Essay References:

• “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” (ISBN 0-691-01784-0)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar_Cars
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cars_characters
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317219/ (Cars)

Podcasts Mentioned:

• The Joe Murphy Memorial Fund

Music prodived by Jon Schmidt

Click “Read the Article” to see the transcript

Transcript

Welcome to the Myth Show, where timeless stories are discussed and brought to life. I am your host, Gregory Lemon and this is episode eight. This show is for those who would like to know more about the wide and fascinating field of mythology, folk lore, and fairy tales.
During this episode I’ll take one fictional character through all seventeen steps of the monomyth as described in the book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, written by Joseph Campbell in 1948. These steps were discussed in detail in Episodes 4, 5, and 6.
The music for this podcast is provided by Jon Schmidt at jonschmidt.com

Main Topic: An example through the Hero’s Journey

While I was preparing the three previous essays that discussed the seventeen steps of the monomyth, I enjoyed the wide variety of heroes and mythologies that Joseph Campbell used as examples. At the end of the monomyth section, I was disappointed that I didn’t see a summary of the monomyth that took one character through all seventeen steps. So, I decided to write my own.
The challenge was to find a hero that had enough experiences to cover all of the steps. The obvious solution could have been from my collection of books written by J. K. Rowling, C. S. Lewis, or J. R. R. Tolkien. These were excellent choices and I did use a lot of examples from Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings in the original three essays, but I wanted to write something unexpected. I may write an essay on these heroes in the future but there is more to mythology than the monomyth. (Not that you could tell that from this podcast).
A possible solution came to me on a Saturday afternoon while I was watching movies with my kids. Santa Claus brought my daughters a new movie which they were enjoying over, and over, and over again. I was writing one of the original monomyth essays while I was watching this movie and started to notice some of the same events that I was reading in Campbell’s book. The movie was “Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Now before you turn this off, or skip to your next podcast, relax. I’m not going to use Barbie as an example of the monomyth. My son and I are severely outnumbered, but come on. Anyways, I will say that I was surprised on the good job that they did in the story treatment and quality of animation. It must have been on my eighth or ninth viewing of the movie when I began to appreciate how they took the fairy tale of the Soldier, who discovered the secret of the twelve princess, was transformed into a heroic journey for Barbie to save her father’s kingdom and marrying the handsome royal shoemaker.
For the sanity of my only son, and honestly my own, I sometimes override the choice of the movie and pick a movie with a little more testosterone. Or as much testosterone a rated “G” movie for kids could have. My son also received a movie from Santa Claus, but honestly that is the excuse because he was only 20 months old at the time. The movie was for me. The move was Disney/Pixar’s Cars.
Needless to say, this essay will discuss plot points for the movie and this show will contain spoilers. But, come on. It’s “G” rated Disney movie. You could probably have guessed the ending already. Anyways, I just wanted to warn you just in case you haven’t seen it yet.
On a side note to any lawyers who may be listening, please don’t sue me. I understand that all characters discussed in this essay are protected by copyrights and trademarked by their respective owners. I hope those who own these copyrights will see this as free publicity for their creations and not an infringement. Also, I will not be using any audio clips from the movie. (End of Disclaimer)

Summary of the Story

Now for everyone who hasn’t seen Cars, here is a spoiler-filled outline of what happens in the movie. Cars is a computer animated movie from 2006 that follows the journey of the self-absorbed, egotistical, yet talented anthropomorphic car “Lightning McQueen” as he tries to be the first rookie to win the “Piston Cup”. In the last race of the season, Lightning ties at the finish line with two other cars, Strip “The King” Weathers and Chick Hicks. While there are no ties in Nascar, the Piston Cup, the officials announce a tie-breaking race will be held in California in one week’s time.
As Lightning and his semi truck driver, Mack, drive through the night to California, Lightning becomes separated and ends up in the forgotten town of Radiator Springs. In a car chase with the Sheriff, Lightning destroys the portion of Historic Route 66 that goes through town. He was sentenced by the local Judge, Doc Hudson to fix the road with a giant asphalt paving machine.
Over the week, Lightning warms up to the local cars and they begin to embrace him as one of their own. Near the end of the week, Lightning is found by the outside world and Mack drives him to California. Before he left, Lightning helped most of the town citizens by buying products or services from each of their stores.
In the final race, Lightning sacrifices his place in history as the first rookie to win the Piston Cup to help the King cross the finish line after the accident caused by Chick Hicks. Lightning may have lost the race, but won the hearts of the crowd and others.
While I was able to find the steps of the hero’s journey in the movie they were not in the same order as Campbell presented them in his book. I’ll follow Campbell’s order rather than the order of the events in the movie.
As I said in the introduction, I wanted to find a hero and track his journey. As I go through these steps, I had to look for some of the steps more diligently that others. It could easily be said that you find what you look for. I don’t know if Pixar had the monomyth in mind when writing the Cars screen play but we’ll just pretend the did.
And now for the journey!

