"I can't believe we get to see this movie in an English class," one of my students announced right before I dimmed the lights.I had carefully prepared this moment, I thought. I had lectured for three days on the hero cycle, explaining that Carl Jung believed that each of us was "pre-wired" to appreciate the seventeen stages of the archetypal story.* I emphasized that Joseph Campbell wanted every Regular Joe—i.e., all of us in the class—to heed the call to adventure and complete the stages, that the cycle wasn't just for mythological characters like Odysseus returning home from the war in Troy. I assigned poems and short stories in the literature reader that demonstrated portions of the cycle. I showed clips of movies and played songs from different genres—rock to rap to country—to illustrate stages like "Belly of the Whale," "Atonement with the Father," and "Rescue from Without." I even made them write short pieces on how they believed episodes of their own lives matched up to responsibilities the hero must complete. Now I wanted them to see all seventeen stages represented in a single work. But if the teacher isn't showing an adaptation of Shakespeare or one of those Merchant & Ivory snooze-o-ramas, then students think that the movie is somehow inappropriate for an English class.
No matter, I won't be using The Matrix again—not because of student perception, but because this time as we watched it, I finally figured out how the movie met all of the characteristics of Campbell's hero cycle. When I have shown the film in the past, I always felt that I was fudging when we got to the stages of Return, but now I believe I can illustrate each portion of the cycle with a scene from the movie. I have tried to find someone, somewhere, on the web who has done just that, but all that I have discovered is a writer's claim that the movie meets all seventeen stages; I can't find anyone who actually does a blow-by-blow analysis.
Someone needs to try it, so here goes.
Departure, Stage 1: The Call to Adventure
The hero must first receive a "call to adventure." According to Campbell, the call is typically heard someplace remote, at the edge of the hero's known world. A herald appears, often someone dark, terrifying, or loathly, sometimes a beast. The call requires travel out of the hero's comfort zone and promises not only treasure but also danger. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell uses the frog from the Grimm Brothers story "The Frog Prince" as his example of this stage. The frog asks the princess to try a less conventional life, one that includes an amphibian as a companion. Campbell notes that a beast is "representative of the repressed instinctual fecundity within ourselves." In class, I always show the clip from Star Wars, Episode IV, when a dark-robed Obi-Wan Kenobi, who lives alone at the edge of civilization, rescues Luke Skywalker and the droids from the Sand People and invites Luke to learn the ways of the Force and help fight the Empire.
In The Matrix, Neo receives his call when his maverick computer advises him to follow the white rabbit, a cryptic message until he spots the tattoo on the shoulder of a woman at his door. He finds himself in a club where his behavior indicates his lack of comfort there at the edge of his known world: while Troy's gang sprawl on the furniture enjoying the booming music, chemical substances, and each other's company, Neo leans alone against a wall, nursing a drink—until, that is, Trinity approaches. Dressed in skin-tight black leather and moving with animal grace, Trinity, though beautiful, is reptilian, nicely meeting the qualifications of the herald and signifying Neo's "ripeness" for change. And like Obi-Wan, Trinity comes with an invitation, offering the answer to the question that drives Neo, "What is the Matrix?"Departure, Stage 2: Refusal of the Call
Every potential hero will at first turn down the invitation to adventure. Campbell claims that too many people believe their lives are "fixed" and "to be made secure" instead of seeing their futures as "an unremitting series of deaths and births." They are unwilling to venture out of their comfort zones and face new challenges. Some people never accept the call and lose "the power of significant affirmative action."
I have always thought that the refusal of the call was also a sign of intelligence and a "balanced soul," two things the hero will need once the journey begins in earnest. In the Phaedrus, my boy Plato equates the soul with a two-horse chariot. One horse represents the appetites; all that animal wants to do is fill its belly grazing. It resents the harness and work ahead. The second horse, on the other hand, is a spirited beast, representing courage, and is straining to rush off to the battlefield. The driver who steers the chariot equals reason and should be in charge, especially if he wants to avoid flipping over as the vehicle bounces along unpaved terrain. To attain control, reason must whip the appetites into meaningful action while reining in the impulses to jump in without thinking. So if the hero immediately announced, "Okay, let's go!" when he received the call, he would be indicating that his reason was not under control [a bad way to start a dangerous adventure]. But by refusing the call, weighing the risks and benefits of the adventure, he shows that he has the intelligence to face the many challenges ahead.
