Zetioun, the Man Who Quit Money and the Hero With a Thousand Faces - Essay Example

th three main stages: the hero’s departure from the common world (his/her community), the hero’s initiation into the new or strange world and finally the hero’s return to the normal and former lands where they use the skills built up while in the foreign world to help their communities. “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man (Campbell 15).

” A close examination of the two books “Zietoun” by Eggers and “The man who quit money” by Sundeen clearly fit in the category of mythical stories described here as they reveal the controversial lives of the two main characters Zeitoun and Suelo away from their homes where they battle life out to make ends meet. Zeitoun is said to have come from Syria to live in America where he meets his wife Cathy Zeitoun, a Christian- Muslim convert and with whom they later bear children. Suelo on the other hand abandons his home in America where he worked as a cook, traverses the deserts of Utah and resides within the caves in the desert far from his fellow bipeds, a decision which later on sterns his long term friend.

“In the twenty first year of the twenty first century, a man standing by the highway in the middle of America pulled from his pocket his life savings- thirty dollars- lay it in a phone booth and walked away (Sundeen 1).” The beginning of Suelo and Zeitoun’s stories, narrating how they left their original homelands, went and lived in foreign spheres conforms to Campbell’s mythical format at the first stage where the hero leaves his home and settles in a foreign land on a call to adventure.

According to Campbell, the hero often experience several trials while in the strange world as part of initiation into the new world, which they must always overcome. These challenges define the