is journey a theme

The Hero’s Journey: 12 Steps That Make Up the Universal Structure of Great Stories

by David Safford | 0 comments

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At some in your writer's life, you've probably come across the term Hero's Journey. Maybe you've even studied this guide for storytelling and applied it to your own books—and yet, something about your own application felt off. You wanted to learn more, but didn't know where to start.

Maybe you needed a resource that would simplify the hero's journey steps and all the other major details instead of complicate them.

The Hero's Journey: The Ultimate Guide to the Universal Structure of Great Stories

The Hero's Journey is as old as humanity itself. And through history, this single story form has emerged over and over again. People from all cultures have seemed to favor its structure, and its familiar types of characters (archetypal hero, anyone?), symbols, relationships, and steps.

If you want to build or strengthen your writing career and win a following of many happy readers, you want this particular tool in your writer's toolbox.

Let's dive in.

Need help applying The Hero's Journey to your story outline and manuscript? Download this free Hero's Journey worksheet now!

Why I Love the Hero's Journey (And You Will, Too)

Like many, I grew up loving Star Wars. I especially loved the music and bought the soundtracks at some point in middle school. When my parents weren't home and I had the house all to myself, I'd slip one of the CDs into my stereo, crank the volume up, and blast the London Symphony Orchestra. I even pretended I was conducting the violins and timpani myself.

I know it's nerdy to admit. But we love what we love, and I love the music of great movies.

In a way, the Hero's Journey is like a soundtrack. It follows familiar beats and obeys age-old principles of human emotion. We can't necessarily explain why a piece of music is so beautiful, but we can explain what it does and simply acknowledge that most people like it.

As I've come to understand Joseph Campbell's groundbreaking monomyth theory, commonly known as the Hero's Journey, I've fallen deeper and deeper in love with it.

But it's important to make sure you know what it is, and what it isn't.

The Hero's Journey isn't a formula to simply follow, plugging in hackneyed characters into cliched situations.

It's not “selling out” and giving up your artistic integrity

The Hero's Journey is a set of steps, scenes, character types, symbols, and themes that tend to recur in stories regardless of culture or time period. Within these archetypes are nearly infinite variations and unique perspectives that are impacted by culture and period, reflecting wonderful traits of the authors and audiences.

Also, the Hero's Journey is a process that your reader expects your story to follow, whether they know it or not. This archetype is hard-wired into our D.N.A. Let's look at how to use it to make your own stories stronger.

How to Use This Hero's Journey Post

In the beginning, there were stories. These stories were told by mothers, soldiers, and performers. They were inscribed on the walls of caves, into tablets of stone, and on the first sheets of papyrus.

This is how the Hero's Journey was born.

In this post, I'll walk you through the Hero's Journey twelve steps, and teach you how to apply them into your story. I'll also share additional resources to teach you some other Hero's Journey essentials, like character archetypes, symbols, and themes. By the end of this post, you'll be able to easily apply the Hero's Journey to your story with confidence.

And don't skip out on the practice exercise at the end of the post! This will help you start to carve out the Hero's Journey for your story with a practical fifteen minute exercise—the best way to really retain how the Hero's Journey works is to apply it.

Table of Contents: The Hero's Journey Guide

What is the Hero's Journey?

Why the Hero's Journey will make you a better writer

The Twelve-Step Hero's Journey Structure

The Ordinary World
The Call to Adventure
The Refusal of the Call
Meeting the Mentor
Crossing the Threshold
Trials, Allies, and Enemies
The Approach
The Road Back
The Resurrection
Return With the Elixir

5 Essential Hero's Journey Scenes

A Guide to Structuring Your Hero's Journey

Bonus! Additional Hero's Journey Resources

5 Character Archetypes
5 Hero's Journey Symbols
5 Hero's Journey Themes

What Is the Hero's Journey?

The Hero's Journey is the timeless combination of characters, events, symbols, and relationships frequently structured as a sequence of twelve steps. It is a storytelling structure that anyone can study and utilize to tell a story that readers will love.

First identified and defined by Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey was theorizied in The Hero With a Thousand Faces . Today, it has been researched and taught by great minds, some including Carl Jung and Christopher Vogler (author of The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers ).

This research has given us lengthy and helpful lists of archetypes , or story elements that tend to recur in stories from any culture at any time.

And while some archetypes are unique to a genre, they are still consistent within those genres. For example, a horror story from Japan will still contain many of the same archetypes as a horror story from Ireland. There will certainly be notable differences in how these archetypes are depicted, but the tropes will still appear.

That's the power of the Hero's Journey. It is the skeleton key of storytelling that you can use to unlock the solution to almost any writing problem you are confronted with.

Why the Monomyth Will Make You a Better Writer

The Hero's Journey is the single most powerful tool at your disposal as a writer.

But it isn't a “rule,” so to speak. It's also not a to-do list.

If anything, the Hero's Journey is diagnostic, not prescriptive. In other words, it describes a story that works, but doesn't necessarily tell you what to do.

But the reason you should use the Hero's Journey isn't because it's a great trick or tool. You should use the Hero's Journey because it is based on thousands of years of human storytelling.

It provides a way to connect with readers from all different walks of life.

This is why stories about fantastical creatures from imaginary worlds can forge deep emotional connections with audiences. Hollywood knows this, and its best studios take advantage. As an example, The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien, contains mythical creatures like elves and hobbits. Yet it is Frodo's heroic journey of sacrifice and courage that draws us to him like a magnet.

Learn how to easily apply the Hero's Journey 12 Steps to your books in this post. Tweet this

David Safford

You deserve a great book. That's why David Safford writes adventure stories that you won't be able to put down. Read his latest story at his website. David is a Language Arts teacher, novelist, blogger, hiker, Legend of Zelda fanatic, puzzle-doer, husband, and father of two awesome children.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Road — Journey Motif in Literature: Unveiling Paths of Self-Realization

Journey Motif in American Literature: Unveiling Paths of Self-realization

Categories: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Road To Kill a Mockingbird

Published: Jun 29, 2018

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Lit. Summaries

Biographies

Exploring the Depths of “The Journey”: A Literary Analysis by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” is a powerful and introspective piece that delves into the complexities of personal growth and transformation. In this literary analysis, we will explore the themes, symbolism, and language used in the poem to gain a deeper understanding of its meaning and significance. Through an examination of Oliver’s poetic techniques and the imagery she employs, we will uncover the rich layers of meaning that make “The Journey” such a timeless and resonant piece of literature.

Background Information

Mary Oliver’s “The Journey” is a poem that explores the theme of self-discovery and the journey towards finding one’s true self. Oliver was an American poet who was known for her nature-inspired poetry and her ability to capture the beauty of the natural world in her writing. She was born in Ohio in 1935 and began writing poetry at a young age. Oliver’s work has been widely praised for its simplicity and its ability to connect with readers on a deep emotional level. “The Journey” is one of her most famous poems and has been widely anthologized and studied in literature classes around the world. In this article, we will explore the themes and literary devices used in “The Journey” and examine how Oliver’s writing style contributes to the poem’s overall impact.

Themes Explored in “The Journey”

In “The Journey,” Mary Oliver explores several themes that are central to the human experience. One of the most prominent themes is the idea of self-discovery and personal growth. The poem follows the speaker as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery, leaving behind the familiar and venturing into the unknown. Along the way, she confronts her fears and doubts, and ultimately emerges stronger and more self-assured.

Another important theme in the poem is the idea of transformation. The speaker undergoes a profound transformation over the course of her journey, shedding her old self and embracing a new, more authentic version of herself. This theme is closely tied to the idea of self-discovery, as the speaker’s journey of transformation is driven by her desire to understand herself more deeply and to live a more fulfilling life.

Finally, “The Journey” explores the theme of perseverance and resilience. The speaker faces numerous challenges and setbacks on her journey, but she never gives up. Instead, she draws on her inner strength and determination to keep moving forward, even when the path ahead is uncertain. This theme is particularly relevant in today’s world, where many people are facing difficult and uncertain times. “The Journey” reminds us that we have the power to overcome adversity and emerge stronger on the other side.

Symbolism in “The Journey”

Symbolism in “The Journey” is a crucial element that adds depth and meaning to the poem. Throughout the poem, Oliver uses various symbols to represent the journey of self-discovery and transformation. One of the most prominent symbols in the poem is the forest. The forest represents the unknown and the journey into the depths of oneself. It is a place of darkness and mystery, but also a place of growth and transformation. The speaker must navigate through the forest to reach their destination, just as one must navigate through the unknown to find themselves. Another symbol in the poem is the river. The river represents the flow of life and the journey of time. It is a symbol of change and transformation, as the speaker must cross the river to reach their destination. The river also represents the power of nature and the forces that guide us on our journey. Overall, the symbolism in “The Journey” adds depth and meaning to the poem, allowing readers to explore the themes of self-discovery and transformation in a more profound way.

Imagery in “The Journey”

In “The Journey,” Mary Oliver uses vivid imagery to convey the speaker’s emotional journey. The poem begins with the speaker standing at the edge of a forest, symbolizing the beginning of a new journey. The forest is described as “dark” and “dense,” creating a sense of mystery and uncertainty. As the speaker begins to walk, they encounter various obstacles, such as “rivers” and “mountains,” which represent the challenges and hardships of life.

Oliver also uses animal imagery to convey the speaker’s emotions. The speaker encounters a “black bear” and a “snake,” both of which are traditionally associated with fear and danger. However, the speaker is able to overcome their fear and continue on their journey. The “wild geese” that the speaker encounters towards the end of the poem represent freedom and the possibility of a new beginning.

Overall, Oliver’s use of imagery in “The Journey” helps to create a vivid and emotional experience for the reader. The imagery not only helps to convey the speaker’s journey, but also allows the reader to connect with their own personal journey and the obstacles they may face along the way.

Structure and Form of “The Journey”

The structure and form of “The Journey” by Mary Oliver is a significant aspect of the poem’s impact on the reader. The poem is composed of three stanzas, each with a different number of lines. The first stanza has six lines, the second has nine, and the third has seven. This structure creates a sense of progression and development throughout the poem. The first stanza introduces the speaker’s desire for change, the second stanza explores the challenges and obstacles she faces on her journey, and the third stanza concludes with the speaker’s realization and acceptance of her transformation.

Additionally, the poem’s form is characterized by its use of metaphor and imagery. Oliver uses the metaphor of a forest to represent the speaker’s journey, with the trees symbolizing the obstacles and challenges she must overcome. The use of vivid imagery, such as “the dark woods, the blue hills,” and “the long, difficult path,” further emphasizes the difficulty of the journey.

Overall, the structure and form of “The Journey” work together to create a powerful and impactful poem that explores the themes of transformation and self-discovery.

The Role of Nature in “The Journey”

Nature plays a significant role in “The Journey” by Mary Oliver. Throughout the poem, the speaker is on a journey through the wilderness, and the natural world serves as both a guide and a source of inspiration. The speaker is in awe of the beauty and power of nature, and this appreciation is reflected in the language and imagery used throughout the poem. The natural world is also a symbol of the speaker’s own inner journey, as she navigates through the challenges and uncertainties of life. Overall, the role of nature in “The Journey” is to provide a sense of wonder and perspective, and to remind us of the interconnectedness of all things.

The Use of Language in “The Journey”

In “The Journey,” Mary Oliver uses language to convey the transformative power of self-discovery. The poem is written in a conversational tone, with simple and direct language that allows the reader to easily connect with the speaker’s journey. Oliver uses vivid imagery to describe the physical landscape, which serves as a metaphor for the speaker’s internal journey. The use of repetition, particularly in the phrase “you knew,” emphasizes the speaker’s growing self-awareness and confidence. Additionally, the use of the second person point of view invites the reader to participate in the journey and encourages self-reflection. Overall, Oliver’s use of language in “The Journey” effectively conveys the theme of personal growth and the importance of self-discovery.

