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Hero’s Journey as a Model for a Memoir, Part 2

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by Jerry Waxler

Buy Memoir Revolution to learn why now is the perfect time to write your memoir.

Each memoir is the product of the author’s diligent, creative attempt to turn life into story so after I read each one, I want to learn lessons not only from the author’s life, but also from their craft. And so, when I read a story like Freeways to Flipflops, I delve into the wisdom of Sonia Marsh’s life experience, not as a collection of various interesting facts, but through the structure of her Story.

In the previous post, I explained how the mythological structure of the  Hero’s Journey helps me understand Sonia Marsh’s memoir. In this post, I’ll explain how you can learn more about that structure, where you can find more examples, and how you can apply it to your own memoir.

When I first learned about Joseph Campbell’s observation that humans have been telling stories of hero’s journeys since the beginning of time, it was like learning about a key that would unlock the meaning of life. However, his ideas were abstract, and I felt unsure about how to apply them.

The system became much clearer when I read Christopher Vogler’s excellent book for writing screenplays, The Writer’s Journey. Picking apart the steps in Vogler’s how-to book gave me the idea to try to apply this mythical journey to the way people live their lives. I soon noticed that the genre of memoirs often contains this simple, powerful story template. All sorts of memoirs involve leaving the familiar world, entering a strange one, and then returning.

The model became personal when I began to visualize my own transition from childhood to adulthood. The simplicity of my nerdy childhood, obsessed with my studies during the week and working in my dad’s drugstore every weekend was like the Hero’s Ordinary World. The rules of that world were blown to oblivion when I entered the campus of the University of Wisconsin in 1965. Like stepping on a landmine, I now needed to make sense of the counter-culture, marijuana, anti-war riots, new sexual mores, the draft, and all the while attempting to prepare myself for a career.

I have never been able to make sense of those chaotic times until I began to look back on them and cast them as a Hero’s Journey. Thanks to Joseph Campbell, Chris Vogler, and the millions of storytellers who have contributed to our civilization, this fundamental structure showed me how to shape the strange process of growing up into a story that makes its own sort of sense.

My breakthrough was not just about me. I began to see the universal process of Coming of Age as a journey from childhood innocence to adult competence. When we leave the ordinary world of our childhood homes, we are like heroes going out into the land of adventure.  Where does the story end? Returning home at the end of the story might mean returning physically to our childhood neighborhood, or it could be more symbolic. When we start our own families, we are symbolically returning to the family unit.

Here are more examples to show how the model can be applied, not as a simple formula, but as a basic structure that can be applied with infinite variation. Each author organizes their own circumstances into a story that makes sense to them, and just as important, a story they hope will make sense to others.

When John Robison was little he loved to watch trains. At the end of his memoir Look Me in the Eye about growing up with Asperger’s Syndrome, he took his son to watch trains.

In My Stroke of Insight, when Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist suffered a stroke, it forced her out of normal life into the land of the Adventure, where she had to learn new rules. One of the twists of homecoming occurs early in the book when the author returns home to be cared for by her mother. Later, after she gains new insights into life and the brain, she returns to her community to popularize a deeper understanding of the brain, using her own life as an example.

Travel memoirs make it easy to identify a journey. Lisa Fineberg-Cook was a party girl in Los Angeles, enjoying her hair salons, dates, and nights out with the girls. As a newly-wed, she flies to a town in Japan to become a school teacher. Her memoir Japan Took the JAP Out of Me deliciously contrasts with Freeways to Flipflops, because when Sonia Marsh flees Los Angeles she goes to a place that is wilder and poorer. When Lisa Fineberg-Cook and her husband flee Los Angeles, they go to a more traditional society with formal manners and exquisite etiquette. Each place has new unfamiliar rules but in opposite ways, demonstrating the resilience and variety of the Hero’s Journey. Japan Took the JAP Out of Me ends when Fineberg-Cook visits Los Angeles and goes to the hair salon with her girl friend, realizing that she now must see the old world through new eyes.

