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The Hero with a Thousand Faces Paperback – March 21, 1972

by Joseph Campbell (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 6,802 ratings
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Joseph Campbell's classic cross-cultural study of the hero's journey has inspired millions and opened up new areas of research and exploration. Originally published in 1949, the book hit the New York Times best-seller list in 1988 when it became the subject of The Power of Myth, a PBS television special.


The first popular work to combine the spiritual and psychological insights of modern psychoanalysis with the archetypes of world mythology, the book creates a roadmap for navigating the frustrating path of contemporary life. Examining heroic myths in the light of modern psychology, it considers not only the patterns and stages of mythology but also its relevance to our lives today--and to the life of any person seeking a fully realized existence.


Myth, according to Campbell, is the projection of a culture's dreams onto a large screen; Campbell's book, like Star Wars, the film it helped inspire, is an exploration of the big-picture moments from the stage that is our world. It is a must-have resource for both experienced students of mythology and the explorer just beginning to approach myth as a source of knowledge.

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  1. Part of series
    The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell
  2. Print length
    464 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Princeton University Press
  5. Publication date
    March 21, 1972
  6. Dimensions
    6.61 x 1.02 x 8.9 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0691017840
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0691017846
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The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)
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  1. The hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms.
    Highlighted by 2,209 Kindle readers
  2. It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back.
    Highlighted by 2,033 Kindle readers
  3. It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Originally written by Campbell in the '40s-- in his pre-Bill Moyers days -- and famous as George Lucas' inspiration for "Star Wars," this book will likewise inspire any writer or reader in its well considered assertion that while all stories have already been told, this is *not* a bad thing, since the *retelling* is still necessary. And while our own life's journey must always be ended alone, the travel is undertaken in the company not only of immediate loved ones and primal passion, but of the heroes and heroines -- and myth-cycles -- that have preceded us.

Review

Campbell's words carry extraordinary weight, not only among scholars but among a wide range of other people who find his search down mythological pathways relevant to their lives today. . . . The book for which he is most famous, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, [is] a brilliant examination, through ancient hero myths, of man's eternal struggle for identity. -- Review

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 21, 1972
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691017840
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691017846
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.61 x 1.02 x 8.9 inches
  • Part of series ‏ : ‎ The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 out of 5 stars 6,802 ratings

About the author

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Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell

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Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology. He was born in New York City in 1904, and from early childhood he became interested in mythology. He loved to read books about American Indian cultures, and frequently visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was fascinated by the museum's collection of totem poles. Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These encounters led to Campbell's theory that all myths and epics are linked in the human psyche, and that they are cultural manifestations of the universal need to explain social, cosmological, and spiritual realities.

After a period in California, where he encountered John Steinbeck and the biologist Ed Ricketts, he taught at the Canterbury School, and then, in 1934, joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, a post he retained for many years. During the 40s and '50s, he helped Swami Nikhilananda to translate the Upanishads and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He also edited works by the German scholar Heinrich Zimmer on Indian art, myths, and philosophy. In 1944, with Henry Morton Robinson, Campbell published A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. His first original work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, came out in 1949 and was immediately well received; in time, it became acclaimed as a classic. In this study of the "myth of the hero," Campbell asserted that there is a single pattern of heroic journey and that all cultures share this essential pattern in their various heroic myths. In his book he also outlined the basic conditions, stages, and results of the archetypal hero's journey.

Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Joseph Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced Campbell's views to millions of people.

For more on Joseph Campbell and his work, visit the web site of Joseph Campbell Foundation at JCF.org.

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4.7 out of 5 stars
6,802 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find this book to be a fascinating read that is essential for aspiring writers and students of mythology, demonstrating the commonality of many myths and stories. The author's style is complex, and customers appreciate how it goes into different heroes and their psychology, making it a great tool for character development. While customers consider it a great value, they note that the content is extremely dense.

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InsightAuthor's styleValue for moneyCharacter developmentDensity
133 customers mention "Insight"112 positive21 negative

Customers find the book insightful and informative, describing it as a phenomenal piece of research, with one customer noting its well-researched philosophical background.

"...It contains a lot of good information." Read more

"...More importantly, however, Campbell reveals with profound depth of insight why these diverse stories can be so convincingly compounded...." Read more

"...The book contains endnotes, footnotes, an index and a bibliography divided in four parts: his main bibliography, editions of sacred texts he cited,..." Read more

"...the cadence and word choice and that while the information within the book is incredibly valuable, it’s a slog to get through even if you’re..." Read more

21 customers mention "Author's style"18 positive3 negative

Customers appreciate the author's style in this book, finding it complex and well-structured, with one customer noting how the author goes step by step through the content.

