I have seen numerous blog posts
about how Anse fits the Campbell paradigm, but I thought it might be fun to see
all the ways he completely missed the mark. To preface, I am not saying that
Anse is not the hero of the story, but I am trying to show the different ways (according
to Campbell) that his journey fails to fit the criteria. Examples of Anse’s
journey straying from the Campbell paradigm range from his lack of decision
making to his general lack of character development.
The first
example of Anse not following the Campbell paradigm relates to the “Refusal of
the Quest” and “Accepting the Call”. In some crazy way, Anse manages to do neither
of those things. When the novel starts, we are simply told that it was Addie’s
last wish to be buried with her family in the city, and Anse never truly
challenges her. Yet at the same time, Anse does not fully accept the call
either. We learn early in the novel that he is slow to making decisions, and I
never felt that Anse fully went along with this journey. There were times when
he had to be prodded by Dewey Dell to continue the quest, something that I
would not expect from a hero that had “accepted the call”. It is Anse’s
unheroic quality of indecision that put him a spot between refusal and
acceptance.
Another way
that Anse fails Campbell’s paradigm is with respect to allies and helpers. In
the Odyssey, for example, Odysseus was helped by nearly every person he met,
and he used the hospitality to further his journey. On the other hand, Anse
would never be “beholden to no man” and thus he pushed away any outside help he
could have gotten. Other than the chance to sleep in some family barns, Anse
did his best to push away all other help, even going so far as to turn down an
offer of mules. In some ways, Anse’s stubborn mentality seems heroic, but it
still strays from the hero’s journey paradigm.
The final
difference between Anse’s journey and Campbell’s, relates to the changes the
hero went through over the duration of the journey. In most hero narratives, there
are drastic improvements in the appearance and actions of the protagonist, but
in the case of Anse, the changes were only physical. At the very end of novel,
he gets a new haircut and teeth, but he is still the clueless Anse we met at
the beginning of the book. He never really changes from his absurd ways, and in
that regards, Anse’s journey is very different from that of Odysseus and
countless other heroes. Although there are numerous examples of how Anse’s
journey fits the Campbell paradigm, I think the differences are even more
important. They help to show how the journey itself is epic and heroic, but
Anse is not the right fit to lead the quest.
