The context for this class is to look at the Campbell model of a hero's journey. So, naturally, one of the many things I pondered throughout the novel was how to fit the journey into Campbell's model. While the novel seems to have elements of the hero's journey, however, I can't really wrap my head around how to view this as a full hero's journey.
Most of the elements of the journey are skewed and/or ambiguous. The main character, Macon, seems to go through several parts of the journey before the novel begins. He has his ordinary world in Boston, where he grows up under general white privilege. However, he renounces his white privilege, teaching himself as much as he possibly can about black culture in America. He then enters the unknown of New York, even though it isn't really too much more different than Boston, and he's essentially doing exactly the same sorts of things he did in his ordinary world. He goes through various trials at an attempt to shame white people for their privilege, and ends up in a confusing situation where he enters a different unknown of the south after having refused the quest once the going got tough from his day of apology, and then he dies in the final ordeal and nothing really gets accomplished.
Most of the elements of the journey are skewed and/or ambiguous. The main character, Macon, seems to go through several parts of the journey before the novel begins. He has his ordinary world in Boston, where he grows up under general white privilege. However, he renounces his white privilege, teaching himself as much as he possibly can about black culture in America. He then enters the unknown of New York, even though it isn't really too much more different than Boston, and he's essentially doing exactly the same sorts of things he did in his ordinary world. He goes through various trials at an attempt to shame white people for their privilege, and ends up in a confusing situation where he enters a different unknown of the south after having refused the quest once the going got tough from his day of apology, and then he dies in the final ordeal and nothing really gets accomplished.
Overall, the story arc is confusing, and trying to fit the story into a hero's journey model is even more confusing. Part of the reason I believe that is is because I don't really know what Macon is trying to accomplish. Is his goal equal rights? Black separatism? Ending white privilege? Shaming white people for their privilege? Throughout, Macon also seems to be battling with these thoughts; he seems to be as clueless as I am as to what his journey is about.
Between how skewed the elements of Macon's journey are and how even he doesn't seem to know his end goal, and the fact that the end of the novel doesn't really accomplish any goals whatsoever, I have a really hard time fitting this into the paradigm of the hero's journey. Is anyone else able to fit this strange story into the model of a hero's journey? I personally just don't see it.
Between how skewed the elements of Macon's journey are and how even he doesn't seem to know his end goal, and the fact that the end of the novel doesn't really accomplish any goals whatsoever, I have a really hard time fitting this into the paradigm of the hero's journey. Is anyone else able to fit this strange story into the model of a hero's journey? I personally just don't see it.
I definitely agree that this is novel is really hard to understand. I think on some level that's intentional, with Macon as this character that seems to at least think of himself as a hero, but whose actual intentions are really ambiguous. I think the last scene is particularly challenging to understand because even at the very end, Macon still isn't sure what his goal is -- he dies for something, which is maybe what he wanted, but no one (including himself) knows what that something was.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Macon's journey does not match that of Campbell's Hero's Journey Paradigm is in part why most of us have so much trouble thinking of him as a hero. The Hero's Journey as laid out by Campbell is not only the path that most heroes follow, but in part what makes them a hero in our eyes.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the hero's journey arc was harder to see in this book than any other we've read this semester. This actually makes me think back to Shakespeare class and Freytag's pyramid, as I feel like this novel takes a more tragic arc than a comic one, as the ending seems to be more catastrophe than resolution. The first half of the book contains a lot of rising action, as Macon rises to fame, his ideas are being heard, and his Day of Apology actually happens. However, the plot starts to spiral downward as everything starts to fall apart, and then Macon flees to the south, and the book ends with his death. Therefore, I think it makes sense that Macon doesn't seem to fit the hero's journey paradigm very well, because his story seems more tragic than comic (by the standards of ancient Greek and Shakespearean drama).
ReplyDeleteI agree. I really struggled to understand how Macon was a hero. I think that as the story moves forward, it gets more and more distant from the hero's journey that we saw in other books. I agree, also, that a lot of Macon's journey seems to have happened. He's already gotten into his unknown. Also, Macon doesn't just lack a strong goal, he has a pretty awful way of accomplishing it which makes it even more difficult to think of him as a hero.
ReplyDeleteI don't think,under the actual plot of the book, that Macon was a hero in anyway. I think what Mansbach is getting at is that Macon had all the potential to be a hero, but he let his ego and his pride get in the way. Being a hero is about caring for others and helping them over yourself. Macon just helps himself by helping other people. If Macon had made slightly different choices, he could have made a very strong positive impact on the community.
ReplyDeleteAll the same, the textbook example of a hero, our boy Odysseus, has all the same characteristics as Macon yet he was viewed far more favorably than Macon. He screws all his followers just like Macon and views them through a paternalistic lens in the same way as Macon approaches some things in what could be argued to be a bit of a white savior attitude. I think Macon is written to take the piss out of the classic Odysseus-type hero while all the same exhibiting a lot of the same qualities.
DeleteI think that Mansbach was at least trying to execute a satire of the hero's journey paradigm. We see this reflected in the crazy refusals of the quest and overall avant garde quality to the antics in the novel. The repeated escalation of events and craziness of the overall plot really emphasized the overarching satire of the novel, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteNice post! Through reading the novel, I also had trouble pinpointing specific aspects of the hero's journey to Macon's story, and as a result I had trouble fully coming to terms with Macon as a hero. I feel like one of Mansbach's points was to make the journey an ambiguous one and also to make it so that Macon was a controversial hero in order to further satirize the idea of a hero, especially one in terms of fighting racism.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the novel gets progressively more bizarre until it kind of spirals out of control at the end. Macon in the first place is supposed to be a kind of bizarre character I think--like Mansbach is almost writing a dystopia and pointing out that in our society a white person obsessed with black culture and black peoples' rights is completely abnormal.
ReplyDeleteYou do a great job at describing Macon's hero's journey and brought to light the interesting point that Macon has already completed a part of his journey before the book has begun. Is it possible that Macon's hero's journey is actually multiple journeys frames together (learning about black culture, moving to New York, and robbing people)?
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that it's hard to place Macon as a hero. While he technically follows aspects of the Campbell's Hero's Journey archetype, there is almost nothing heroic about him as a person. If we saw him in our own lives, I think heroic is not a word I'd use to describe him.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's hard to think of Macon as a hero of this book. He thinks of himself as a hero, and does some things similar to Campbell's archetype, but in my mind he still isn't a hero.
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