Analysis of the Speaker’s Journey

Throughout “The Journey,” the speaker undergoes a transformative journey that takes her from a place of fear and uncertainty to one of courage and self-discovery. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker is hesitant to embark on her journey, unsure of what lies ahead and afraid of the unknown. However, as she begins to move forward, she finds strength in her own resilience and determination, and she begins to embrace the challenges that come her way.

One of the most striking aspects of the speaker’s journey is the way in which she confronts her own fears and doubts. Rather than allowing these emotions to hold her back, she uses them as a source of motivation, pushing herself to keep moving forward even when the path ahead seems daunting. This resilience is particularly evident in the lines “But little by little, / as you left their voices behind, / the stars began to burn / through the sheets of clouds, / and there was a new voice / which you slowly / recognized as your own.” Here, the speaker is able to find her own voice and her own sense of purpose, even in the face of adversity.

Another key element of the speaker’s journey is the way in which she connects with the natural world around her. Throughout the poem, she draws strength and inspiration from the landscape, finding solace in the beauty of the mountains, the rivers, and the stars. This connection to nature is particularly evident in the lines “You knew what you had to do, / though the wind pried / with its stiff fingers / at the very foundations, / though their melancholy / was terrible.” Here, the speaker is able to find a sense of peace and clarity even in the midst of a storm, drawing on the power of the natural world to guide her forward.

Overall, the speaker’s journey in “The Journey” is a powerful testament to the human spirit and the resilience of the human soul. Through her struggles and triumphs, she is able to find her own voice and her own sense of purpose, and she emerges from her journey stronger and more self-assured than ever before.

Comparison to Other Works by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is a prolific poet, and “The Journey” is just one of her many works. When compared to her other poems, “The Journey” stands out for its simplicity and accessibility. Unlike some of her more abstract and complex works, “The Journey” is straightforward and easy to understand. This makes it a great entry point for readers who are new to Oliver’s poetry. However, despite its simplicity, “The Journey” still manages to convey deep and profound truths about life and the human experience. In this way, it is a testament to Oliver’s skill as a poet and her ability to connect with readers on a deep level.

Reception and Interpretation of “The Journey”

The reception and interpretation of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” has been varied and complex. Some readers have found the poem to be a powerful meditation on the process of self-discovery and the importance of taking risks in order to grow and change. Others have interpreted the poem as a commentary on the challenges of navigating the world as a woman, and the need to break free from societal expectations and constraints in order to find one’s true path. Still others have seen the poem as a reflection on the human condition more broadly, and the universal struggle to find meaning and purpose in life. Whatever one’s interpretation of “The Journey,” it is clear that the poem has resonated deeply with readers around the world, and continues to inspire and challenge us to explore the depths of our own inner landscapes.

Impact of “The Journey” on Contemporary Poetry

“The Journey” by Mary Oliver has had a significant impact on contemporary poetry. The poem’s themes of self-discovery, resilience, and the power of nature have resonated with readers and writers alike. Many poets have been inspired by Oliver’s use of vivid imagery and her ability to capture the essence of the human experience. “The Journey” has also influenced the way poets approach the idea of a personal journey, encouraging them to explore their own paths and find meaning in their experiences. Overall, “The Journey” has become a touchstone for contemporary poets, a reminder of the transformative power of poetry and the importance of finding one’s own way in the world.”

The Significance of “The Journey” in Oliver’s Body of Work

Throughout her body of work, Mary Oliver has consistently explored the theme of “the journey.” Whether it be a physical journey through nature or an emotional journey through the human experience, Oliver’s poetry is filled with the idea of movement and progression. This theme is significant because it speaks to the universal human experience of growth and change. Oliver’s exploration of “the journey” allows readers to connect with her work on a personal level, as we all have our own journeys to navigate. Additionally, Oliver’s use of nature as a backdrop for these journeys highlights the interconnectedness of all living things and the importance of our relationship with the natural world. Overall, “the journey” is a central theme in Oliver’s body of work that speaks to the human experience and our place in the world.

The Universal Appeal of “The Journey”

“The Journey” by Mary Oliver is a poem that has captured the hearts of readers from all walks of life. Its universal appeal lies in its ability to speak to the human experience of transformation and growth. The poem’s central theme of embarking on a journey, both physical and emotional, resonates with readers who have faced challenges and overcome obstacles in their own lives. Oliver’s use of vivid imagery and metaphors creates a sense of familiarity and relatability, allowing readers to connect with the poem on a personal level. Whether it’s a journey of self-discovery, healing, or simply a physical journey, “The Journey” speaks to the human desire for growth and change. It is a timeless piece of literature that continues to inspire and move readers today.

Interpretation of the Final Lines of “The Journey”

The final lines of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” are often interpreted as a call to action, a reminder to live life to the fullest and not waste time on fear or hesitation. The speaker urges the reader to “determine to do / the work for which you came” and to “save the only life you can.” This can be seen as a message of empowerment, encouraging the reader to take control of their own destiny and make the most of their time on earth. However, some readers may also interpret these lines as a warning against complacency and a reminder that life is fleeting. The phrase “save the only life you can” could be seen as a reminder to cherish every moment and not take anything for granted. Ultimately, the interpretation of these final lines will depend on the reader’s own experiences and perspective.

The Journey as a Metaphor for Life

The journey is a powerful metaphor for life, and Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” captures this idea beautifully. Just as we embark on a physical journey, we also embark on a journey through life, with all its ups and downs, twists and turns. Along the way, we encounter obstacles and challenges, but we also experience moments of joy and wonder. The journey is not always easy, but it is always worth it. Oliver’s poem reminds us that we must have the courage to take that first step, to leave behind what is safe and familiar, and to venture into the unknown. Only then can we discover the true beauty and meaning of our lives.

Exploring the Connection between “The Journey” and Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that emerged in the 19th century in America. It emphasizes the importance of individualism, intuition, and the connection between humans and nature. Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” is a perfect example of transcendentalist literature. The poem is about a woman who decides to take a journey to find herself and her purpose in life. Throughout the poem, the woman encounters different obstacles and challenges, but she never gives up. She keeps moving forward, trusting her intuition and the universe to guide her. This is a perfect example of the transcendentalist belief in the power of the individual and the importance of following one’s own path. The poem also emphasizes the connection between humans and nature. The woman in the poem is constantly surrounded by nature, and she finds solace and guidance in it. This is another important aspect of transcendentalism, which emphasizes the importance of nature in human life. Overall, “The Journey” is a beautiful example of transcendentalist literature, and it shows how this philosophy can be applied to everyday life.

The Role of Religion and Spirituality in “The Journey”

Religion and spirituality play a significant role in Mary Oliver’s “The Journey.” The poem explores the idea of a spiritual journey, one that is not necessarily tied to any specific religion but rather a personal quest for meaning and purpose. The speaker in the poem is searching for a deeper understanding of herself and her place in the world, and she turns to a higher power for guidance and support. The use of religious imagery, such as the mention of a “dark night” and the idea of being “saved,” adds to the spiritual tone of the poem. Overall, “The Journey” highlights the importance of faith and spirituality in the human experience and the quest for self-discovery.

The Importance of Self-Discovery in “The Journey”

Self-discovery is a crucial element in any journey, and this is particularly true in “The Journey” by Mary Oliver. The poem tells the story of a woman who sets out on a journey to find herself, and in doing so, discovers the true meaning of life. Through her experiences, she learns to embrace her innermost desires and passions, and to let go of the things that hold her back. This process of self-discovery is not only important for the protagonist, but also for the reader, as it encourages us to reflect on our own lives and to consider what truly matters to us. Ultimately, “The Journey” reminds us that the path to self-discovery is not always easy, but it is always worth it.

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The Hero’s Journey Ultimate Writing Guide with Examples

by Alex Cabal

What do Star Wars , The Hobbit , and Harry Potter have in common? They’re all examples of a story archetype as old as time. You’ll see this universal narrative structure in books, films, and even video games.

This ultimate Hero’s Journey writing guide will define and explore all quintessential elements of the Hero’s Journey—character archetypes, themes, symbolism, the three act structure, as well as 12 stages of the Hero’s Journey. We’ll even provide a downloadable plot template, tips for writing the Hero’s Journey, and writing prompts to get the creative juices flowing.

What is the Hero’s Journey?

The Hero’s Journey is a universal story structure that follows the personal metamorphosis and psychological development of a protagonist on a heroic adventure. The protagonist goes through a series of stages to overcome adversity and complete a quest to attain an ultimate reward—whether that’s something tangible, like the holy grail, or something internal, like self confidence.

In the process of self-discovery, the archetypal Hero’s Journey is typically cyclical; it begins and ends in the same place (Think Frodo leaving and then returning to the Shire). After the epic quest or adventure has been completed by overcoming adversity and conflict—both physical and mental—the hero arrives where they once began, changed in some as they rose to meet the ultimate conflict or ordeal of the quest.

Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler

The Hero’s Journey has a long history of conversation around the form and its uses, with notable contributors including Joseph Campbell and the screenwriter Christopher Vogler , who later revised the steps of the Hero’s Journey.

Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” framework is the traditional story structure of the Hero’s Journey archetype. Campbell developed it through analysis of ancient myths, folktales, and religious stories. It generally follows three acts in a cyclical, rather than a linear, way: a hero embarks on a journey, faces a crisis, and then returns home transformed and victorious.

Campbell’s ideation of the monomyth in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces was influenced by Carl Jung’s perspective of psychology and models of self-transformation , where the Hero’s Journey is a path of transformation to a higher self, psychological healing, and spiritual growth.

While Campbell’s original take on the monomyth included 17 steps within the three acts, Christopher Vogler, in his book The Writer’s Journey , refined those 17 steps into 12 stages—the common formula for the modern structure many writers use today.

It’s also worth checking out Maureen Murdock’s work on the archetype, “The Heroine’s Journey.” This takes a look at the female Hero’s Journey, which examines the traditionally masculine journey through a feminist lens.

Hero’s Journey diagram: acts, steps, and stages

Below, you can see the way Volger’s Hero’s Journey is broken into twelve story beats across three acts.

A diagram representing the Hero’s Journey. The 12 steps of the journey surround a circle, which goes in a direction from act 1 to the final act.

Why is the Hero’s Journey so popular?

The structure of the Hero’s Journey appears in many of our most beloved classic stories, and it continues to resonate over time because it explores the concept of personal transformation and growth through both physical and mental trials and tribulations. In some sense, every individual in this mythic structure experiences rites of passage, the search for home and the true authentic self, which is mirrored in a protagonist’s journey of overcoming obstacles while seeking to fulfill a goal.

Additionally, the Hero’s Journey typically includes commonly shared symbols and aspects of the human psyche—the trickster, the mother, the child, etc. These archetypes play a role in creating a story that the reader can recognize from similar dynamics in their own relationships, experiences, and familiar world. Archetypes allow the writer to use these “metaphorical truths”—a playful deceiver, a maternal bond, a person of innocence and purity—to deeply and empathetically connect with the reader through symbolism. That’s why they continue to appear in countless stories all around the world.

Hero’s Journey character archetypes

Character archetypes are literary devices based on a set of qualities that are easy for a reader to identify, empathize with, and understand, as these qualities and traits are common to the human experience.

It should be noted that character archetypes are not stereotypes . While stereotypes are oversimplifications of demographics or personality traits, an archetype is a symbol of a universal type of character that can be recognized either in one’s self or in others in real life.

The following archetypes are commonly used in a Hero’s Journey:

The hero is typically the protagonist or principal point-of-view character within a story. The hero transforms—internally, externally, often both—while on their journey as they experience tests and trials and are aided or hindered by the other archetypes they encounter. In general, the hero must rise to the challenge and at some point make an act of sacrifice for the ultimate greater good. In this way, the Hero’s Journey represents the reader’s own everyday battles and their power to overcome them.

Heroes may be willing or unwilling. Some can be downright unheroic to begin with. Antiheroes are notably flawed characters that must grow significantly before they achieve the status of true hero.

The mentor often possesses divine wisdom or direct experience with the special world, and has faith in the hero. They often give the hero a gift or supernatural aid, which is usually something important for the quest: either a weapon to destroy a monster, or a talisman to enlighten the hero. The mentor may also directly aid the hero or present challenges to them that force internal or external growth. After their meeting, the hero leaves stronger and better prepared for the road ahead.