Stage 1. The Separation:

Just for a review, here is the first part of Campbell’s description of his monomyth steps:
“The first great stage, that of the separation or departure, will be shown…in five subsections: (1) “The Call to Adventure,” or the signs of the vocation of the hero; (2) “Refusal of the Call,” or the folly of the flight from the god; (3) “Supernatural Aid,” the unsuspected assistance that comes to one who has undertaken his proper adventure; (4) “The Crossing of the First Threshold”; and (5) “The Belly of the Whale,” or the passage into the realm of night. (p. 36-37)

Step 1. The Call to Adventure

In most situations, this call becomes the subject of the story or the plot of the movie. For Lightning, he thinks his call to adventure comes over the Public Announcement System when the tie breaking race in California is announced.
While this may be the obvious choice, but I don’t think that it is. We need to look at Lightning as the potential hero and observes how he grows over the course of the journey. He doesn’t grow in skill as a driver. He ran his first race at the beginning of the movie a lot better than the race at the end.
The call to adventure is not always the destination, but the road leading to the destination. The adventure is in the hero’s growth. The growth that Lightning experiences is in his ability to have and appreciate friends. As cheesy as it sounds, the call to adventure for this movie is the call to find friendship.

Step 2. Refusal of the Call

The refusal of the call happened during the first race when Lightning refused the help and friendship around him. Let’s admit it, Lightning was a jerk. He alienated the people who tried to help him. Three different crew chiefs quit on him during the one season he’s been racing. His arrogance at the end of the first race was so bad his entire crew quit on him.
Another example of Lightnings Refusal was his initial refusal to pave the road he destroyed in Radiator Springs. It was through his paving the road that he learned the lessons of the journey.

Step 3. Supernatural Aid

The next step of “Supernatural Aid” contains the protective figure who provides help to our hero in some way. There were two candidates for this role. King, the current Piston Cup champion and Doc, the old-time champion. Both racers provided Lightning with advice that he initially rejected. King tried to help him out after the first race and Doc tried to help him on the dirt race track. Lightning eventually did use their advice which put him in the winning position in the final race.
But if I had to pick one character for this step, I’d pick King because Doc is more involved in later steps as another character. Another reason is that Lightning is able to help King at the end of the last race. I think it is a “student becomes the master” moment where Lighting shares the advice Doc gave him. That winning the cup isn’t the most important goal, in fact, “It’s just an empty cup.”

Step 4. The Crossing of the First Threshold

The symbolism of the thresholds in the movie are found in the highways that Mack and Lightning are traveling. The “Mother Road” on Route 66 is significantly more important as it is on the Mother Road that we meet the Threshold Guardian, embodied by the Sheriff.
As Lightning is frantically trying to find the interstate and Mack, he speeds pas a sleepy Sheriff’s speed trap. The local sheriff begins to follow him with sirens going. Instead of stopping, Lightening goes through a chain of events through the forgotten town of Radiator Spring destroying the main road and other property and landing himself in jail, or the impound.

Step 5. The Belly of the Whale

The Belly of the Whale step is very closely tied to the crossing of the thresholds. The whale symbolism in this movie is found twice. The first and best example is Mack’s trailer that Lightning is “swallowed” by as they leave for the first race for California. The second, and more symbolic example, is the night. These two examples are show at the same time and on two occasions. When Lightning enters the trailer to go to California but ends up in Radiator Springs and when he gets in the trailer to actually go to California, it is evening and approaching night time.
I initially thought that Mack’s trailer would be the threshold itself but I abandoned that idea when I identified Sheriff as the threshold guardian. The Sheriff didn’t guard Mack’s trailer, but the Mother Road. Also, Mack’s trailer carries Lightning across the threshold as it is part of the real world.

Stage 2. The Initiation:

Here is the second part of Campbell’s quote:
“The stage of the trials and victories of initiation will appear…in six subsections: (6) “The Road of Trials,” or the dangerous aspect of the gods; (7) “The Meeting with the Goddess”…or the bliss of infancy regained; (8) “Woman as the Temptress,” the realization and agony of Oedipus; (9) “Atonement with the Father”; (10) “Apotheosis”; and (11) “The Ultimate Boon.”

Step 6. The Road of Trails

The neat part of the Road of Trials step in Cars is that they are somewhat associated with an actual road, in this case, Route 66 or the Mother Road.
As Lightning began to face his trails during the movie, he began by failing them. Lighting’s failure in his encounter with the threshold guardian, the Sheriff, resulted in the destruction of the road. When Doc challenged Lightning to a race, Lightning again failed due to his arrogance and lack of experience racing on dirt.
The turning point on his road of trials came in the pasture where he and Mater, the local tow truck, were tipping tractors. Lightning successfully tipped all of the tractors by revving his engine. He was also successful in escaping from Frank the Combine. There, Lightning’s luck changed and he was able to fix the road, learn to race on dirt and redeem himself from his earlier failures.