"..."The Hero with a Thousand Faces," is written in a very straightforward and scholarly style...." Read more

"...This new edition has been carefully prepared by a knowledgeable editor and includes a rich biography...." Read more

"...The hardback is worth the price, effort, and wait time (hard backs do not, unfortunately arrive in your kindle or kindle app within a minute or two)...." Read more

"...I have not finished it yet, but so far is incredible. Very complex, you must have at least a background in psychology, antropology, mythology and..." Read more

18 customers mention "Value for money"18 positive0 negative

Customers find the book to be a great value, with one mentioning it's worth all the time invested.

"...That fact is worth the price of the book alone...." Read more

"It was written in throughout but no big deal for the price. I can read it and now I have a copy of a classic!" Read more

"...If you are a writer, then this is a must have. The hardback is worth the price, effort, and wait time..." Read more

"...times, and gaining that new perspective alone has been worth the price of the book." Read more

15 customers mention "Character development"15 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's character development, particularly how it explores different heroes and their psychology, and serves as a great tool for character creation.

"...Famously, he determines specific characteristics about the hero and his or her journey, hence the term (coined by Campbell) familiar to readers and..." Read more

"The book is good and full of examples of heros with a thousand faces...." Read more

"...There's even information on the stories of religious heroes in here...." Read more

"...It has been mentioned that this can help with character development in writing. I couldn't read it...." Read more

9 customers mention "Density"0 positive9 negative

Customers find the book extremely dense.

"...It is dense and not for those lacking in perseverance, but such a treasure trove of material is packed into one book...." Read more

"A bit too dense and discursive for me...." Read more

"...A true work of genius! It is definitely academic and dense so I had to take in in in digestible chunks, but it is a book I will be returning to..." Read more

"It is dense as most of his work is. It needs to be read when you can concentrate and digest is messages." Read more

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5 out of 5 stars
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I ordered this book for a mythology class and it arrived pretty quickly. Personally, it’s a difficult book for me to fully understand. I need to be really focused and reread it a few times to kind of get it so there’s that. But it’s definitely interesting.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Valerie
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, highly recommend
    Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2025
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    This is a book I will keep in my collection forever. I have recommended it to a lot of other people. It is a bit difficult at first to get into but by Chapter Two, I have not wanted to put it down. “It’s for thinkers”
    One person found this helpful
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  • Jeremy David Stevens
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Karate Kid and The Hero with a Thousand Faces
    Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2018
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    All the way back in 1949, Joseph Campbell wrote a book titled The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The book contains hundreds of examples of stories from a wide range of mythology, including those from Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Native American, and Greek (and countless other) canons.

    Campbell identifies similarities in style as well as structure between the great adventure stories/mythologies throughout human history. Famously, he determines specific characteristics about the hero and his or her journey, hence the term (coined by Campbell) familiar to readers and writers alike, The Hero’s Journey. In effect, there is a very specific set of rules governing what makes a great story. And just in case I wasn’t certain of the extent of Campbell’s research, the book contains over forty pages of endnotes and other references. The man put in the research time.

    Reading The Hero With a Thousand Faces came at the perfect time for me. I’d heard of it and seen it recommended to me on Amazon for quite some time, but I never took the time to actually read it. Actually, I “Wikipedia’d” it a few times, but that was the extent of that. But in finally reading the book, Campbell has helped me understand much better some of the ideas that I’ve been working out in my weekly “Books of the Bible” review posts. If you’ve read any of my recent Bible book reviews, you’ll immediately recognize that Campbell has already clearly written what I’m still trying to figure out for myself. For example:

    “For the symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche…”

    Powerful stuff.

    Here are the rules governing the first great stage of the adventure story (some of it is paraphrased in my own words):

    The Call to Adventure
    Initial Refusal to Heed the Call
    Supernatural Aid/Mentor/“Old Man” (Old man is a direct quote from Campbell.)
    Crossing the First Threshold
    Belly of the Whale (The Point When the Hero’s Death/Ultimate Failure seems Certain)

    Truly, Exodus would have been the perfect story to compare with Campbell’s ruleset, but I just wrote a review of Exodus last week, so I wanted to do something different. The Karate Kid might just might be the most perfect modern example of them all (and one of my favorite movies). So I thought it might be interesting to see just how closely the writers of this movie follow Campbell’s rules.

    Young New Jersey native Daniel is called to the great land of adventure (California) by his mother. He hates it there (his initial macro-reluctance to heed the call) and would like nothing more than to move back home. The only saving grace (besides a pretty girl) is a mentor (Mr. Myagi) that he meets when he arrives. After getting into some trouble with the local bullies, Daniel’s mentor signs him up for a karate tournament. Daniel is mortified and has no faith in his ability to survive a karate tournament like that (Micro-reluctance to Heed the Call), “I cannot believe… what you got me into back there!”

    But Daniel does as his mentor says and enters the tournament anyway (Crossing the First Threshold), where he manages to make it to the semifinals, further than he ever dreamed, before even hitting a snag. When he gets there, young bully Bobby cheats in a most despicable manner, kicking Daniel directly in the knee, damaging Daniel’s body seemingly beyond repair (into the Belly of the Whale, i.e., Daniel’s ultimate defeat seems certain). But just as soon as all hope is lost, Daniel’s mentor heals his leg through supernatural methods and Daniel comes back to win the tournament, his dignity, and the girl. Indeed, it’s a Hero’s Journey almost worthy of Moses.