The herald is the “call to adventure.” They announce the coming of significant change and become the reason the hero ventures out onto a mysterious adventure. The herald is a catalyst that enters the story and makes it impossible for the hero to remain in status quo. Existing in the form of a person or an event, or sometimes just as information, they shift the hero’s balance and change their world.

The Threshold Guardian

This archetype guards the first threshold—the major turning point of the story where the hero must make the true commitment of the journey and embark on their quest to achieve their destiny. Threshold guardians spice up the story by providing obstacles the hero must overcome, but they’re usually not the main antagonist.

The role of the threshold guardian is to help round out the hero along their journey. The threshold guardian will test the hero’s determination and commitment and will drive them forward as the hero enters the next stage of their journey, assisting the development of the hero’s character arc within the plot. The threshold guardian can be a friend who doesn’t believe in the hero’s quest, or a foe that makes the hero question themselves, their desires, or motives in an attempt to deter the hero from their journey. Ultimately, the role of the threshold guardian is to test the hero’s resolve on their quest.

The Shape Shifter

The shape shifter adds dramatic tension to the story and provides the hero with a puzzle to solve. They can seem to be one thing, but in fact be something else. They bring doubt and suspense to the story and test the hero’s ability to discern their path. The shape shifter may be a lover, friend, ally, or enemy that somehow reveals their true self from the hero’s preconceived notion. This often causes the hero internal turmoil, or creates additional challenges and tests to overcome.

The shadow is the “monster under the bed,” and could be repressed feelings, deep trauma, or festering guilt. These all possess the dark energy of the shadow. It is the dark force of the unexpressed, unrealized, rejected, feared aspects of the hero and is often, but not necessarily, represented by the main antagonist or villain.

However, other characters may take the form of the shadow at different stages of the story as “foil characters” that contrast against the hero. They might also represent what could happen if the hero fails to learn, transform, and grow to complete their quest. At times, a hero may even succumb to the shadow, from which they will need to make sacrifices to be redeemed to continue on their overall quest.

The Trickster

The trickster is the jester or fool of the story that not only provides comic relief, but may also act as a commentator as the events of the plot unfold. Tricksters are typically witty, clever, spontaneous, and sometimes even ridiculous. The trickster within a story can bring a light-hearted element to a challenge, or find a clever way to overcome an obstacle.

The Hero’s Journey can be found all across comparative mythology

Hero’s Journey themes and symbols

Alongside character archetypes, there are also archetypes for settings, situations, and symbolic items that can offer meaning to the world within the story or support your story’s theme.

Archetypes of themes, symbols, and situations represent shared patterns of human existence. This familiarity can provide the reader insight into the deeper meaning of a story without the writer needing to explicitly tell them. There are a great number of archetypes and symbols that can be used to reinforce a theme. Some that are common to the Hero’s Journey include:

Situational archetypes

Light vs. dark and the battle of good vs. evil

Death, rebirth, and transformation in the cycle of life

Nature vs. technology, and the evolution of humanity

Rags to riches or vice versa, as commentary on the material world and social status

Wisdom vs. knowledge and innocence vs. experience, in the understanding of intuition and learned experience

Setting archetypes

Gardens may represent the taming of nature, or living in harmony with nature.

Forests may represent reconnection with nature or wildness, or the fear of the unknown.

Cities or small towns may represent humanity at its best and at its worst. A small town may offer comfort and rest, while simultaneously offering judgment; a city may represent danger while simultaneously championing diversity of ideas, beings, and cultures.

Water and fire within a landscape may represent danger, change, purification, and cleansing.

Symbolic items

Items of the past self. These items are generally tokens from home that remind the hero of where they came from and who or what they’re fighting for.

Gifts to the hero. These items may be given to the hero from a mentor, ally, or even a minor character they meet along the way. These items are typically hero talismans, and may or may not be magical, but will aid the hero on their journey.

Found items. These items are typically found along the journey and represent some sort of growth or change within the hero. After all, the hero would never have found the item had they not left their everyday life behind. These items may immediately seem unimportant, but often carry great significance.

Earned rewards. These items are generally earned by overcoming a test or trial, and often represent growth, or give aid in future trials, tests, and conflicts.

The three act structure of the Hero’s Journey

The structure of the Hero’s Journey, including all 12 steps, can be grouped into three stages that encompass each phase of the journey. These acts follow the the external and internal arc of the hero—the beginning, the initiation and transformation, and the return home.

Act One: Departure (Steps 1—5)

The first act introduces the hero within the ordinary world, as they are—original and untransformed. The first act will typically include the first five steps of the Hero’s Journey.

This section allows the writer to set the stage with details that show who the hero is before their metamorphosis—what is the environment of the ordinary world? What’s important to the hero? Why do they first refuse the call, and then, why do they ultimately accept and embark on the journey to meet with the conflict?

This stage introduces the first major plot point of the story, explores the conflict the hero confronts, and provides the opportunity for characterization for the hero and their companions.

The end of the first act generally occurs when the hero has fully committed to the journey and crossed the threshold of the ordinary world—where there is no turning back.

Act Two: Initiation (Steps 6—9)

Once the hero begins their journey, the second act marks the beginning of their true initiation into the unfamiliar world—they have crossed the threshold, and through this choice, have undergone their first transformation.

The second act is generally the longest of the three and includes steps six through nine.

In this act, the hero meets most of the characters that will be pivotal to the plot, including friends, enemies, and allies. It offers the rising action and other minor plot points related to the overarching conflict. The hero will overcome various trials, grow and transform, and navigate subplots—the additional and unforeseen complexity of the conflict.

This act generally ends when the hero has risen to the challenge to overcome the ordeal and receives their reward. At the end of this act, it’s common for the theme and moral of the story to be fully unveiled.

Act Three: Return (Steps 10—12)

The final stage typically includes steps 10—12, generally beginning with the road back—the point in the story where the hero must recommit to the journey and use all of the growth, transformation, gifts and tools acquired along the journey to bring a decisive victory against their final conflict.

From this event, the hero will also be “reborn,” either literally or metaphorically, and then beginning anew as a self-actualized being, equipped with internal knowledge about themselves, external knowledge about the world, and experience.

At the end of the third act, the hero returns home to the ordinary world, bringing back the gifts they earned on their journey. In the final passages, both the hero and their perception of the ordinary world are compared with what they once were.

The 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey

The following guide outlines the 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey and represents a framework for the creation of a Hero’s Journey story template. You don’t necessarily need to follow the explicit cadence of these steps in your own writing, but they should act as checkpoints to the overall story.

We’ll also use JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit as a literary example for each of these steps. The Hobbit does an exemplary job of following the Hero’s Journey, and it’s also an example of how checkpoints can exist in more than one place in a story, or how they may deviate from the typical 12-step process of the Hero’s Journey.

1. The Ordinary World

This stage in the Hero’s Journey is all about exposition. This introduces the hero’s backstory—who the hero is, where they come from, their worldview, culture, and so on. This offers the reader a chance to relate to the character in their untransformed form.

As the story and character arc develop, the reader is brought along the journey of transformation. By starting at the beginning, a reader has a basic understanding of what drives the hero, so they can understand why the hero makes the choices they do. The ordinary world shows the protagonist in their comfort zone, with their worldview being limited to the perspective of their everyday life.

Characters in the ordinary world may or may not be fully comfortable or satisfied, but they don’t have a point of reference to compare—they have yet to leave the ordinary world to gain the knowledge to do so.

Step One example

The Hobbit begins by introducing Bilbo in the Shire as a respectable and well-to-do member of the community. His ordinary world is utopian and comfortable. Yet, even within a village that is largely uninterested in the concerns of the world outside, the reader is provided a backstory: even though Bilbo buys into the comforts and normalcy of the Shire, he still yearns for adventure—something his neighbors frown upon. This ordinary world of the Shire is disrupted with the introduction of Gandalf—the “mentor”—who is somewhat uncomfortably invited to tea.

2. Call to Adventure

The call to adventure in the Hero’s Journey structure is the initial internal conflict that the protagonist hero faces, that drives them to the true conflict that they must overcome by the end of their journey.

The call occurs within the known world of the character. Here the writer can build on the characterization of the protagonist by detailing how they respond to the initial call. Are they hesitant, eager, excited, refusing, or willing to take a risk?

Step Two example

Bilbo’s call to adventure takes place at tea as the dwarves leisurely enter his home, followed by Gandalf, who identifies Bilbo as the group’s missing element—the burglar, and the lucky 14th member.

Bilbo and his ordinary world are emphasized by his discomfort with his rambunctious and careless guests. Yet as the dwarves sing stories of old adventures, caverns, and lineages, which introduce and foreshadow the conflict to come, a yearning for adventure is stirred. Though he still clings to his ordinary world and his life in the Shire, he’s conflicted. Should he leave the shire and experience the world, or stay in his comfortable home? Bilbo continues to refuse the call, but with mixed feelings.

3. Refusal of the Call

The refusal of the call in the Hero’s Journey showcases a “clinging” to one’s original self or world view. The initial refusal of the call represents a fear of change, as well as a resistance to the internal transformation that will occur after the adventure has begun.

The refusal reveals the risks that the protagonist faces if they were to answer the call, and shows what they’ll leave behind in the ordinary world once they accept.

The refusal of the call creates tension in the story, and should show the personal reasons why the hero is refusing—inner conflict, fear of change, hesitation, insecurity, etc. This helps make their character clearer for the reader.

These are all emotions a reader can relate to, and in presenting them through the hero, the writer deepens the reader’s relationship with them and helps the reader sympathize with the hero’s internal plight as they take the first step of transformation.

Step Three example

Bilbo refuses the call in his first encounter with Gandalf, and in his reaction to the dwarves during tea. Even though Bilbo’s “Tookish” tendencies make him yearn for adventure, he goes to bed that night still refusing the call. The next morning, as Bilbo awakes to an empty and almost fully clean hobbit home, he feels a slight disappointment for not joining the party, but quickly soothes his concerns by enjoying the comfort of his home—i.e. the ordinary world. Bilbo explores his hesitation to disembark from the ordinary world, questioning why a hobbit would become mixed up in the adventures of others, and choosing not to meet the dwarves at the designated location.

4. Meeting the Mentor

Meeting the mentor in the Hero’s Journey is the stage that provides the hero protagonist with a guide, relationship, and/or informational asset that has experience outside the ordinary world. The mentor offers confidence, advice, wisdom, training, insight, tools, items, or gifts of supernatural wonder that the hero will use along the journey and in overcoming the ultimate conflict.

The mentor often represents someone who has attempted to overcome, or actually has overcome, an obstacle, and encourages the hero to pursue their calling, regardless of the hero’s weaknesses or insecurities. The mentor may also explicitly point out the hero’s weaknesses, forcing them to reckon with and accept them, which is the first step to their personal transformation.

Note that not all mentors need to be a character . They can also be objects or knowledge that has been instilled in the hero somehow—cultural ethics, spiritual guidance, training of a particular skill, a map, book, diary, or object that illuminates the path forward, etc. In essence, the mentor character or object has a role in offering the protagonist outside help and guidance along the Hero’s Journey, and plays a key role in the protagonist’s transition from normalcy to heroism.

The mentor figure also offers the writer the opportunity to incorporate new information by expanding upon the story, plot, or backstory in unique ways. They do this by giving the hero information that would otherwise be difficult for the writer to convey naturally.

The mentor may accompany the hero throughout most of the story, or they may only periodically be included to facilitate changes and transformation within them.

Step Four example

The mentor, Gandalf, is introduced almost immediately. Gandalf is shown to be the mentor, firstly through his arrival from—and wisdom of—the outside world; and secondly, through his selection of Bilbo for the dwarven party by identifying the unique characteristics Bilbo has that are essential to overcoming the challenges in the journey. Gandalf doesn’t accompany Bilbo and the company through all of the trials and tribulations of the plot, but he does play a key role in offering guidance and assistance, and saves the group in times of dire peril.