Step 7. The Meeting with the Goddess

I had a couple of options in picking the goddess who Lightning would meet. Since Lightning is a male, I began looking at the female characters. Had the hero been a woman, I would have included the male characters in my search. One important part of identifying the Gods and Goddesses is to not get hung up on their gender but on how the character fills the role.
I first went to Sally Carrera, a 2002 Porsche Carrera, as a possibility for the goddess, but I needed to remember not to confuse the romantic interest with the goddess. The goddess that Lightning has to meet needs to be associated with a trial or test that he had to pass in order to continue on his journey.
The character that I identified as the goddess, was not a main character, she didn’t even have any speaking lines. The goddess was Bessie. Who’s Bessie, you ask? Bessie is the name given to the road paving machine that Lightning had to drag at a snails pace to fix the road.
I chose Bessie because she was the symbolic and literal obstacle that was keeping Lightning in town. To leave town, Bessie would have to be on the other end of the road with smooth pavement behind her. Lightning challenged Bessie’s role as his captor when he tried to speed up the process of fixing the road by quickly laying down the asphalt that he later had to scrape up.
When Lightning was put in his place, humbled, and respectful of Bessie’s role as the goddess, he could begin to accomplish the task before him.

Step 8. Woman as the Temptress

When I tried to find the woman as the temptress, I went back to Sally, as she was the romantic interest, to see if she filled the role. She did. Twice.
The temptress tries to keep the hero from completing his journey and becoming the best hero that he could be. Lightning is a race can and a part of his journey is to be the best race car that he can be. While his call to adventure is to friendship, Lightning needs to eventually leave Radiator Springs to complete his journey. He can come back, and does, but he must leave first.
The two times that Sally acted as the temptress was when she invited Lightning to go for a drive. He had the opportunity to escape with his newly filled tank of gas. But he chose to drive with her to the Wheel Well Hotel. Not only did he not leave town, but a day that could have been spent fixing the road was spent being very distracted. It is the memories of this drive with Sally that causes Lightning some difficulties during his final race.
The second time came when Lightning was about to leave Radiator Springs with Mack. Lightning almost stayed, she had successfully tempted him away from the real world. He probably would have stayed if Sally not told him to go.

Step 9. Atonement with the Father

I believe the Father figure in this movie was quite obvious, and that was Doc. The process of atonement or reconciliation with Doc required Lightning to act against Doc’s view that race cars are self-centered and egotistical good-for-nothings. The process began when Doc quietly admitted that Lightning did a good job fixing the first segment of the road. It suffered a set back when Lightning rejected Doc’s help on how to race on dirt. The process of atonement was restarted as the town was being fixed-up and Lightning helped all of the residents. The atonement was complete when Lightning helped King to the finish line, proving Lightning’s true change of heart, and admitting that the Piston Cup was “just an empty cup.”

Step 10. Apotheosis

The step of apotheosis or becoming the father or god began when Lightning discovered that Doc was a retired race car. Discovering Doc’s Piston Cups and watching Doc race helped Lightning to realize that he could learn something from Doc and he quickly regretted not listening to the advice Doc previously offered.
The true point of apotheosis comes during the final race when Lighting takes things learned from his time in Radiator Springs and used it to position himself for the win. This includes driving backwards using rear view mirrors and driving on the dirt infield during a spin-out that helped him take the lead. Even though he did not win the race, or the cup, as Doc had, it was Lightning’s to give up. He became the race car that Doc would be proud to know.

Step 11. The Ultimate Boon

Determining what was the ultimate boon for this story was tricky because, from the hero’s point of view, it changed during course of the movie. In the beginning, the perceived ultimate boon was to win the Piston Cup and become the new official race car for Dinoco after the King retires.
As Lightning was heading to California in the beginning of the movie, his agent asked for the names of his friends to put on the list to get tickets to for the big race. Lightning realized at that point, he couldn’t name any friends. Later on, Doc asked Lightning if he had done anything nice for anyone. Lightning realized at that point, he couldn’t name anything.
Lightning took these events to heart and later he helped nearly every resident in town by purchasing from their different stores. He helped Sally by showing her what the town might have looked like back in its hay-day.
Finally, he helped Doc regain his faith in racing and restored his stature in the community that he lost in the race track crash that ended his racing career.

