Using the Hero’s Journey to Get Through a Pandemic

By the time you come to the end of reading this post, the situation may have already changed. We’re in the midst of something unprecedented right now with the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the course of a week we’ve gone from business as usual to spiked numbers, massive shifts to work-from-home, company closures, schools moving online, and restaurants going to take-out only. New terms like “de-densifying” and “social distancing” have become a part of our vocabulary. Some countries have sealed borders. Some cities in the U.S. have already enacted “shelter in place” initiatives. And while there are still high spirits, there’s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty as to what’s to come.

I’m a writer, so my outlook on reality is a bit skewed, in that one part of me lives life while the writer part of me stands back and processes it. I’ve also been working on another project about storytelling, and in taking a closer look at the Hero’s Journey, the classic framework for storytelling, I realized that we fit right in.

The Hero’s Journey

Storytelling has been around as long as humans have been human, and some basic structures and storylines always appeared just because they settled well with us, or because our brains responded to those structures. (Who knows why?) Those stories from mythology, religious tradition, and epic poetry began to be studied in the 19th century for patterns, and in 1949 Joseph Campbell codified the Hero’s Journey framework in his work The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

You already know it. If I were to ask you to detail a classic story, you would probably say something like: There’s a main character, they go on an adventure, they defeat an obstacle, and return home.

While Campbell’s Hero’s Journey includes seventeen steps, I’ll just go over a few main ones for you:

The Ordinary World

“Once upon a time…” This is the opening of the story, when we find the hero or protagonist living in the Ordinary, or Known, World. Life is status quo, until…

The Call to Adventure or Action

Something happens here — called the call to adventure, or the inciting incident — that confronts the character. It could be a natural disaster or an invasion, or it could be as simple as an invitation to a party at Gatsby’s mansion. Something happens that confronts the main character with a decision.

Refusing the Call

Initially they refuse it. They either don’t think they’re up to the task, or want to stay in the Known World for loyalty or duty.

A Mentor AppearsHmm… Sudden Obi-Wan Kenobi or Morpheus appears, and helps the hero see that they can go on their journey.

Crossing into the Unknown World

The hero decides to embark on the adventure or journey, and travels into the Unknown World. It’s not a world that the hero knows or understands, and maybe confused by or outwitted in. According to Campbell, it’s “a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, super human deeds, and impossible delight.” The hero must acclimate to this new world, learn its rules, and become a master of it before they’re allowed to return.

Ordeals and Trials

It’s in this world where the hero must face trials, ordeals, battles, and conflict, either from outside themselves or within. The hero, now surrounded by friends and aware of their enemies, journeys through the Unknown World’s tests and tribulations towards the biggest test of all.

Final Vanquishing

We’re at the climax of the story now, where the hero comes to the final test: slaying the dragon, slaying the final exam, or slaying the demons in their own mind. Once the hero wins the day, they experience a kind of enlightenment or apotheosis, or simply learn a lesson about themselves or the world.

The Return to the Known World

At first, like with the call to adventure, the hero refuses the call to return, since they’ve grown accustomed to their current world. But once they return to the Known World, they’ve brought with them experience and knowledge from the Unknown World. It may allow them to change the people around them now, or it may have just led to their change alone.

March 2020: You Are Here

If we apply the Hero’s Journey to our current situation with COVID-19, we have just entered the Unknown World. There was an inciting incident or call to action (the virus outbreak) that led us to journey into a new realm of business closures, school modifications, social distancing, and more. We’re not used to it, and we’re fumbling, and it’s unfamiliar. Other nations are in the Unknown World as well, facing trials and ordeals as they navigate this. But if you look to China, they’re returning to the Known World, having overcome the challenges, but using their knowledge gained in the Unknown World to alter things going forward.

Keep the Hero’s Journey in mind this week. We may be facing trials and ordeals in the Unknown World, but the story says that we’ll get back someday, changed for the better.