Joseph Campbell

• Recall the hero’s quest pattern which includes:– Departure (call to

adventure, crossing threshold)

– Adventures, tests, trials– Fulfillment along the way– Return to home– Individual’s

consciousness is transformed

•This quest pattern is also known as a “monomyth” = one story

•Joseph Campbell expressed this idea in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

1. The Title: I am Born Again• Suggests a pattern: very basic version of

the quest theme

Fetus: Dunny’s pre-battle life:

Section 1

Birth canal: the battle:Section 2

Newborn: Post battle

Sections 3-8

• PRESENTATION 4 :THE QUEST THEME

• PRESENTATION 5: WAR STORIES AND SOLDIERS’ EXPERIENCES

2. Pre-battle• Boredom (loss of personality): “I was a

lonely creature” (64)

• “my boredom was to blame… that comes of being cut off from everything that could make life sweet” (64)

Dunny’s Roles:

• Deacon (Holy Joe) because he read the New Testament

• People see only one side of Dunny (67)

• Charlie (68-69)

Two realities:

• The enemy: the Germans--they see only each other’s persona: “absolute devils” (65)

• “we were decency incarnate” (65)—even though Dunny recognizes his own soldiers as “a foul-mouted, thieving, whoring lot of toughs” (65)

Story:

• (67) New Testament and the Arabian Nights – both psychologically true which

is as important as literal truth

• Dunny says, “Later I was able to say that… psychological truth was really as important in its own way as historical verification” (68)

• What is psychological truth?

3. The Battle

• (69-74) Dunny makes clear that he is not a hero

• In the battle he sees the Madonna with the face of Mrs. Dempster

• Another miracle?

• Psychological stress?

• PRESENTATION: NURSING IN WWI

• PRESENTATION: ROMANCE DURING THE WAR.

4. Post Battle• Dunny loses one mother: he can never

again be anyone’s “own dear laddie any longer” (78)

• He gains another “mother”: Diana (80,85)

• Another anima?

• Diana teaches him to walk, talk, renames him (90)

• St. Dunstan: solemn, good at resisting temptation and full of learning, faced the devil

• “St. Dunstan was a marvellous person and very much like you—mad about learning, terribly stiff and stern and scowly, and an absolute wizard at withstanding temptation” (90)

Two Realities:

• Who cured Dunny? (75-76)

• He hears the Madonna's voice

• Did he cure himself?

• Did Diana’s nursing cure him? Rest?

• What is a hero? (83-84)

• Who was Dunny’s mother (anima)? (104)

Roles• Dunny as hero• People need

heroes, and it might as well be Dunny

• He is an icon of heroism just as the king is an icon of kingship

• Presentation: (Canadian Forces Honours and Awards).

Roles: Dunny as hero

• Celebration in Deptford: people see only one side of the Germans

• People need icons of heroism

• The staged “handing over of Leola”: Dunny plays the mythological role of Mars, the god of war – the winner in the field of battle, but the loser in the court of Venus (the goddess of love)

Mars, God of War

Venus, Goddess of Love