Stage 3. The Return:

Here is the last third of Campbell’s quote:
“The return and reintegration with society, which is indispensable to the continuous circulation of spiritual energy into the world, and which, from the standpoint of the community, is the justification of the long retreat,…[will be shown in] six subheadings: (12) “Refusal of the Return,” or the world denied; (13) “The Magic Flight,” or the escape of Prometheus; (14) “Rescue from Without”; (15) “The Crossing of the Return Threshold,” or the return to the world of common day; (16) “Master of the Two worlds”; and (17) “Freedom to Live,” the nature and function of the ultimate boon.” (end quote - p. 36-37)

Steps 12, 13 & 14. the Refusal of the Return, The Magic Flight, and the Rescue from Without

The next three step follow each other in very rapid succession. The refusal came when Mack and the rest of the media came to bring Lightning back to the “real” world. Lightning didn’t want to go. He had fallen for the temptress, Sally, and was ready to abandon his journey. Luckily for him, Sally told him it was okay to go and he left, returning to the world he left behind.
The magic flight out of the fantastical world in this story had been combined with the crossing of the return threshold. Mack the truck carries Lightning out of Radiator Springs and onto California. The events surrounding this is discussed a little more when we talk about crossing the return threshold.
During Lightning’s stay in Radiator Springs, he became more attached to the people there. It is easy to imagine that he would give up the California race if that meant he could stay with Sally and the residents of the town. The sweet ambrosia of friendship he tasted there was more powerful that the desire to have the Piston Cup.
As demonstrated in the movie, there were three aspects to this rescue from without. First is how the media was notified by Doc of Lightning’s location. Second, is Mack with the media entourage barreling into town to take Lightning away. And third, Harv the agent reminds Lighting about the Race, Dinoco, and his rival Chick Hicks. Doc, Mack, Harv, and the media each helped to rescue Lightning. Reluctantly, he allows himself to be rescued and backs into Mack’s trailer for the magic flight to California.

15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold

In the step of crossing the return threshold, we see the return of the Sheriff in his role as the threshold guardian. He and Sally stopped Lightning from leaving by siphoning his gas tank on his first night in the impound. Later, the Sheriff almost had to go after him before Sally and Lightning went on their ride to the Wheel Well.
After Lightning finishes paving the road, and thus completing his road of trials, the Sheriff changes his demeanor and is ready to give Lightning a police escort to help Lightning get to the race on time. In the Sheriff’s role as the threshold guardian, he has released Lightning from “captivity” and it is now Lightning’s “refusal to return” that is keeping him there.
Lightning crosses the return threshold as he takes his magical flight in Mack’s trailer. One part of crossing the return threshold is that the fantastical world, or the world forgotten, becomes forgotten again. Lightning had become a catalyst of life and energy culminating with everyone in Radiator Springs cruising under the neon lights. When Lightning had left town, Doc finally got what he originally wanted. After a tongue lashing from Sally, Doc quietly sat there as everyone left him alone. He sat there thinking about what he had done as the neon lights turned off, one by one. The world forgotten returned to its anonymity as Doc sat on the darkened road, under the traffic light’s flashing yellow signal. Perhaps the saddest moment in the movie.

16. Master of the Two Worlds

The second to last step in the journey is when the hero becomes the master of the two worlds. This is done by finding the ultimate boon and sharing it with those around him. Since the Ultimate boon in the gift of friendship, it is shared in two situations. First, Lightning shares his friendship to the residents of Radiator Springs when he becomes the customer of all of their stores. They share their friendship back when they show up to be his pit crew. Most notably is Doc acting as the crew chief. Lightning did not show his friendship to Doc in the same manner as he did to the others until he helped King across the finish line. Another large sharing of friendship is where he arranges for Mater to take a helicopter ride over Radiator Springs.

17. Freedom to Live

The Freedom to live is shown primarily in the epilogue after the race. Lightning has merged his two worlds together and can now freely live in the racing world but still be with his friends, especially Sally. Lightning literally puts Radiator Springs back on the map when he moves his racing headquarters to the the small town. Also, Lightning becomes a new man, or car, as shown by his new paint job, inspired by the classic 1957 Chevy.

Essay Conclusion

Well, those are the seventeen steps. I hope that you enjoyed this full example of the monomyth using the movie, Cars. I had a lot of fun delving deeper into a movie that I enjoy and analyzing its different elements. Hopefully, this essay will change the way that you read, listen, or watch other stories. Even if you won’t find the elements of the monomyth in everything, the searching and detailed analysis can help you appreciate the story more.
A friend of mine was telling me about a college course in children’s literature that she is taking for Continuing Education credits. She enjoyed reading the text book and how it helped her to understand the different aspects that go into writing good literature. She said that while she will never write books for children, learning about the process and what goes into it helped her to appreciate those who do write even more.
After these four essays on the monomyth, I hope that you are able to appreciate the stories all around us even more.

 

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