At the beginning of The Matrix, Neo declines the adventure every chance he gets. When Troy invites Neo to the club, Neo says, "I can't. I have work tomorrow," although spying the white rabbit tattoo inspires Neo to change his mind. The next day, Morpheus tries by cell phone to help Neo escape the Agents who have tracked him down at work, but when Neo realizes he will have to use scaffolding to climb to the building's roof, he announces, "I can't do this" and allows the Agents to capture him. During his interrogation, when Agent Smith offers Neo a different adventure, helping to bring in the "terrorist" Morpheus, Neo turns him down as well: "How about I give you the finger and you give me my phone call." And when Switch demands that Neo remove his shirt on the way to meeting Morpheus in person, Neo almost leaves the car rather than comply. If Trinity hadn't been there to say, "You've already taken that road," the path back to his lonely apartment and sleepless nights combing the Internet, Neo might have lost his chance to complete the hero cycle.Departure, Stage 3: Supernatural Aid
"For those who have not refused the call," claims Campbell, "the first encounter ... is with a protective figure ... who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass." Campbell also assigns these characteristics to supernatural aid: the helper is usually masculine and peripheral, a wizard, hermit, shepherd, or the like. Sometimes this supernatural aid will act as a guide who accompanies the hero on his journey. In The Matrix, Morpheus fits this role nicely. The red pill he offers is the magical charm Neo needs to start his adventure; Morpheus' continued presence ensures Neo's success during many of the stages that are to come.Departure, Stage 4: Crossing of the First Threshold
Here in Florida, I have no problem meeting any of my needs. I know where everything is, including the cleanest Publix and the gas station with the cheapest fuel. And if construction or an accident closes a road, I can confidently arrange a detour. Florida is my area of expertise. I also know that Africa exists, though I have never been there. I have seen it depicted in film, on television, in magazines. As soon as I disembarked from a flight to Cairo, however, I would have left my comfort zone [magazines in English, restrooms at the front of the plane] and would find myself in a world where I had no skills. Sure, there would be taxis, but I wouldn't know the language to converse with the drivers. Of course there would be restaurants and hotels, but I wouldn't know the direction to go to find them. I would be outside my area of expertise.
To illustrate the crossing of the first threshold, I showed my students a 30-second clip from The Fellowship of the Ring, the first movie in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sam and Frodo are walking through a field when Frodo realizes that Sam has stopped in his tracks. Sam explains his paralysis like this: "If I take one more step, it'll be the furthest away from home I've ever been." Frodo encourages Sam to cross that imaginary division line between what Sam recognizes and the Great Unknown that awaits them both.In The Matrix, Neo must recognize his old life even as the mirror flows down his throat. When he opens his eyes in the goo-filled pod, however, he has crossed the first threshold. Campbell describes the demarcation like this: "[The hero] comes to ... the entrance zone of magnified power. Beyond ... is darkness, the unknown, and danger." Where am I? What just happened? What are these wires connected to my limbs? These are the questions Neo must be struggling to answer. He does not have the skill to release himself; an insect-like android takes care of that responsibility, flushing him into darkness.
Departure, Stage 5: Belly of the Whale
After crossing the first threshold, Campbell says that the hero "is swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died." Thomas Anderson and his life as corporate cog by day, hacker by night is over. A new life aboard the Nebuchadnezzar awaits. In a really nice touch, the ship hovers over his prostate body like a steel whale, the belly of which opens so that a mechanized apparatus can scoop the poor boy up and swallow him inside.Next ... the six stages of Initiation!
*This class I'm teaching requires that students get two things: an introduction to literature and the skills to write a correct, longish research paper. Those loose parameters give faculty lots of flexibility. Some of my colleagues have all of their degrees in literature and treat the course as if the students were sophomore English majors. Not only do these instructors spend lots of class time explaining rhyme schemes, symbolism, the components of plot, etc., but they also require that students write a literary research paper [author biography, critical analyses of key works, etc.]. Others of us recognize that the course is required of all AA-degree-seeking students, most of whom have no interest in becoming English majors, and emphasize the production of the research paper [topic of each student's own choosing]. In the past, I have intentionally devoted so much time to the research paper that in the three or four weeks remaining at semester's end, I had time only to discuss a handful of short stories—and very superficially at that.
This semester, however, I realized that literature didn't have to be taught from an English department's perspective, that we could use a multi-discipline approach and make it meaningful to everyone in the room, no matter their individual majors. So I have used the hero cycle as our focus for the literature unit. Jung claims that "the human psyche possesses a common substratum transcending all differences in culture and consciousness"; this collective unconscious gives all of us a similar fantasy life and innate appreciation for certain archetypal stories like the hero cycle.
Understanding the cycle, seeing its influence on television programs like Lost, movies as diverse as Gladiator and Finding Nemo, and popular music, will give students an appreciation for all art forms that they encounter. In a conversation with future bosses at a company picnic, they can say something intelligent like "Character X would have had much more impact if Character Y hadn't tempted him off his path" instead of "Yeah, fast cars! Cool explosions! Great boobs on Actress Z!"