5. Crossing the Threshold

As the hero crosses the first threshold, they begin their personal quest toward self-transformation. Crossing the threshold means that the character has committed to the journey, and has stepped outside of the ordinary world in the pursuit of their goal. This typically marks the conclusion of the first act.

The threshold lies between the ordinary world and the special world, and marks the point of the story where the hero fully commits to the road ahead. It’s a crucial stage in the Hero’s Journey, as the hero wouldn’t be able to grow and transform by staying in the ordinary world where they’re comfortable and their world view can’t change.

The threshold isn’t necessarily a specific place within the world of the story, though a place can symbolize the threshold—for example a border, gateway, or crossroads that separate what is safe and “known” from what is potentially dangerous. It can also be a moment or experience that causes the hero to recognize that the comforts and routine of their world no longer apply—like the loss of someone or something close to the hero, for example. The purpose of the threshold is to take the hero out of their element and force them, and the reader, to adapt from the known to the unknown.

This moment is crucial to the story’s tension. It marks the first true shift in the character arc and the moment the adventure has truly begun. The threshold commonly forces the hero into a situation where there’s no turning back. This is sometimes called the initiation stage or the departure stage.

Step Five example

The threshold moment in The Hobbit occurs when the party experiences true danger as a group for the first time. Bilbo, voted as scout by the party and eager to prove his burglar abilities, sneaks upon a lone fire in the forest where he finds three large trolls. Rather than turn back empty-handed—as he initially wants to—Bilbo chooses to prove himself, plucking up the courage to pickpocket the trolls—but is caught in the process. The dwarves are also captured and fortunately, Gandalf, the mentor, comes to save the party.

Bilbo’s character arc is solidified in this threshold moment. He experiences his first transformation when he casts aside fear and seeks to prove himself as a burglar, and as an official member of the party. This moment also provides further characterization of the party as a whole, proving the loyalty of the group in seeking out their captured member.

Gandalf’s position as the mentor is also firmly established as he returns to ultimately save all of the members of the party from being eaten by trolls. The chapter ends with Bilbo taking ownership of his first hero talisman—the sword that will accompany him through the rest of the adventure.

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

Once the hero has crossed the threshold, they must now encounter tests of courage, make allies, and inevitably confront enemies. All these elements force the hero to learn the new ways of the special world and how it differs from the hero’s ordinary world—i.e. how the rules have changed, the conditions of the special world vs. the ordinary world, and the various beings and places within it.

All these elements spark stages of transformation within the hero—learning who they can trust and who they can’t, learning new skills, seeking training from the mentor, and overcoming challenges that force and drive them to grow and transform.

The hero may both succeed and fail at various points of this stage, which will test their commitment to the journey. The writer can create tension by making it clear that the hero may or may not succeed at the critical moment of crisis. These crises can be external or internal.

External conflicts are issues that the character must face and overcome within the plot—e.g. the enemy has a sword drawn and the hero must fight to survive.

Internal conflicts occur inside the hero. For example, the hero has reached safety, but their ally is in peril; will they step outside their comfort zone and rise to the occasion and save their friend? Or will they return home to their old life and the safety of the ordinary world?

Tests are conflicts and threats that the hero must face before they reach the true conflict, or ordeal, of the story. These tests set the stage and prime the hero to meet and achieve the ultimate goal. They provide the writer the opportunity to further the character development of the hero through their actions, inactions, and reactions to what they encounter. The various challenges they face will teach them valuable lessons, as well as keep the story compelling and the reader engaged.

Allies represent the characters that offer support to the protagonist along the journey. Some allies may be introduced from the beginning, while others may be gained along the journey. Secondary characters and allies provide additional nuance for the hero, through interactions, events, and relationships that further show who the hero is at heart, what they believe in, and what they’re willing to fight for. The role of the allies is to bring hope, inspiration, and further drive the hero to do what needs to be done.

Enemies represent a foil to the allies. While allies bring hope and inspiration, enemies will provide challenges, conflicts, tests, and challenges. Both allies and enemies may instigate transformative growth, but enemies do so in a way that fosters conflict and struggle.

Characterization of enemies can also enhance the development of the hero through how they interact and the lessons learned through those interactions. Is the hero easily duped, forgiving, empathetic, merciful? Do they hold a grudge and seek revenge? Who is the hero now that they have been harmed, faced an enemy, and lost pieces of their innocent worldview? To answer that, the hero is still transforming and gestating with every lesson, test, and enemy faced along the way.

Step Six example

As the plot of The Hobbit carries on, Bilbo encounters many tests, allies, and enemies that all drive complexity in the story. A few examples include:

The first major obstacle that Bilbo faces occurs within the dark and damp cave hidden in the goblin town. All alone, Bilbo must pluck up the wit and courage to outriddle a creature named Gollum. In doing so, Bilbo discovers the secret power of a golden ring (another hero talisman) that will aid him and the party through the rest of the journey.

The elves encountered after Bilbo “crosses the threshold” are presented as allies in the story. The hero receives gifts of food, a safe place to rest, and insight and guidance that allows the party to continue on their journey. While the party doesn’t dwell long with the elves, the elves also provide further character development for the party at large: the serious dwarf personalities are juxtaposed against the playful elvish ones, and the elves offer valuable historical insight with backstory to the weapons the party gathered from the troll encounter.

Goblins are a recurring enemy within the story that the hero and party must continue to face, fight, and run from. The goblins present consistent challenges that force Bilbo to face fear and learn and adapt, not only to survive but to save his friends.

Step Seven: “Approach to the Inmost Cave”

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

The approach to the inmost cave of the Hero’s Journey is the tense quiet before the storm; it’s the part of the story right before the hero faces their greatest fear, and it can be positioned in a few different ways. By now, the hero has overcome obstacles, setbacks, and tests, gained and lost allies and enemies, and has transformed in some way from the original protagonist first introduced in the ordinary world.

The moment when the hero approaches the inmost cave can be a moment of reflection, reorganization, and rekindling of morale. It presents an opportunity for the main characters of the story to come together in a moment of empathy for losses along the journey; a moment of planning and plotting next steps; an opportunity for the mentor to teach a final lesson to the hero; or a moment for the hero to sit quietly and reflect upon surmounting the challenge they have been journeying toward for the length of their adventure.

The “cave” may or may not be a physical place where the ultimate ordeal and conflict will occur. The approach represents the momentary period where the hero assumes their final preparation for the overall challenge that must be overcome. It’s a time for the hero and their allies, as well as the reader, to pause and reflect on the events of the story that have already occurred, and to consider the internal and external growth and transformation of the hero.

Having gained physical and/or emotional strength and fortitude through their trials and tests, learned more rules about the special world, found and lost allies and friends, is the hero prepared to face danger and their ultimate foe? Reflection, tension, and anticipation are the key elements of crafting the approach to the cave.

Step Seven example

The approach to the cave in The Hobbit occurs as the party enters the tunnel of the Lonely Mountain. The tunnel is the access point to the ultimate goal—Thorin’s familial treasure, as well as the ultimate test—the formidable dragon Smaug. During this part of the story, the party must hide, plot, and plan their approach to the final conflict. It’s at this time that Bilbo realizes he must go alone to scout out and face the dragon.

8. The Ordeal

The ordeal is the foreshadowed conflict that the hero must face, and represents the midpoint of the story. While the ordeal is the ultimate conflict that the hero knows they must overcome, it’s a false climax to the complete story—there’s still much ground to cover in the journey, and the hero will still be tested after completing this, the greatest challenge. In writing the ordeal phase of the Hero’s Journey, the writer should craft this as if it actually were the climax to the tale, even though it isn’t.

The first act, and the beginning of the second act, have built up to the ordeal with characterization and the transformation of the hero through their overcoming tests and trials. This growth—both internal and external—has all occurred to set the hero up to handle this major ordeal.

As this stage commences, the hero is typically faced with fresh challenges to make the ordeal even more difficult than they previously conceived. This may include additional setbacks for the hero, the hero’s realization that they were misinformed about the gravity of the situation, or additional conflicts that make the ordeal seem insurmountable.

These setbacks cause the hero to confront their greatest fears and build tension for both the hero and the reader, as they both question if the hero will ultimately succeed or fail. In an epic fantasy tale, this may mean a life-or-death moment for the hero, or experiencing death through the loss of an important ally or the mentor. In a romance, it may be the moment of crisis where a relationship ends or a partner reveals their dark side or true self, causing the hero great strife.

This is the rock-bottom moment for the hero, where they lose hope, courage, and faith. At this point, even though the hero has already crossed the threshold, this part of the story shows how the hero has changed in such a way that they can never return to their original self: even if they return to the ordinary world, they’ll never be the same; their perception of the world has been modified forever.

Choosing to endure against all odds and costs to face the ordeal represents the loss of the hero’s original self from the ordinary world, and a huge internal transformation occurs within the hero as they must rise and continue forth to complete their journey and do what they set out to do from the beginning.

The ordeal may also be positioned as an introduction to the greater villain through a trial with a shadow villain, where the hero realizes that the greatest conflict is unveiled as something else, still yet to come. In these instances, the hero may fail, or barely succeed, but must learn a crucial lesson and be metaphorically resurrected through their failure to rise again and overcome the greater challenge.

Step Eight example

Bilbo must now face his ultimate challenge: burgle the treasure from the dragon. This is the challenge that was set forth from the beginning, as it’s his purpose as the party’s 14th member, the burglar, anointed by Gandalf, the mentor. Additional conflicts arise as Bilbo realizes that he must face the dragon alone, and in doing so, must rely on all of the skills and gifts in the form of talismans and tokens he has gained throughout the adventure.

During the ordeal, Bilbo uses the courage he has gained by surmounting the story’s previous trials; he’s bolstered by his loyalty to the group and relies upon the skills and tools he has earned in previous trials. Much as he outwitted Gollum in the cave, Bilbo now uses his wit as well as his magical ring to defeat Smaug in a game of riddles, which ultimately leads Smaug out of the lair so that Bilbo can complete what he was set out to do—steal the treasure.

The reward of the Hero’s Journey is a moment of triumph, celebration, or change as the hero achieves their first major victory. This is a moment of reflection for both the reader and the hero, to take a breath to contemplate and acknowledge the growth, development, and transformation that has occurred so far.

The reward is the boon that the hero learns, is granted, or steals, that will be crucial to facing the true climax of the story that is yet to come. The reward may be a physical object, special knowledge, or reconciliation of some sort, but it’s always a thing that allows for some form of celebration or replenishment and provides the drive to succeed before the journey continues.

Note that the reward may not always be overtly positive—it may also be a double-edged sword that could harm them physically or spiritually. This type of reward typically triggers yet another internal transformation within the hero, one that grants them the knowledge and personal drive to complete the journey and face their remaining challenges.

From the reward, the hero is no longer externally driven to complete the journey, but has evolved to take on the onus of doing so.

Examples of rewards may include:

A weapon, elixir, or object that will be necessary to complete the quest.

Special knowledge, or a personal transformation to use against a foe.

An eye-opening experience that provides deep insight and fundamentally changes the hero and their position within the story and world.

Reconciliation with another character, or with themselves.

No matter what the reward is, the hero should experience some emotional or spiritual revelation and a semblance of inner peace or personal resolve to continue the journey. Even if the reward is not overtly positive, the hero and the reader deserve a moment of celebration for facing the great challenge they set out to overcome.

Step Nine example

Bilbo defeats the dragon at a battle of wits and riddles, and now receives his reward. He keeps the gifts he has earned, both the dagger and the gold ring. He is also granted his slice of the treasure, and the Lonely Mountain is returned to Thorin. The party at large is rewarded for completing the quest and challenge they set out to do.

However, Tolkien writes the reward to be more complex than it first appears. The party remains trapped and hungry within the Mountain as events unfold outside of it. Laketown has been attacked by Smaug, and the defenders will want compensation for the damage to their homes and for their having to kill the dragon. Bilbo discovers, and then hides, the Arkenstone (a symbolic double edged reward) to protect it from Thorin’s selfishness and greed.