    Note: There are other rules and further stages to the story that I haven’t included in this short review, but it seems to me that these are certainly the essential components to the modern story. Maybe some other time, I can write about the further stages and which stories they apply to (Lord of the Rings comes to mind).

    My final say on this book is as follows: If you’re a student of religion, mythology or philosophy, or if you are a writer (whether of music, poetry, or fiction), read this book. It contains a lot of good information.
    272 people found this helpful
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  • Peter M
    5.0 out of 5 stars Look at life differently
    Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2025
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    One of the best
    One person found this helpful
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  • John
    4.0 out of 5 stars Tough read, but profound
    Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2020
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    “Why is mythology everywhere the same, beneath its varieties of costume? And what does it teach?”

    In this seminal work of comparative mythology, renowned author and professor of literature Joseph Campbell points to the universal motifs pervading myths, folk tales, religion, arts, ancient rites, and dreams across the globe and throughout history. The primary motif explored is the monomyth of the hero’s journey: such a compelling outline of popular tales throughout the ages that it has inspired modern stories such as Star Wars, The Lion King, Watership Down, and the Robert Langdon book series (which includes The Da Vinci Code). More importantly, however, Campbell reveals with profound depth of insight why these diverse stories can be so convincingly compounded. They ”are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization.”

    ”The gods as icons are not ends in themselves. Their entertaining myths transport the mind and spirit, not up to, but past them, into the yonder void; from which perspective the more heavily freighted theological dogmas then appear to have been only pedagogical lures: their function, to cart the unadroit intellect away from its concrete clutter of facts and events to a comparatively rarefied zone, where, as a final boon, all existence - whether heavenly, earthly, or infernal - may at last be seen transmuted into the semblance of a lightly passing, recurrent, mere childhood dream of bliss and fright.”

    I found this book difficult to read, as exemplified by the passage above, and I found the recitation of outlandish tales provided as examples to be exhausting (and not particularly illustrative). Reading this cover to cover was a bit of a slog, but it pays off.

    Campbell draws from world mythology a message that echoes the teachings of eastern Advaita Vedanta and western monistic idealism: All is one. The journey of the hero is away from the world of forms, on a path that leads to the conjunction of paradox at the great at-one-ment. But this road to enlightenment is not the greatest challenge. That distinction belongs to the hero’s return to a world where “men who are fractions imagine themselves to be complete.”

    ”The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the world. How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand times, throughout the millennia of mankind’s prudent folly? That is the hero’s ultimate difficult task. How render back into light-world language the speech-defying pronouncements of the dark?”

    We are, all of us, the hero. Our task is to heed the call to adventure, facing fears and abandoning desires as we fight our psychic dragons until we finally achieve apotheosis, realizing the unlimited potentiality of our nature, and return to the world of the everyday with the boon of truth, careful to keep it aflame. It is a daunting task, but it is also full of hope, and wonder:

    ”Protective power is always and ever present within the sanctuary of the heart and even immanent within, or just behind, the unfamiliar features of the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side.”
    20 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • N
    5.0 out of 5 stars great book
    Reviewed in the Netherlands on November 7, 2024
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    awesome
    Report
  • Bernardo
    5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
    Reviewed in Spain on July 8, 2023
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    A must read. I recommend it as a storyteller and as a person who enjoys reading.
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  • V-rock
    5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
    Reviewed in India on January 28, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    As all his works, this was just as brilliant a read as his Power Of Myth series
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  • Lau♡
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente producto 👍🏼
    Reviewed in Mexico on December 1, 2024
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    Excelente producto 👍🏼
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  • Marc John
    5.0 out of 5 stars A work of pure genius!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 9, 2006
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    The key to understanding this classic book, and getting the most from it, is to realise that it's actually all about YOU. Campbell wrote it for YOU. Just think about the title for a start. YOU are the hero and your hero's journey is all about finding your inner life, your divine spark, and being engulfed and re-born out of it. This is what all the world's great hero myths were really talking about, symbolically, and Campbell brilliantly draws together the universal themes and parallels running through all the world's mystical and religious traditions, all of which were concerned (when understood metaphorically instead of literally) with this marvellous "death and resurrection" of the human psyche - from human animal to divine incarnation. It's a heroic deed which we all have the potential to achieve, and this book vibrantly and beautifully recollects many anicent stories that have drawn Mankind's imagination toward this very real transformation, through the use of the oldest and best means at our disposal - symbolic storytelling. This book is not just for the student or teacher of mythology or comparative religion, it's for everyone on the spiritual path. In fact, this book speaks directly to you wherever you are right now in life, whether on that path or not. Simply brilliant, and possibly the most important book of the 20th century. Even the full five star rating is not enough!
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