The Hero's Journey

What makes a hero?

A hero could be defined as someone who overcomes great trial and tribulation in order to achieve his destiny. He is courageous and is the epitome of all that is good... 

In English this week, we have exploring what makes a hero. We have been creating our own superhero's and then considered some of the reasons why they are used in stories. Superhero's help us to see some of the best qualities that exist in people and to help teach us that we can be better people.

An author named James Campbell has written a book called "The hero with a Thousand Faces". He analysed many different stories about heroes including superheroes, and found that there were similarities in the stories. The following video shows the outline of what has been called the "The Hero's Journey".

It explains that the Journey has twelve parts as shown by this diagram:

To help understand how this journey is represented in a story, we watched the movie "Big Hero Six". This is a story about a young boy who becomes the hero of the story. This comes about as a result of his brother's death. His brother was creating a robot, Baymax that would help people. The outcome is that Baymax helps Hero to not only learn to forgive but to realise his destiny.

It was encouraging to see Years 5 and 6 students start to apply the stages of the story to the Hero's Journey model. As we discussed the story, we also discovered that their was a back story of the villain or the antagonist. The students were able to give other examples of how in the hero's story that there is another story being told too. 

At the end of the discussion, one student's comment was "that it was all really interesting!" 

The next part of this will be to have the students map the story on a story map and then discuss what they felt the different phases of the story were. 

Who is your favourite hero? What was his or her journey?