10. The Road Back

The road back in the Hero’s Journey is the beginning of the third act, and represents a turning point within the story. The hero must recommit to the journey, alongside the new stakes and challenges that have arisen from the completion of the original goal.

The road back presents roadblocks—new and unforeseen challenges to the hero that they must now face on their journey back to the ordinary world. The trials aren’t over yet, and the stakes are raised just enough to keep the story compelling before the final and ultimate conflict—the hero’s resurrection—is revealed in the middle of the third act.

The hero has overcome their greatest challenge in the Ordeal and they aren’t the same person they were when they started. This stage of the story often sees the hero making a choice, or reflecting on their transformed state compared to their state at the start of the journey.

The writer’s purpose in the third act is not to eclipse the upcoming and final conflict, but to up the stakes, show the true risk of the final climax, and to reflect on what it will take for the hero to ultimately prevail. The road back should offer a glimmer of hope—the light at the end of the tunnel—and should let the reader know the dramatic finale is about to arrive.

Step Ten example

What was once a journey to steal treasure and slay a dragon has developed new complications. Our hero, Bilbo, must now use all of the powers granted in his personal transformation, as well as the gifts and rewards he earned on the quest, to complete the final stages of the journey.

This is the crisis moment of The Hobbit ; the armies of Laketown are prepared for battle to claim their reward for killing Smaug; the fearless leader of their party, Thorin, has lost reason and succumbed to greed; and Bilbo makes a crucial choice based his personal growth: he gives the Arkenstone to the king as a bargaining chip for peace. Bilbo also briefly reconnects with the mentor, Gandalf, who warns him of the unpleasant times ahead, but comforts Bilbo by saying that things may yet turn out for the best. Bilbo then loyally returns to his friends, the party of dwarves, to stand alongside them in the final battle.

11. Resurrection

The resurrection stage of the Hero’s Journey is the final climax of the story, and the heart of the third act. By now the hero has experienced internal and external transformation and a loss of innocence, coming out with newfound knowledge. They’re fully rooted in the special world, know its rules, and have made choices that underline this new understanding.

The hero must now overcome the final crisis of their external quest. In an epic fantasy tale, this may be the last battle of light versus darkness, good versus evil, a cumulation of fabulous forces. In a thriller, the hero might ultimately face their own morality as they approach the killer. In a drama or romance, the final and pivotal encounter in a relationship occurs and the hero puts their morality ahead of their immediate desires.

The stakes are the highest they’ve ever been, and the hero must often choose to make a sacrifice. The sacrifice may occur as a metaphoric or symbolic death of the self in some way; letting go of a relationship, title, or mental/emotional image of the self that a hero once used as a critical aspect of their identity, or perhaps even a metaphoric physical death—getting knocked out or incapacitated, losing a limb, etc.

Through whatever the great sacrifice is, be it loss or a metaphoric death, the hero will experience a form of resurrection, purification, or internal cleansing that is their final internal transformation.

In this stage, the hero’s character arc comes to an end, and balance is restored to the world. The theme of the story is fully fleshed out and the hero, having reached some form of self-actualization, is forever changed. Both the reader and the hero experience catharsis—the relief, insight, peace, closure, and purging of fear that had once held the hero back from their final transformation.

Step Eleven example

All the armies have gathered, and the final battle takes place. Just before the battle commences, Bilbo tells Thorin that it was he who gave the Arkenstone to the city of men and offers to sacrifice his reward of gold for taking the stone. Gandalf, the mentor, arrives, standing beside Bilbo and his decision. Bilbo is shunned by Thorin and is asked to leave the party for his betrayal.

Bilbo experiences a symbolic death when he’s knocked out by a stone. Upon awakening, Bilbo is brought to a dying Thorin, who forgives him of his betrayal, and acknowledges that Bilbo’s actions were truly the right thing to do. The theme of the story is fully unveiled: that bravery and courage comes in all sizes and forms, and that greed and gold are less worthy than a life rich in experiences and relationships.

12. Return with the Elixir

The elixir in the Hero’s Journey is the final reward the hero brings with them on their return, bridging their two worlds. It’s a reward hard earned through the various relationships, tests, and growth the hero has experienced along their journey. The “elixir” can be a magical potion, treasure, or object, but it can also be intangible—love, wisdom, knowledge, or experience.

The return is key to the circular nature of the Hero’s Journey. It offers a resolution to both the reader and the hero, and a comparison of their growth from when the journey began.

Without the return, the story would have a linear nature, a beginning and an end. In bringing the self-actualized hero home to the ordinary world, the character arc is completed, and the changes they’ve undergone through the journey are solidified. They’ve overcome the unknown, and though they’re returning home, they can no longer resume their old life because of their new insight and experiences.

Step Twelve example

The small yet mighty hero Bilbo is accompanied on his journey home by his mentor Gandalf, as well as the allies he gathered along his journey. He returns with many rewards—his dagger, his golden ring, and his 1/14th split of the treasure—yet his greatest rewards are his experience and the friends he has made along the way. Upon entering the Shire Bilbo sings a song of adventure, and the mentor Gandalf remarks, “My dear Bilbo! Something is the matter with you, you are not the hobbit you were.”

The final pages of The Hobbit explore Bilbo’s new self in the Shire, and how the community now sees him as a changed hobbit—no longer quite as respectable as he once was, with odd guests who visit from time to time. Bilbo also composes his story “There and Back Again,” a tale of his experiences, underlining his greatest reward—stepping outside of the Shire and into the unknown, then returning home, a changed hobbit.

Books that follow the Hero’s Journey

One of the best ways to become familiar with the plot structure of the Hero’s Journey is to read stories and books that successfully use it to tell a powerful tale. Maybe they’ll inspire you to use the hero’s journey in your own writing!

The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

The Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin.

The Odyssey by Homer.

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Writing tips for the Hero’s Journey

Writing a Hero’s Journey story often requires planning beforehand to organize the plot, structure, and events of the story. Here are some tips to use the hero’s journey archetype in a story:

Use a template or note cards to organize and store your ideas. This can assist in ensuring that you tie up any loose ends in the plot, and that the cadence of your story is already outlined before you begin writing.

Use word count goals for writing different sections of your story. This can help you keep pace while you plan and write the first draft. You can always revise, edit, and add in detail at later stages of development, but getting the ideas written without bogging them down with details can assist in preparing your outline, and may perhaps provide additional inspiration and guidance along the way.

Lean into creativity and be flexible with the 12 steps. They don’t need to occur in the exact order we’ve listed above, but that ordering can offer great checkpoint moments for your story.

Invest in characterization and ensure that your main character is balanced with credible strengths and weaknesses. A perfect, pure hero has no room to grow. A one-dimensional villain who relies on the trope of “pure evil” without any motivations for their actions is boring and predictable.

Ensure tension and urgency is woven into the story. An epic tale to the grocery store for baby formula may still be fraught with danger, and the price of failure is a hungry child. Without urgency, tension, and risk, a Hero’s Journey will fall flat.

Be hard on your characters. Give them deep conflicts that truly test their nature, and their mental, physical, and spiritual selves. An easy journey isn’t a memorable one.

Have a balance of scenes that play on both positive and negative emotions and outcomes for the hero to create a compelling plot line that continues to engage your reader. A story that’s relentlessly positive doesn’t provide a pathway for the hero to transform. Likewise, a story that’s nothing but doom, strife, and turmoil, without a light at the end of the tunnel or an opportunity for growth, can make a story feel stagnant and unengaging.

Reward your characters and your reader. Personal transformation and the road to the authentic self may be grueling, but there’s peace or joy at the end of the tunnel. Even if your character doesn’t fully saved the world, they—and the reader—should be rewarded with catharsis, a new perspective, or personal insight at the end of the tale.

Hero’s Journey templates

Download these free templates to help you plan out your Hero’s Journey:

Download the Hero’s Journey template template (docx) Download the Hero’s Journey template template (pdf)

Prompts and practices to help you write your own Hero’s Journey

Use the downloadable template listed below for the following exercises:

Read a book or watch a movie that follows the Hero’s Journey. Use the template to fill in when each step occurs or is completed. Make note of themes and symbols, character arcs, the main plot, and the subplots that drive complexity in the story.

When writing, use a timer set to 2—5 minutes per section to facilitate bursts of creativity. Brainstorm ideas for cadence, plot, and characters within the story. The outline you create can always be modified, but the timer ensures you can get ideas on paper without a commitment; you’re simply jotting down ideas as quickly as you can.

Use the downloadable template above to generate outlines based on the following prompts.

A woman’s estranged mother has died. A friend of the mother arrives at the woman’s home to tell her that her mother has left all her belongings to her daughter, and hands her a letter. The letter details the mother’s life, and the daughter must visit certain places and people to find her mother’s house and all the belongings in it—learning more about her mother’s life, and herself, along the way.

The last tree on earth has fallen, and technology can no longer sustain human life on Earth. An engineer, having long ago received alien radio signals from a tower in their backyard, has dedicated their life to building a spaceship in their garage. The time has come to launch, and the engineer must select a group of allies to bring with them to the stars, on a search for a new life, a new home, and “the others” out there in the universe.

A detective is given a new case: to find a much-talked-about murderer. The twist is, the murderer has sent a letter to the detective agency, quietly outing a homicidal politician who is up for re-election and is a major financial contributor to the police. In the letter, the murderer states that if the politician doesn’t come clean about their crimes, the murderer will kill the politician on the night of the election. The detective must solve the case before the election, and come to terms with their own feelings of justice and morality.

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10 of the Best Poems about Journeys

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

According to Thomas de Quincey, Wordsworth clocked up an estimated 180,000 miles during his lifetime, walking around his beloved Lake District (to say nothing of the Quantocks, where he lived near Coleridge during the 1790s).

Given that there is a strong link between poets and travelling of various kinds – whether walking, sailing, or travelling in some more abstract, metaphorical or spiritual sense – we felt it was time we put together some of the greatest journey poems.

Andrew Marvell, ‘ Bermudas ’.

Where the remote Bermudas ride In th’ocean’s bosom unespied, From a small boat, that row’d along, The list’ning winds receiv’d this song. ‘What should we do but sing his praise That led us through the wat’ry maze Unto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own?

This poem, from the seventeenth-century poet Andrew Marvell, is set in the Atlantic ocean and focuses on a group of people aboard a boat, and clearly in exile from their native land. They spy the island of Bermuda, and sing a song in praise of the island. The next 32 lines of the poem comprise their song.

The people aboard the boat praise God for leading them to this previously undiscovered island, which seems ‘far kinder’ than the island they have left behind, namely Britain.

These people have endured and eluded sea-monsters and storms, and God has led them to safety on the ‘grassy stage’ of this new island. It is mentioned that they are fleeing England because of ‘prelates’ rage’, namely religious persecution – so ‘Bermudas’ is a poem about undertaking a difficult journey to find a new place where a community of people can start afresh.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner.

‘The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the lighthouse top.

‘The Sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea …

Written in 1797-8, this is Coleridge’s most famous poem – it first appeared in Lyrical Ballads . The idea of killing an albatross bringing bad luck upon the crew of a ship appears to have been invented in this poem, as there is no precedent for it – and the albatross idea was probably William Wordsworth’s, not Coleridge’s (Wordsworth got the idea of the albatross-killing from a 1726 book, A Voyage Round The World by Way of the Great South Sea , by Captain George Shelvocke).

The poem is one of the great narrative poems in English, with the old mariner recounting his story, with its hardships and tragedy, to a wedding guest. Variously interpreted as being about guilt over the Transatlantic slave trade, about Coleridge’s own loneliness, and about spiritual salvation, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner remains a challenging poem about a journey whose lessons the ship’s crew, and we as readers, continue to learn from.

Robert Browning, ‘ How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix ’.

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I gallop’d, Dirck gallop’d, we gallop’d all three; ‘Good speed!’ cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; ‘Speed!’ echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we gallop’d abreast …

Beginning with the wonderfully rhythmical lines ‘I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; / I gallop’d, Dirck gallop’d, we gallop’d all three’. But this poem, describing a horse-ride to deliver some important news (although we never learn what the news actually is). Instead, the emphasis is on the journey itself, with the sound of the galloping horses excellently captured through the metre of the verse.

