goes through in the Odyssey! Learn with flashcards, games, and more — for free.

  18. The Hero's Journey Of Odysseus: A Monomyth Guide to the Iliad and

    Many people associate the "Hero's Journey" as synonymous with The Monomyth. Both, historical and modern storytellers have used it as an approach to analyze narratives and develop new plots and characters for contemporary audiences. According to Campbell, the Monomyth follows a three-act structure. In the first act, The Separation, a hero ...

  19. The Hero's Journey: How to Leverage the Most Powerful Story Structure

    To put your hero at a disadvantage, remove one of life's most common advantages: A solid set of parents, traditionally one's first allies. Doing this will instill your story with readymade conflict from page one. 3. A Principled but Boring Life. Many elements of the Ordinary World are obvious.

  20. 5.2 The Monomyth: Understanding the Seventeen Stages of the Hero's Journey

    Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, while based on his study of mythology around the world, can be applied to more than just myth. In fact, it's applied to film frequently. One of the clearest examples of Campbell's Hero's Journey is none other than George Lucas's film Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). To this film we now turn.

  21. The Odyssey: Write Your Hero's Journey (Narrative Writing)

    After reading The Odyssey, students will write their own hero's journey narrative using Joseph Campbell's twelve steps of the hero's journey. Although students may choose to write a story set in Greek mythology, they can choose any setting for their story. Before writing, the students will discuss the hero journey in the Odyssey and popular books and movies.

  22. Hero's journey

    Illustration of the hero's journey. In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, also known as the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.. Earlier figures had proposed similar concepts, including psychoanalyst Otto Rank and amateur anthropologist Lord ...

  23. The Hero's Journey

    Sunday, February 18, 2024. Richard Rohr uses the framework of the "hero's journey" to describe the path of spiritual transformation. He points to The Odyssey as a powerful metaphor: The universe story and the human story are a play of forces rational and nonrational, conscious and unconscious, involving fate and fortune, nature and nurture.

  24. Odysseus becomes first US spacecraft to land on moon in over 50 years

    The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed "Odie" or IM-1, became the first US-made spacecraft to touch down on the moon in 50 years.

  25. Odysseus moon lander tipped over, will lose power in hours

    Total solar eclipse Efrain Hidalgo's journey Dream Chaser details Start ... Appropriately named for the Greek hero of Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey," the lander became the first built by a ...

  26. DR Sales Boards Apache CPH:DOX-Bound 'Phantoms of the Sierra Madre'

    His odyssey filmed by Bustnes is juxtaposed with rich archive material from Andersen's childhood hero, Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad, who himself set out on the same adventure in 1937.

  27. Two African Migrants' Fantastical, Harrowing Odyssey in "Io Capitano"

    At one point in "Io Capitano," a deeply moving drama about an odyssey through unknown lands, the Italian director Matteo Garrone undermines his own realism, to startlingly lyrical effect ...