The Hero’s Journey Story: Understanding the Symbolism of the Supporting Characters
*Important to Improve Your Character Writing
The classic hero’s journey story — we all love it. The tale of young hero who leaves his home, saves the day and is transformed into someone greater…it’s one of the most popular and prevalent story structures in existence.
And for good reason. Not only are these types of stories very resonate with the human experience, but they contain all sorts of fascinating meta that has captivated even casual consumers of books and films.
In order to write a compelling hero’s journey story, it’s important to understand some of this meta, especially when it comes to the roles of the characters that surround the hero. A good cast of supporting characters is essential to making our hero interesting.
Now we’ve all heard of the basic character archetypes, like the mentor, trickster, love interest, and so on.
But today we are going to look beyond these basic archetypes and see what these characters mean in our story and how they move along our protagonist’s journey.
First, let’s talk a bit about what goes on in a hero’s story.
A hero’s journey story typically showcases a struggle between good and evil, which takes place in an unfamiliar world…one in which we meet many strange new things and above all, new characters.
These characters grow and shape our hero, each in a different way, and each have their own unique role and character arc that fits a similar formula across all stories.
The Larger Picture
In a hero’s tale, there will be two characters who head this cosmic struggle between good and evil, who are in direct opposition to one another.
One of these is the main villain of the story, i.e., Darth Vader, Agent Smith, Scar, or Sauron, who is the leader of the forces of evil; and the other is our hero’s mentor figure. For example, Obi-Wan, Morpheus, Mufasa, and Gandalf, who leads the forces of good.
Both of these characters are great leaders and very powerful, in their own way. Darth Vader is one of the leaders of the mighty empire that our heroes are up against. Although Obi-Wan’s now old and out of action, we get the sense that he’s also very powerful, maybe even more so than Darth Vader, but in a different way.
The great leader of good is our hero’s main guide for a time, preparing him for his future trials and teaching him about the new world he’s entered. The leader of evil is our hero’s main challenger, whom he will have to go up against once he is properly prepared. Both these characters start out far stronger and wiser than our protagonist. Both have something to teach him. These characters mirror each other, in a way, showing two different paths for our hero to take.
As we will see, there is a lot of mirroring between characters in a hero’s story.
The Smaller Picture
That encompasses the big picture of good and evil that is present in the outside world. Then, you have characters who are more similar to our protagonist and fill similar roles to the ones just mentioned. But instead of representing the external struggle, these characters symbolize the internal struggle of our hero character.
In traditional literature, it is understood that a person is composed of three faculties, body; which encompasses desire, mind; which encompasses intelligence and will, and spirit; which encompasses the heart. Yes, that sounds meta, but stick with me.
These faculties of the soul are often in conflict with each other as the hero experiences internal conflict. Rather than showing us these abstract things, our hero has two companions that represent the faculties of body and mind, or the desire and the will, while our hero represents the spirit.
The Will
On his journey, the hero soon meets a character who is slightly ahead of him in life and has many of the qualities and attributes that he himself either wants or should have. In Star Wars, this character is Leia, who is a leader of the rebellion. She is brave, resourceful, kind, and supportive, qualities that reflect Luke’s best qualities.
In most stories, this character supports our protagonist in reaching his goals, if they are the right ones, although in some cases, she may be the one to talk some sense into him. For example, in the Lion King, Nala represents this character and she talks sense into Simba. This character is not necessarily flawless, but she mirrors our main character in a way, showing the positive traits that he has and what he should strive for.
She is a manifestation of the will, and is a heroic fighter for the cause. She often has one of the most static character arcs in the story, since she causes the other characters to grow around her, rather than growing much herself. Although she may open up and get some development as the story progresses, her character arc is generally flat. She is exteriorly fierce and independent, but is actually very fragile interiorly and dependent on her companions. If there is a falling out or separation between the main characters, she is often the one to suffer the most, since the will, without a heart or body, is nothing.
The Shadow Figure
The next character our hero meets will also mirror him, but instead of showing us his positive qualities, this character mirrors our hero’s darker side. After being recently orphaned Luke meets a gun-slinging scoundrel who cares only for money and his own selfish interests. He doesn’t share our hero’s idealistic nature, nor does he care about what’s happening in the galaxy. But there is something of a kindred spirt between him and Luke. As far as we know, Han Solo has no family and no real home. His backstory could be very similar to Luke’s. We don’t know.
But he shows the audience what Luke could become without proper guidance, and along the way, expresses many of the doubts that we and Luke may have about his Jedi training and his mission. He doesn’t believe in hooky religions or ancient weapons.
In the Lion King, Timon and Pumba take this role. They were outcast when young, similar to the way Simba believes himself to be. They lure him away from facing his problems and responsibilities into a cozy but ultimately unfulfilling life.
In The Lord of the Rings, Gollum has been corrupted by the ring and shows what could happen to Frodo, too, if he claims the ring, while representing our hero’s desire which may or may not be conscious — to take the Ring for himself.
The Battle of the Faculties
The shadow character and our hero’s more noble companion will be in bitter opposition, since they manifest two opposing ideologies and the internal struggle of our hero. They manifest the battle of the mind against the body, of will against desire. Sam, who represents the better side of Frodo, fights with Gollum. Han and Leia fight with each other. Timon and Pumba are suspicious of Nala.
At some point, our hero will have to decide which character he is going to follow. This means he has to decide if he is going to follow his lower faculty, the body and desire, or the higher faculty, his mind, or will.
Luke begins to get along with Han and lends him a hand aboard the Falcon. Eventually, Han invites Luke to come join him, rather than fighting what he considers is a useless war. At this point, Luke has an easy way out. He can choose to follow Han and be a gun-slinging scoundrel just like him, seeking comfort and not bothering about the war in the galaxy. In other words, he can give in to desire. However, in an often overlooked character moment, Luke rejects him, and follows Leia instead, spurning Han’s selfish life.
At this point, Luke has no turning back, since he has ultimately chosen the higher faculty, the mind and will, in his decision to follow the princess, who represents these qualities in the story.
In The Lord of the Rings, we start seeing Frodo gradually preferring Gollum to Sam. He identifies more closely to Gollum, because both have held the ring and both have experienced the corruption and temptation of it. This is hard to watch because we know that Frodo is making the wrong choice by doing this, because Gollum represents the bad side of Frodo that he should be resisting.
While the other companion of our hero has a flat arc, his shadow companion must have a growth arc and be redeemed, or he will be destroyed. Just as the faculty they represent must be overcome by our hero, this character will either be redeemed or perish, symbolizing our hero’s eventual conquest of his flaws.
In Han’s case, he redeems himself, and comes back to rescue Luke. But this is not the case of some characters. Gollum is destroyed, as is Cypher from the Matrix, who is Neo’s shadow figure.
Their flawed beliefs will be put to the test at some point in the story, which pushes along their character arcs.
Conclusion
These concepts are deeply ingrained in literature and the human psych, which is why they are have been around since the beginning of storytelling and are still common today. Unfortunately, the importance of them seems to be largely ignored nowadays, but they are valuable to study if you want to improve your storytelling.