This poem has a notable claim to fame: in 1889, it became the first poem (spoken by the author) to be recorded on a phonograph, when Browning recited (half-remembered) words from the poem into an Edison phonograph at a dinner party.

Henry Cholmondeley Pennell, ‘ The Night Mail North ’.

Now then, take your seats! for Glasgow and the North; Chester! – Carlisle! – Holyhead, – and the wild Firth of Forth,

‘Clap on the steam and sharp’s the word, You men in scarlet cloth: –

‘Are there any more pas .. sengers, For the Night .. Mail .. to the North!’ Are there any more passengers? Yes three – but they can’t get in, – Too late, too late! – How they bellow and knock, They might as well try to soften a rock As the heart of that fellow in green …’

Before W. H. Auden’s more famous ‘Night Mail’ poem from 1936, there was this poem, whose full title is ‘The Night Mail North (Euston Square, 1840)’ – 1840 being the year the penny post was introduced in Britain. Pennell captures the snatches of conversation on the train as it prepares to embark on its long voyage north and the passengers settle down for their journey in this skilful piece of what we might call documentary poetry.

Emily Dickinson, ‘ Our Journey had advanced ’.

Our journey had advanced; Our feet were almost come To that odd fork in Being’s road, Eternity by term …

In many of the best journey poems, the journey is a metaphor for something greater – and this is certainly the case in this Emily Dickinson poem. And what journey is greater than that from life into death, mortality into eternity?

A. E. Housman, ‘ White in the moon the long road lies ’.

White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love.

Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: My feet upon the moonlit dust Pursue the ceaseless way …

In this poem, the king of lugubrious English verse writes about leaving his beloved, with the road lying ahead of him that ‘leads me from my love’. And although he trusts that the same road will eventually lead him back to his love, first he must travel far, far away.

W. B. Yeats, ‘ Sailing to Byzantium ’.

That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect …

W. B. Yeats wrote ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ in 1927, when he was in his early sixties, and the poem sees Yeats’s speaker announcing that the country he’s left behind is ‘no country for old men’.

Being old, the speaker felt out of place there, and so he is making a journey (a pilgrimage?) to the ancient city of Byzantium, which can be read as a symbol for his yearning for spiritual meaning: the poem, then, is about a spiritual journey, and renouncing the hold of the world upon us in order to attain something higher than the physical or sensual.

D. H. Lawrence, ‘ The Ship of Death ’.

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell to one’s own self, and find an exit from the fallen self …

A poem of angst and death, ‘The Ship of Death’ uses the metaphor of a journey to invoke the idea of self-discovery: the poem involves the poem’s speaker calling for the reader to prepare a ‘ship of death’ – ‘the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith’ – to transport them to ‘oblivion’, travelling from ‘the old self’ to ‘the new’.

T. S. Eliot, ‘ Journey of the Magi ’.

A nativity poem with a difference, ‘Journey of the Magi’ (1927) is spoken by one of the ‘Three Wise Men’ (as they’re commonly known), as they make their journey to visit the infant Jesus. The speaker reflects on the hardships he and his fellow travellers endure on their journey, and the implications of the advent of Christ for the Magi’s own belief system.

Philip Larkin, ‘ The Whitsun Weddings ’.

This poem, the title poem in Larkin’s 1964 collection, describes a journey from Hull to London on the Whitsun weekend and the wedding parties that Larkin sees climbing aboard the train at each station. Actually inspired by a train journey from Hull down to Loughborough in the Midlands, ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ captures the hope and togetherness these wedding parties symbolise – although the poem can also be read in a less optimistic way .

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Journeys: Exploring Inner Journeys in Art and Text

Sara Jatcko, Terra Foundation for American Art Manuel Valderrama, Lane Tech College Prep High School

By conducting close readings of works of visual art and poetry, students will explore how artists connect physical journeys with inner journeys of human experience. Students will also write narratives that depict real and imagined journeys.

Lesson Overview

Grade Levels: 9–12

Time Needed: 4–5 class periods, 40–50 minutes each

Background Needed

No specific background is needed for this lesson.

Essential Questions

What is a journey?
How can a work of art or literature take you on a journey?
How can a physical journey inspire a journey of the imagination?

Enduring Understandings

Artists and writers can create works that explore inner journeys of human experience as well as external, physical journeys.
A close reading of a work of art or literature can lead us on an inner journey.
Students will determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development.
Students will integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually as well as in words.
Students will write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences and events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences.
Students will prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Key Vocabulary

inner journey
perspective

Standards Connections

Common Core State Standards

Anchor Standards in Reading:

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/CCRA/R/

CCSS-ELA Reading Anchor Standard 2: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2
CCSS-ELA Reading Anchor Standard 7: ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.7

Anchor Standards in Writing:

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/CCRA/W/

CCSS-ELA Writing Anchor Standard 3: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.3

Anchor Standards in Speaking and Listening:

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/CCRA/SL/

CCSS-ELA Speaking and Listening Anchor Standard 1: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.1

In the Classroom

a computer with Internet access
an interactive whiteboard or another classroom projector

Works of Art

Joseph H. Boston, From Shore to Shore

Other Resources

Art Study: From Shore to Shore , Read to Build Understanding
Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
Close Reading Guide: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”

Lesson Steps

Have students document an everyday journey: Ask students to jot down or draw* what they see, hear, or experience while traveling to or from school. Ask students if the journey’s endpoint affects the details they remember. Why were they drawn to these specific details of their journey? What might others traveling with them have noticed? Consider discussing how an individual’s perspective, life context, and destination affect what he/she notices.

*Note: While using cell phones to film the experience could be useful, it could be seen as intrusive by othergs and may not be safe.

Guide a close reading of a work of art: Project Joseph Boston’s painting From Shore to Shore and ask students to record the details they notice about the painting. Use the questions and prompts below as a starting point, but encourage students to address details from the painting that interest them or provoke questions.
Spend a few minutes looking closely at this work of art. Write down five things you notice. What did you notice and why?
Describe the people portrayed in this painting. What do their clothing and belongings tell you about who they might be and when this painting might have been made?
What do the different people appear to be doing?
Which people do you notice the most? What makes you notice them?
Notice the way the artist uses color and value contrasts to separate different spaces within this scene. Describe these different spaces.
What kind of place is shown here? Provide evidence for your response.
Based on the artist’s use of light and shadow, at what time of day do you think this scene is taking place?
What’s your (the viewer’s) vantage point on this scene? How does the arrangement of the composition invite or allow you to enter the scene?
What do you think is the subject or main idea of this painting?
What attitude about the subject matter do you think the artist is conveying? Which details make you think this?
Have students read an informational text about the painting: Distribute copies of the Art Study: From Shore to Shore , Read to Build Understanding. Have students work with partners to read the text and annotate or highlight the passages that give them new insights about the painting and its meaning. Then lead a whole-class discussion with questions like the following:
How do your initial observations about Boston’s painting compare with the information presented in the text?
Does the informational text change the way you experience and/or make sense of the painting?
As you look at the painting now, do you see details that suggest a deeper meaning, beyond an everyday journey?
Does it affect your confidence in your initial observations?
Have students write a narrative based on the painting: Tell students to choose one of the people depicted in From Shore to Shore. Students should write either a diary entry or a letter from the perspective of the person they chose that explains where the person is going and why he or she is making this journey. Encourage them to incorporate details from the painting and the informational text to make the narrative more vivid and realistic.
Guide a close reading of the poem that inspired Boston’s painting: Remind the class that the painting From Shore to Shore by Joseph Boston was inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” Project or distribute copies of the poem. Because of its length, you may wish to focus on the first three stanzas or identify another excerpt from the poem to examine closely.

Before reading the poem with students, explain that Walt Whitman was born in Long Island, NY, in 1819 and grew up in Brooklyn. At the time he wrote this poem, there were no bridges connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan, so people had to cross by ferry or another type of boat. Whitman is frequently referred to as “America’s poet,” as he often celebrated the sights and sounds of America and its founding principles within his poetry. (For a timeline of Whitman’s life, see the following: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/whitman/timeline/ .)

Read aloud the selected excerpt from the poem to the entire class. As they listen, students should consider the following questions:

Who is narrating the poem?
What experience does the narrator seem to be sharing?

Divide the class into small groups and distribute copies of the Close Reading Guide: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” to each student. Tell students to have one person in the group read the poem excerpt aloud a second time. The other students should note unfamiliar vocabulary words in the box on the Close Reading Guide. Students should work together to determine the meanings of these words, consulting dictionaries and online resources as needed.

Have the groups read the poem again, either aloud or silently. After this reading, students should discuss the questions on the Close Reading Guide with their group members. Each member of the group should record responses to these questions.

What is the setting of this poem? How do you know?
Who is speaking? What, if anything, can you infer about the speaker, such as age, gender, social class, etc.?
Who is the speaker speaking to?
How is this poem organized?
Walt Whitman frequently included lists in his poems. What lists do you find in this poem? What effect do these lists have on the poem?
How do rhythm and repetition contribute to the poem? In what ways does the rhythm of the poem reflect the subject and setting of the poem?
Guide a class discussion on the poem: Invite students to share their responses to the previous questions with the class. Then deepen the discussion with questions such as the following:
In the first stanza, what kinds of crossings could the speaker be referring to?
What is the speaker’s relationship to the other passengers on the ferry? Which words and phrases reveal this relationship?
How does the speaker’s perception of this relationship change during the course of the poem?
In this poem, Whitman reflects on both physical and inner journeys. What physical journeys does Whitman address? What kinds of inner journeys does he address? Cite specific passages that illustrate these two types of journeys.
“Tone” is the speaker’s attitude toward the subject expressed through word choice. What is the dominant tone of the poem in this excerpt? What words and phrases in the poem support your answer?
What is the theme of this poem? In other words, what message is the poet conveying through this poem? Provide evidence from the text for your response.
Have students compare and contrast the poem and the painting: Guide the discussion with questions like the following:
Do you think that Boston’s painting, From Shore to Shore, and Whitman’s poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” present similar or different ideas about the Brooklyn Ferry and the journey of life? Cite evidence from the painting and poem in your answer.
How do these two works show the same type of journey in different ways?
How does the painting affect you as a viewer? How does the poem affect you as a reader or a listener? In what way does the medium affect the message each artist is communicating?
Are there any details of this journey that the painting conveys more vividly than its source poem?
What does the poem say that the painting cannot show?
Have students re-chronicle a mundane or everyday journey: Revisit the writing exercise from step. Tell students to chronicle the journey from home to school again, creating a narrative in written or visual form or both. In either medium, students should carefully think about how they will use form, content, craft, and structure to convey the meaning of the journey. To guide students’ work, ask them to consider the following:
Think back to the text and work of art we’ve examined: Joseph H. Boston’s From Shore to Shore and Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” What techniques did each author/artist use? Which techniques resonate with what you want to convey about your own journey? What parts of the journey will you represent? What details will you include?
What message do you want to convey?
What techniques can you use to express the mood, tone, and meaning of your journey?
Discuss students’ narratives: Have students present their narratives to the class. After their presentations, lead a discussion using the following questions:
Did knowledge of the destination affect what you noticed during or about the journey? How did the exercise of noticing and recording your journey affect the way you think about your destination once you arrived? To what extent did your awareness of the task of rendering or describing the journey affect what you noticed during the journey?
Why did you choose to chronicle your journey through art/writing/ a combination of the two?

Extension Activities

Write a Comparison

Have students write an essay to compare how Boston and Whitman establish a connection between physical journeys and inner journeys in their respective works, From Shore to Shore and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” Students should point out the techniques that each uses to express this connection, citing examples.

