The Hero's Journey: A Rant

For those Potter readers without the benefit of a liberal college education and who somehow circumvented having to take a mythology class, a head's up: STAR WARS was not the original hero's journey, so therefore JK Rowling did not steal Spielburg's idea.

I can hear you croaking now, but it's true. "Snape is Hans Solo..."--blah, blah, blah. No. Spielburg stole it first. Actually he didn't exactly "steal it" because he simply used a story arc that has been used since the flipping beginning of time called: The Hero's Journey.

Stories, as you might not realize or understand if you think they're all supposed to mean something and change the world like Rushdie's Satanic Verses, are about the Human Experience. If you're writing something outside of the human experience, while you can gloat you actually wrote about an "original idea", no one will actually give a damn because no one will understand it since it sits outside the relevance of what we know and understand. We understand ambition, hate, greed, power, God or the Higher Being, jealousy, sloth, temptation, lust, goodness and charity, friendship, death, loss, fear, family, and love. We've all felt these, been captured by these...maybe fallen into hell by these...but I assure you, these aren't "original". They are Timeless though.

So if you want to say JK Rowling's writing voice is boring; that you just couldn't get into the world she's drawn--FINE. That's logical. I don't exactly get into Homer's voice either, but he tells a damn fine hero's journey too. But don't say she's unoriginal because she stole her ideas from STAR WARS because it's just not true. Nor did she steal them for Tolkien...or the other thousands of other fantasy writers who's penned a fantasy novel.

#1: The gray-bearded mentor ALWAYS dies because the hero must face the BIG BAD EVIL all by himself. That's how it's always been--since Beowulf. #2: The hero must always "die" (usually to save everyone)--but is then resurrected. Jesus comes to mind--I suppose you're going to say he stole it from somebody, Beowulf, perhaps?

And in the hero's journey, the hero returns to the "normal world" to live Happily Ever After, a reward for conquering all that was evil and unjust. The ultimate boon. Usually with the sassy redheaded girl he meets along his journey.

Thank you. And I will stop reading people's reviews of Deathly Hallows because it's obviously just pissing me off!

Mea culpa: So sorry--George Lucas rather than Steven Spielburg wrote and directed Star Wars--not that I give a f*ck.