Harry Potter: An Archetypal Hero\u27s Journey in Four Books

All stories told in myths, be they Greek, Norse or Celt, are retellings of the same small number of stories, just in different languages and different settings. Joseph Campbell, one of the foremost mythology scholars in the 20th century establishes the archetypal ‘monomyth’ of the hero in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. According to Campbell, the ‘archetypal myths’ are, to name three, the Creation Myth, the Virgin Birth and the Hero’s Journey. The stories I will be focusing on is the archetypal hero’s story, in the version told by J.K. Rowling in her series of books, beginning with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer\u27s Stone, currently the most popular piece of young people’s literature. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer\u27s Stone, as well as the other books in the series, deals with the archetypal hero’s journey as it describes the adventures of the character Harry Potter