Additional Resources

Poetry Foundation. “Walt Whitman: Biography.” Accessed December 15, 2014. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/walt-whitman

Public Broadcasting Service. “Walt Whitman: Timeline.” Accessed December 15, 2014. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/whitman/timeline/

The Walt Whitman Archive. “Life and Letters.” Accessed December 15, 2014. http://www.whitmanarchive.org/biography/index.html

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Lessons from Amazon’s Early Growth Strategy

If you’re interested in strategies for scaling start-ups, this episode is for you.

Apple Podcasts

So much has been written about Amazon’s outsized growth. But Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta says it’s the company’s unusual approach to strategy that has captured his scholarly attention. Gupta has spent years studying Amazon’s strategy and its founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos.

In this episode, Gupta shares how Amazon upended traditional corporate strategy by diversifying into multiple products serving many end users, instead of having a narrow focus.

He argues that some of Amazon’s simplest business strategies — like their obsession with customers and insistence on long-term thinking — are approaches that companies, big and small, can emulate.

Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, leadership, scaling, Jeff Bezos, long-term thinking, customer focus.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: How Jeff Bezos Built One of the World’s Most Valuable Companies (2020)
Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business.

Gupta has spent years studying Amazon’s strategy and its founder and former CEO, Jeff Bezos.

In this episode, Gupta shares how Amazon upended traditional corporate strategy by diversifying into multiple products serving many end users instead of focusing more narrowly.

And he argues that some of their simplest business strategies – like their obsession with the customer and insistence on long-term thinking – are approaches that companies, big and small, should emulate.

If you’re interested in innovation strategy, this episode is for you. It originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in November 2020. Here it is.

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.

If you had to name the most successful business leader alive today, who would you say? I can’t hear you from my basement podcasting room, but I would bet that for many of you, the answer is Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. This is a man who over the past 25 years turned his online bookstore startup into a diversified company currently valued at $1.6 trillion.

Amazon is a digital retailing juggernaut, it’s also a web services provider, media producer, and manufacturer of personal technology devices like Kindle and Echo. Oh, and Bezos also owns the Washington Post and Blue Origin, a space exploration company. Forbes tells us he is the richest person in the world.

How did he accomplish so much? How did he change the business landscape? What mistakes has he made along the way? A new collection of Bezos’s own writing, which full disclosure, my colleagues at Harvard Business Review Press have published, offer some insights. Here’s a clip from one speech that’s included. The book is called Invent and Wander.

And our guest today, who has spent years studying both Amazon and Bezos, is here to talk with me about some of the key themes in it, including the broad drivers of both the company and the CEO’s success. Sunil Gupta is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and cochair of its executive program, and cochair of its executive program on driving digital strategy, which is also the title of his book. Sunil, thanks so much for being on the show.

SUNIL GUPTA: Thank you for having me, Alison.

ALISON BEARD: So Invent and Wander. I get that Bezos is inventive. You know, he created a new way for us to buy things – everything. How is he also a wonderer?

SUNIL GUPTA: So he’s full of experiments. His company and his whole style is known for experimentation, and he says that in so many words that if you want big winners, then you have to be willing to have many failures. And the argument is, one big winner will take care of a thousand failed experiments. So I think that’s the wandering part. But also his experiments are not aimless. There is a certain thought and process behind what experiments to do and why they will connect to the old, old picture of what Amazon is today.

ALISON BEARD: And your expertise is in digital strategy. How does he break the traditional rules of strategy?

SUNIL GUPTA: So for the longest time the way, at least I was taught in my MBA program and the way we teach to our MBA students and executives, is strategy is about focus. But if you look at Amazon, Amazon certainly doesn’t look like it’s focusing on anything, so obviously Jeff Bezos missed that class, otherwise it’s a very, very different thing.

And then you’d say, why is it that so called lack of focus strategy seems to be working for Amazon? And I think the fundamental underlying principle that he’s guiding his whole discussion of strategy is, he’s changed the rules of strategy. So the old rules of strategy were, the way you gained competitive advantage is by being better or cheaper. So if I am selling you a car, my car is better of cheaper. But the inherent assumption in that strategy statement is, I’m selling one product to one customer. And what Amazon is basically arguing is, the digital economy is all about connection. We have got to connect products and connect customers. Let me explain why that is so powerful.

So connecting products, here the idea is, I can sell you, this is a classic razor and blade strategy. I can sell you a razor cheap in order to make money on the blade. So I can sell you Kindle cheap in order to make money on the ebooks. Now, at some level you might say, hey, razor and blade have been around forever. What’s so unique today? I think unique today is razor could be in one industry and blades could be in completely different industrys.

So for example, if you look at Amazon’s portfolio of businesses, you sort of say, not only Amazon is an e-commerce player, but also is making movies and TV shows, its own studio. Well, why does it make sense for an e-commerce player, an online retailer to compete with Hollywood. Well, Walmart doesn’t make movies. Macy’s doesn’t make movies? So why does it make sense for Amazon to make movies?

And I think once you dig into it, the answer becomes clear that the purpose of the movies is to keep and gain the Prime customers. Two day free shipping is fine, but if you ask me to pay $99 or $119 for two day free shipping, I might start doing the math in my head, and say, OK, how many packages do I expect to get next year? And is the Prime membership worth it or not?

But once you throw in, in addition to the two-day free shipping, you throw in some TV shows and movies that are uniquely found only on Amazon, I can’t do this math. And why is Prime customers important to Amazon? Because Prime customers are more loyal. They buy three or four times more than the non-Prime customers, and they’re also less price sensitive.

And in fact, Jeff Bezos has said publicly that every time we win a Golden Globe Award for one of our shows, we sell more shoes. So this is, and he said it in your book, Invent and Wander, also, that we might be the only company in the world which has figured out how winning Golden Globe Awards can actually translate into selling more products on the online commerce.

So this is a great example of the razor being in a very different industry and blade being in another industry. Take another example. Amazon has a lending business where they give loans to small and medium enterprises. If Amazon decides to compete with banks tomorrow, Amazon can decide to offer loans to the small merchants at such a low price that banks would never be able to compete. And why would Amazon be able to do that? Because Amazon can say, hey, I’m not going to make money on loans, as much money on loans, but I’ll make more money when these businesses, small businesses grow and do more transactions on my marketplace platform. And I get more commissions. So again, loan can become my razor in order to help the merchants grow and make money on the transaction and the commission that I get from that. The moment I make somebody else’s, in this case the banks, core business my razor, they will make a very hard time competing. So I think that’s the key change, the fundamental rules of strategy and competition in that direction.

The second part of connection is connecting customers, and this is the classic network effect. So marketplace is a great example of network effects. The more buyers I have, the more sellers I have. The more sellers I have, the sellers I have, the more buyers I get, because the buyers can find all the items. And that becomes flywheel effect, and it becomes a situation where it’s very hard for a new player to complete with Amazon.

ALISON BEARD: In this diversification that Amazon has done, how have they managed to be good at all of those things? Because they’re not focused. You know, they’re not concentrated on an area of specific expertise. So how have they succeeded when other companies might have failed because they lacked that expertise, or they were spreading themselves too thin?

SUNIL GUPTA: So I think it depends on how you define focus. Most of us, when we define focus, we sort of define focus by traditional industry boundaries, that I’m an online retailer, therefore going into some other business is lack of focus. The way Amazon thinks about is focus on capabilities.

So if you look at it from that point of view, I would argue that Amazon had three fundamental core capabilities. Number one, it’s highly customer focused, not only in its culture, but also in its capability in terms of how it can actually handle data and leverage data to get customer insight. The second core capability of Amazon is logistics. So it’s now a world class logistics player. It uses really frontier technology, whether it’s key word, robotics, computer vision, in its warehouse to make it much more efficient.

And the third part of Amazon’s skill or the capability is its technology. And a good example of that is Amazon Web Services, or AWS. And I think if you look at these three core capabilities, customer focus and the data insight that it gets from that, the logistics capability, and the technology, everything that Amazon is doing is some way or the other connected to it. In that sense, Amazon, and there’s no lack of focus, in my judgment on Amazon.

Now, if he starts doing, starts making cream cheese tomorrow or starts making airplane engines, then I would say, yes, it’s got a lack of focus. But one of the other things that Jeff Bezos has said again and again is this notion of work backwards and scale forward. And what that means is, because you’re customer obsessed, you sort of find ways to satisfy customers, and if that means developing new skills that we don’t have because we are working backwards from what the customer needs are, then we’ll build those skills.

So a good example of that is, when Amazon started building Kindle, Amazon was never in the hardware business. It didn’t know how to build hardware. But Bezos realized that as the industry moved, people are beginning to read more and more online, rather, or at least on their devices, rather than the physical paper copy of a book. So as a result, he says, how do we make it easier for consumers to read it on an electronic version? And they’re spending three years learning about this capability of hardware manufacturing. And by the way, Kindle came out long before iPad came out. And of course, that capability now has helped them launch Echo and many other devices.

ALISON BEARD: Right. So it’s the focus on the customer, plus a willingness to go outside your comfort zone, the wander part.

SUNIL GUPTA: Exactly.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. How would you describe Bezos’s leadership style?

SUNIL GUPTA: So I think there are at least three parts to it. One is, he said right from day one that he wants to be a long-term focus. The second thing is being customer obsessed. And many times he has said that he can imagine, in the meetings he wants people to imagine an empty chair. That is basically for the customer. And he says, we are not competitor focused. We are not product focused. We are not technology focused. We are customer focused. And the third is, willingness to experiment. And fail, and build that culture in the company that it’s OK to fail.

ALISON BEARD: What about personally, though? Is he a hard charger? Is he an active listener? What’s it like to be in a room with him?

SUNIL GUPTA: Oh, he’s certainly a hard charger. I mean, he’s also the kind of guy, when he hires people, he says, you can work long, hard, or smart. But at Amazon, you can choose two out of three. And I think this is similar to many other leaders. If you look at Steve Jobs, he was also a very hard charging guy. And I think some people find it exhilarating to work with these kind of leaders. Some find it very tough.

ALISON BEARD: Do you think that he communicates differently from other successful CEOs?

SUNIL GUPTA: So the communication style that he has built in the company is the very famous now, there’s no PowerPoints. So it’s a very thoughtful discussion. You write six-page memos, which everybody, when their meeting starts, everybody sits down and actually reads the memo.

In fact, this was a very interesting experience that I had. One of my students, who was in the executive program, works at Amazon in Germany. And he is, he was at that point in time thinking of moving to another company and becoming a CEO of that company. So he said, can I talk to you about this change of career path that I’m thinking about? I said, sure. So we set up a time, and five minutes before our call, he sends me an email with a six-page memo. And I said, well, shouldn’t he have sent this to me before, so I could at least look at it? He says, no, that’s the Amazon style. We’ll sit in silence and read it together. And so I read it together, because then you’re completely focused on it. And then we can have a conversation. But this discipline of writing a six-page memo, it’s a very, very unique experience, because you actually have to think through all your arguments.

ALISON BEARD: You also mentioned the long term focus, and that really stood out for me, too, this idea that he is not at all thinking of next year. He’s thinking five years out, and sometimes even further. But as a public company, how has Amazon been able to stick to that? And is it replicable at other companies?

SUNIL GUPTA: I think it is replicable. It requires conviction, and it requires a way to articulate the vision to Wall Street that they can rally behind. And it’s completely replicable. There are other examples of companies who have followed a similar strategy. I mean, Netflix is a good example. Netflix hadn’t made money for a long period of time. But they sold the vision of what the future will look like, and Wall Street bought that vision.

Mastercard is exactly the same thing. Ajay Banga is giving three year guidance to Wall Street saying, this is my three-year plan, because things can change quarter to quarter. I’m still responsible to tell you what we are doing this quarter, but my strategy will not be guided by what happens today. It will be guided by the three-year plan that we have.

ALISON BEARD: There are so many companies now that go public without turning any profit, whereas Amazon now is printing money, and thus able to reinvest and have this grand vision. So at what point was Bezos able to say, right, we’re going to do it my way?