Another book with an obvious journey is Doreen Orion’s Queen of the Road. She and her husband cope with midlife crisis by taking a yearlong trip through the U.S. in a motor home. Orion’s character arc occurs toward the end of the book when she goes shopping and realizes that she has nowhere to put her new shoes. So she returns them, accepting the new reality that she can be a whole person without having a walk-in closet full of footwear.

Many stories use the hero’s geographical movement in a far more complex way. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes contains a tricky example of the hero’s return. He was born in New York City, so his adventure begins when the family “goes forth” to Ireland where he does most of his growing up. At the end of Angela’s Ashes, he returns to New York, a peculiar anti-heroic ending of the book. I wonder if there was something about that homecoming to America that called out to millions of readers.

In the memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi grows up in Iran. As the child of a privileged family, she goes to the U.S. for an education. Then she returns to Iran to teach English literature. That should have been the ending, and in an uncomplicated world she would have lived happily ever after. Tragically, the increasing militancy of the Iranian Revolution turns her familiar world into the world of the adventure. Under the bizarre misogynist rules of militant Islamism, she feels like a stranger in her own home. In a sad twist of exile, she must “return” to the United States, not because it’s where she was born, but because it’s where she can find peace and sanity.

My Ruby Slippers by Tracy Seeley offers an intriguing variation of homecoming. She starts her journey by leaving her adopted home in San Francisco, returning to her childhood home in Kansas to try to understand her own childhood roots.

Even grief can be interpreted as a Hero’s Journey. In Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup, her husband dies suddenly, sending the young mother careening out of the familiar world of marriage into the grief-stricken world widowhood. She must reconstruct her life, attempting to “return” to normal.

Writing Prompt: Consider your own Hero’s Journey

When you look across the landscape of your own life experience, try to identify dramatic tension that can harness this ancient system of storytelling. Identify some broad sweeping changes. For example

We were all born, and had to undergo the transition known as Coming of Age, during which we pieced together the rules of life. During your Coming of Age, what particular challenges and adventures did you face? When you reached some sort of “destination,” a life you were willing to live, describe how that might have felt like a conclusion to your quest.

At the next stage of the life journey, typically around our early 20s, we transition from the unformed stage of early adulthood into the solid responsibility of family and home. What was this period like for you? Was it brief and predictable? Or was this transition difficult and even chaotic. What adventures or special challenges did you face during this important second stage of Coming of Age? What defined the “end” of the journey? Was it a career or family? What lesson or growth in your character will let the reader know the period has ended?

Sonia Marsh’s Home Page
Freeways to Flipflops (Kindle Version)
Notes

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

Memoir as a Hero’s Journey: Character Arc and Homecoming

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by Jerry Waxler

Read Memoir Revolution to learn why now is the perfect time to write your memoir.

In the beginning of the memoir Freeways to Flipflops, Sonia Marsh portrays a middle-class life in southern California. On the surface, this family seems ordinary and comfortable. But underneath the glossy exterior, trouble is brewing. Her teenage son is veering out of control, introducing a corrosive force that threatens to destroy their stability.

These problems force Marsh to consider making a huge change, but she isn’t sure what. One day a visiting plumber asks, “Have you thought about moving to Belize?” The question grows into a possibility, and then into a plan.

In the parlance of the Hero’s Journey, the plumber is a messenger, and the family answers the Call to Adventure. They leave the Ordinary World and move to Central America where they enter the World of the Adventure.

In this foreign land, the family encounters discomfort, inconvenience, edgy neighbors, and money problems. They valiantly press forward, finding schools for the kids and trying to make friends. But as fast as they solve one problem, new ones arise. Enemies turn against them, backstabbing and shunning them, and finally sabotaging their boat. This world grows increasingly dangerous and harsh. In the end, they can’t stomach the adventure anymore and retreat home to Los Angeles.

