Telemachus: the Real Hero

This essay will dissect Joseph Campbell’s Cosmogonic Cycle’s description of a hero. But what is a hero? Joseph Campbell defines a hero as one who takes a journey over land, through the mind, or of memory but one that comes out a changed man at the end of it. This essay will explain how Telemachus meets all of the standards that Joseph Campbell has set and therefore is a hero. He does not quite meet all of Campbell’s set standards, but he is still hero-like because he does all of what he needs to with maturity and finesse that only a hero could possess. Telemachus sees that he needs to go and see where his father has been, so he takes that as his “Call to Adventure,” so he sets of to go find clues about his father’s whereabouts. During this journey he encounters many trials such as tempting offers from kings, if he is ever to achieve hero status he will need to resist temptations and survive the adventures that he will take. Telemachus does not truly fulfill all of the steps of the Cosmogonic Cycle; but, he is still a universal hero.
This section will explain steps one through three on the Cosmogonic Cycle. Those steps include: Meeting the hero, the call to adventure, and the meeting of the guide of the adventure. Starting with the hero being introduced and when he was introduced for the first time he was weeping about his father being gone for so long while suitors were trying to take his mother’s hand in marriage and the kingdom having no stable authoritative figure. This image here shows that he needs to mature as a person before he can even begin his adventure. Also with him being this immature it shows that he does have room for growth, and a lot of it, which if he wants to become a hero, he will need to do. His herald is his mother who tells him that he should do what he can to see if he can find out anything about the whereabouts of his missing father. This is a wake-up call for him because it gives him the courage and the inspiration to go out and find out