Comparison Of Perseus And The Hero's Journey

The Perseus myth fits Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey whereas the Heroine’s Journey of Persephone does, not simply because female characters were rarely celebrated as victors and were suppressed underneath a patriarch. His model describes a character that is constructed for male heroes, for example the Hero’s Journey requires him to leave home to conquer his adversary whereas Persephone is trapped within a power struggle between wanting to stay with her mother and growing up; therefore she is stuck in a contradictory situation, embracing and resisting development. An example of this is seen in Seventeenth Summer, “It will be all right and I’ll be home early” (Daly 11). Angie is hesitant on asking her mother permission to go on a date with Jack thus proving that Campbell’s model limits the female character’s ability to progress as an
Angie is seventeen, almost grown up, like Persephone they will always be little girls because they will go back and forth from their mothers and lovers consequently never reaching a resolution.

Another key difference between Perseus’ hero’s journey and Persephone’s hero’s journey is that while Perseus and Persephone are deeply connected to their mothers, Perseus embarks on a daring conquest to save his mother from Polydectes while Persephone’s mother seeks to save her daughter from Hades. Immediately in The Lightning Thief, Percy has an innate thirst for adventure without yet realizing it until he has a brief, dramatic battle and defeats Mrs. Dodd’s with a sword, “…when it hit my hand, it wasn’t a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner’s bronze sword” (Riordan 13), coinciding with the Perseus myth in which he receives a steel sword to cut Medusa’s head.