Heroes often return home at the end of the story. Ulysses famously returns to his home in Ithaca after fighting in the Trojan War, and Dorothy returns home at the end of Wizard of Oz. The return home at the end of an adventure is so important there’s a Greek name for it: Nostoi. With the hero back home, the reader can close the book, satisfied that the story has reached closure. “Ah. Loose ends are tied up. The adventure made sense. I can return to my life.”

The fact that the Hero returns to the same geographic location highlights the fact that the most important transformation takes place in the Hero’s character. Before Dorothy is permitted to leave the Land of Oz, she must assertively confront the wizard. Once she finds her own courage, the door opens and she can return. The development of the character from the beginning of the story to the end is called Character Arc, and it expresses our culture’s deep faith in the possibility that we can grow over time.

Freeways to Flipflops provides a perfect example of this inner development. Externally, Sonia’s family needs to figure out where to find the boat that will take them shopping, where to buy cool birthday presents for the kids, and how to make money. Internally, they are trying to grow emotionally, and reclaim their emotional health. As they struggle through the outer events of their adventure, they are forced to view the world in new ways. Resolving their outer hardship forces them to solve their psychological challenges.

Adapting to this harsh environment has the same effect on the family as a wilderness drug rehab has on addicts. Marsh’s son realizes his parents and siblings are allies, and he rallies around the needs of the clan. In doing so, he learns that the entire world does not revolve around his desires. By the end of the book, he reorients his priorities in a more compassionate, socially responsible way. Dad’s character also develops through the course of the journey. Separation from the corporate grind helps him break out of his career stalemate. And even though Mom started this mission in order to help her family, by the end, she has grown too. No longer limited to acting inside the home, she has become an entrepreneur. And as a bonus, Sonia’s family experienced life outside the boundaries of the United States, an international perspective she had hoped to share with them.

The homecoming at the end of Freeways to Flipflops contains an important twist that adds energy and mystery to the story. If the only goal of the family’s move had been to stay in Belize, the whole adventure would have been a flop*. But settling into permanent life in Belize was only one of the family’s goals. A much more urgent goal was to resolve their family problems, and get their son back on track. From that point of view, they succeeded. Like Dorothy who was allowed to return home after she found the courage to confront the wizard, Sonia Marsh’s family was permitted to return home after the family achieved a new degree of maturity.

In the end of the classic Hero’s Journey, the hero brings back insights and wisdom to the community. Sonia Marsh’s memoir has achieved this heroic goal. By telling us her story about life in the Land of the Adventure, she lets us experience and learn from her lessons without leaving our chairs. And the greatest lesson Sonia Marsh offers aspiring memoir writers…? Messy experiences can be translated into tight, integrated, well constructed stories.

*The paradoxical nature of the family’s journey, turning defeat into victory, literally “flipped the flop,” offering a sneaky double-entendre of the title. Aren’t words amazing?

In Part 2 of this essay, I’ll offer examples of the Hero’s Journey model peeking through the seams of memoirs.

Sonia Marsh’s Home Page
Freeways to Flipflops (Kindle Version)

Notes

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

Pets, motion, and other tips from a travel memoir

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by Jerry Waxler

In my previous essay, I described my overall experience with Doreen Orion’s travel memoir, “Queen of the Road.” In this entry I continue my journey through her journey, finding additional insights that I can take away from this excellent book.

Click here for my previous essay about Queen of the Road.
Click here for the Amazon listing for Queen of the Road.

Travel and Companion Animals
One of the best belly laughs I had from a book was when I was teenager reading John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charlie,” about his trip in 1960 across the United States to take the pulse of the American people. He drove a camper, and like Orion he took his dog who turned out to be a key character. In fact his dog was the “Charlie” in the book’s title. After a few miles on the road with Steinbeck, he mentioned that the dog’s full name was “Able Baker Charlie Dog.” In that moment, I saw into Steinbeck’s relationship and knew Charlie was a person in the great writer’s life. That glimpse stands out as a highlight of my reading life.

Now I’ve read another laugh-out-loud travel book that contains a respectful relationship with a dog. Doreen Orion took her dog and two cats along with her across country, and through the book she invests them with personality. Scientists often complain that humans ascribe too many personality traits to their animals. But most pet owners know that’s at least half the fun. Orion certainly does. She interprets their motives, and through the course of spending so much quality time with them, gains fresh glimpses into what makes them tick. Meanwhile, her connection with her animals helps me as a reader feel authentically connected to her and her world.

Writing Prompt
Write a scene in which a pet or some other animal in your life can helps you portray nuance of feeling or raise dramatic tension.

Travel and Motion
If I read a description of coming over a hill and sees the vast expanse of the ocean, I begin to see endless horizons and crashing waves. My connection becomes more immediate when the author smells the salty air, takes off her shoes and walks onto the sand feeling the grainy stuff oozing between her toes.

Writers often make use of the familiar five senses – touch, taste, hearing, smell, and sight – to help connect readers. There is one more sense that can help. Our body has sensors that tell us where we are in space, and whether we are upright or in motion. This sense, called proprioception, is also used by writers. Think of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Just hearing the title makes me feel like I’m rocking around in stormy seas. Motion is an important part of our connection to Captain Ahab’s world.

Some of the best motion I’ve read were in Bill Strickland’s description of bicycle racing in his memoir “Ten Points.” He takes me right into the pack of cyclists, leaning into turns. I feel the dizzying and dangerous closeness of other riders all around him, and the crazy motion of spinning legs and road racing underneath. All this motion, offers a compelling metaphor for what Strickland is trying to work out in his mind.

Motion in stories often breaks up routines and dissolves structures. For example, Robert Pirsig’s motorcycle flew along country roads in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Jack Kerouac famously focused on motion in “On the Road” driving back and forth across the country, and practically driving a generation mad with the tantalizing insinuation that driving equals freedom.

Doreen Orion also traveled across the country, and despite the dishwasher and satellite television, the trip wasn’t as far from Pirsig and Kerouac as first meets the eye. She was seeking something not just in the scenery but also in her self. As she travelled she too felt the miles roll by and the rigid structures melt. The sense of rootlessness and motion in her RV does some of the same work as the car, the motorcycle, and the bicycle do in the other books. I think the boomer generation is getting ready for another existential crisis.  Could this book, “Queen of the Road,” become the Bible we need to usher in another round of cultural self-discovery? (Just kidding.)

Writing prompt
Consider some of your stories, and look for places to accentuate motion. Feel the bumps in the road, the tilt of the bike, the recline of the seat. How can you extend it either across time, or down to the details, to help the reader feel what you felt.

This is the end
The end of any story needs to wrap up what it started, letting the reader feel that the dramatic tension has drawn to a satisfying close. One of the classic methods to draw a story to a close is to “return home” or as the Greeks called it “Nostoi.” (To paraphrase Steve Martin, those Greeks have a word for everything.) If you are looking for a framework, discover some of the lessons handed down from the culture that essentially started the Western art of Storytelling. If you don’t return home at the end of your story, you may not have access to this method. Or you may need to dig for a metaphor that feels like coming home. But if you are writing a travel book, you can easily take advantage of this ancient Greek principle. At the end, go home. That’s what Orion does and it feels like a good ending.

And one more thing. You know how at the end of Star Wars, Darth Vader gets away, leaving room for a sequel? As Orion wraps up the story, she leaves room for her own sequels, by suggesting all the other trips she could take – yet another reason I keep using the word “brilliant” to describe this book.

Writing Prompt
Think about how you intend to end your memoir. List some of the places you were in the beginning and see if you can return to one or more at the end. Or list the essential dramatic tensions you have introduced in the book, and try to match up each dramatic tension with some sort of geographical or metaphorical Return.