SUNIL GUPTA: I think he said it right from day one, except that people probably didn’t believe it. And in fact, one of the great examples of that was, when he was convinced about AWS, the Amazon Web Services, that was back in the early 2000s, when a majority of the Wall Street was not sure what Jeff Bezos was trying to do, because they say, hey, you are an online retailer. You have no business being in web services. That’s the business of IBM. And that’s a B2B business. You’re in a B2C business. Why are you going in there?

And Bezos said, well, we have plenty of practice of being misunderstood. And we will continue with our passion and vision, because we see the path. And now he’s proven it again and again why his vision is correct, and I think that could give us more faith and conviction to the Wall Street investors.

SUNIL GUPTA: Oh, absolutely. And he’s one of the persons who has his opinion, and you always surround yourself with people better than you.

ALISON BEARD: How has he managed to attract that talent when it is so fiercely competitive between Google, Facebook, all of these U.S. technology leaders?

SUNIL GUPTA: So a couple of things I would say. First of all, it’s always good fun to join a winning team. And all of us want to join a winning team, so this certainly is on a trajectory which is phenomenal. It’s like a rocket ship that is taking off and has been taking off for the last 25 years. So I think that’s certainly attractive to many people, and certainly many hard charging people who want to be on a winning team.

And a second thing is, Amazon’s culture of experimentation and innovation. That is energizing to a lot of people. It’s not a bureaucracy where you get bogged down by the processes. So the two type of decisions that we talked about, he gives you enough leeway to try different things, and is willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into things that may or may not succeed in the future. And I think that’s very liberating to people who are willing to take on the ownership and build something.

ALISON BEARD: But don’t all of the tech companies offer that?

SUNIL GUPTA: They do, but if you think about many other tech companies, they’re much more narrow in focus. So Facebook is primarily in social media. Google is primarily in search advertising. Yes, you have GoogleX, but that’s still a small part of what Google does. Whereas if you ask yourself what business is Amazon in, there are much broader expansive areas that Amazon has gone into. So I think the limits, I mean, Amazon does not have that many limits or boundaries as compared to many other businesses in Silicon Valley.

ALISON BEARD: So let’s talk a little bit about Bezos’s acquisition strategy. I think the most prominent is probably Whole Foods, but there are many others. How does he think about the companies that he wants to bring in as opposed to grow organically?

SUNIL GUPTA: So some acquisitions are areas where he thinks that he can actually benefit and accelerate the vision that he already has. So for example, the acquisition of Kiva was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the systems that he already put in place in his warehouse. And logistics and warehouse is a key component or key part of Amazon’s business, and he saw that Kiva already was ahead of the curve in technology that he probably wanted to have that in his own company. So that was obvious acquisition, because that fits in the existing business.

Whole Foods is kind of a slightly different story, in my judgment, because I some ways, you can argue, why is Amazon, an online player, buying an offline retail store, Whole Foods? And in fact, they bought it at 27% premium. So that doesn’t make sense for an online retailer commerce to go to offline channels. And I think, in fact, part of the reason in my judgment is, it’s not just Whole Foods, but it’s about the food business, per se. And why is Amazon so interested in food? In fact, Amazon has been trying this food business, online food delivery for a long period of time without much success. And Whole Foods was one, another way to try and get access to that particular business. And why is that so important to Amazon, even though you could argue, food is a low margin business?

And I would say, part of the reason is, food is something, grocery is something that you buy every week, perhaps twice a week. And if I, as Amazon, can convince you to buy grocery online from Amazon, then I’m creating a habit for you to come onto Amazon every week, perhaps twice a week. And once you are on Amazon, you will end up buying other products on Amazon. Whereas if you are buying electronics, you may not come to Amazon every day.

So this is a habit creation activity, and again, it may not be a very high margin activity to sell you food. But I’ve created a habit, just like Prime. I’ve created a loyal customer where you think of nothing else but Amazon for your daily needs, and therefore you end up buying other things.

ALISON BEARD: And Amazon isn’t without controversy. You know, and we should talk about that, too. First, there are questions about its treatment of warehouse employees, particularly during COVID. And Bezos, as you said, has always been relentlessly focused on the customer. But is Amazon employee centric, too?

SUNIL GUPTA: So I think there is definitely some areas of concern, and you rightly said there is a significant concern about the, during the COVID, workers were complaining about safety, the right kind of equipment. But even before COVID, there were a lot of concerns about whether the workers are being pushed too hard. They barely have any breaks. And they’re constantly on the go, because speed and efficiency become that much more important to make sure customers always get what they are promised. And in fact, more than promised.

Clearly Amazon either hasn’t done a good job, or hasn’t at least done the public relations part of it that they have done a good job. Now, if you ask Jeff Bezos, he will claim that, no, actually, they have done things. For example, they offer something called carrier choice, where they give 95% tuition to the employees to learn new skills, whether they’re relevant to Amazon or not. Pretty much like what Starbucks does for its baristas, for college education and other things. But I think more than just giving money or tuition, it requires a bit of empathy and sense that you care for your employees, and perhaps that needs, that’s something that Amazon needs to work on.

ALISON BEARD: And another challenge is the criticism that it has decimated mom and pop shops. Even when someone sells through Amazon, the company will then see that it’s a popular category and create it itself and start selling it itself. There’s environmental concerns about the fact that packages are being driven from warehouses to front doors all over America. And boxes and packaging. So how has Bezos, how has the company dealt with all of that criticism?

SUNIL GUPTA: They haven’t. And I think those are absolutely valid concerns on both counts, that the small sellers who grow to become reasonably big are always under the radar, and there are certainly anecdotal evidence there, small sellers have complained that Amazon had decided to sell exactly the same item that they were so successful in selling, and becoming too big is actually not good on Amazon, because Amazon can get into your business and wipe you away. So that’s certainly a big concern, and I think that’s something that needs to be sorted out, and Amazon needs to clarify what its position on that area is, because it benefits from these small sellers on his platform.

And your second question about environmental issues is also absolutely on the money, because not only emission issues, but there’s so many boxes that pile in, certainly in my basement, from Amazon. You sort of say, and it’s actually ironical that Millennials who are in love with Amazon are extremely environmentally friendly. But at the same time, they would not hesitate to order something from Amazon and pile up all these boxes. So I think Amazon needs to figure out a way to think about both those issues.

ALISON BEARD: And at what point will it have to? I mean, it seems to be rolling happily along.

SUNIL GUPTA: Well, I think those issues are becoming bigger and bigger, and it’s certainly in the eye of the regulators, also, for some of these practices. And not only because it’s too big, and there might be monopoly concerns, but these issues will become larger, and any time you become a large company, you become the center of attraction for broader issues than just providing shareholder value.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. So those are weaknesses possibly for the company. What are some of Bezos’s personal weaknesses that you’ve seen in studying him and the company?

SUNIL GUPTA: So I think one thing that stands out to me, and at least in the public forums, I have not seen any empathy. And it’s, I mean, we talk about that the leaders have, should have three qualities. They should be competent. They should have a good character. And they should have compassion. So he’s certainly very competent. I mean, he’s brilliant in many aspects, right, from the computer vision and AI and machine learning, to the nuances of data analytics, to the Hollywood production, etc. He also seems to have good character, at least I have not heard any personal scandals, apart from his other issues in his personal life, perhaps.

Those characteristics of competence and character make people respect you. What makes people love you is when you show compassion, and at least I haven’t seen compassion or empathy that comes out of him. I mean, he certainly comes across as a very hard charging, driven person, which probably is good for business. But the question of empathy is perhaps something lacking right now.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. The other issue is his just enormous wealth. He did invent this colossally valuable company, but should anyone really be that rich?

SUNIL GUPTA: Well, I guess that’s, you can say that’s the good or the bad thing about capitalism. But I think, and again, my personal view is there’s nothing wrong in becoming rich, if you have been successful and done it with hard work and ingenuity. But how you use your wealth is something that perhaps will define Jeff Bezos going forward. I think Bill Gates is a great example how he actually has used his wealth and his influence and his expertise and his brilliance into some certain thing that actually is great for humanity.

Now, whether Jeff Bezos does that down the road, I don’t know, whether his space exploration provides that sort of outlet which is both his passion as well as good for humanity, I don’t know. But at some point in time, I think it’s the responsibility of these leaders to sort of say, my goal is not simply to make money and make my shareholders rich, but also help humanity and help society.

ALISON BEARD: If you’re talking to someone who’s running a startup, or even a manager of a team at a traditional company, what is the key lesson that you would say, this is what you can learn from Jeff Bezos? This is what you can put to work in your own profession?

SUNIL GUPTA: So I would say two things that at least I would take away if I were doing a startup. One is customer obsession. Now, every company says that, but honestly, not every company does it, because if you go to the management meetings, if you go to the quarterly meetings, you suddenly go focus on financials and competition and product. But there’s rarely any conversation on customers. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, that Jeff Bezos always tells his employee to think of the imaginary chair in which a customer is sitting, because that’s the person that we need to focus on. Howard Shultz does the same thing at Starbucks, and that’s why Starbucks is so customer focused.

So I think that’s the first part. And the argument that Bezos gives is, customers are never satisfied. And that pushes us to innovate and move forward, so we need to innovate even before the rest of the world even sees that, because customers are the first ones to see what is missing in the offering that you have.

And the second I would say that I would take away from Jeff Bezos is the conviction and passion with what you do. And many times that goes against the conventional wisdom. And the Amazon Web Services is a great example of that. The whole world, including the Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street analysts were saying, this is none of Amazon’s business to do web services. But he was convinced that this is the right thing to do, and he went and did that.

And part of that conviction may come from experiments. Part of that conviction comes from connecting the dots that he could see that many other people didn’t see. I mean, that’s why he went, left his job, and went to Seattle to do the online bookstore, because he could see the macro trends as to what the Internet is likely to do. So, I think that’s the vision that he had. And once you have the conviction, then you follow your passion.

ALISON BEARD: Sunil, thanks so much for coming on the show.

SUNIL GUPTA: Thank you for having me. Alison.

HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta, in conversation with Alison Beard on the HBR IdeaCast .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about business strategy from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

And when you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Mary Dooe, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. And special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Nicole Smith, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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Inside Blizzard

Galvanize your Legend in Season 4: Loot Reborn

The forges burn with renewed vigor, stoked by braziers to hone the steel of Sanctuary’s finest. Across the land, Hell’s expanded Legions gather and multiply, marshalling their strength to ambush wanderers that fall prey to their Helltide.

Fresh from our first Public Test Realm in Diablo IV, Season 4: Loot Reborn begins on May 14 at 10 a.m. PT . Use the Itemization overhaul on new systems, Tempering and Masterworking to change a noteworthy blade into a force to be feared. Across all World Tiers, Helltide is reborn: slay monstrosities to fill your threat meter, marking you as prey for the Hellborne . Prepare to fight side by side with the Iron Wolves —a seasoned mercenary company of brethren aiming to quell the demons.

Itemization Reforged: Masterworking, Tempering and More

Helltide reborn, andariel joins the fray & tormented echoes, your greatest challenge: the pit of artificers, fight with the iron wolves, earn rewards with the season journey and battle pass, acquire fabled threads from tejal’s shop, community guides for season 4, stay up to date with diablo iv news.

Seasons within Diablo IV bear their mark on Sanctuary in the Seasonal Realm, unearthing new quests and fresh mechanics to explore and master. Season 4: Loot Reborn takes on a new theme, overhauling many core game systems to refresh how items are earned, how they function, and how they improve as you level through World Tiers during the season.

Unlike previous Seasonal themes that affect only the Seasonal Realm, with Season 4: Loot Reborn, these Itemization changes persist beyond the Seasonal Realm and affect the Eternal Realm as well. Read on to learn how Itemization will change the way you loot and reap your way across all of Diablo IV.

All updates to our new items, Classes and Skills will be available in our Season 4 Patch Notes, which will be available here following our Developer Update stream on May 2.

General Item Updates

One of our several goals for the Itemization changes is to make it easier to understand which items are upgrades when they drop. We reduced the number of affixes on items (down to 3 on Legendary items, 2 on Rare items) and made these affixes more effective. Instead of seeing an affix that relies on conditional values (+10% damage on non-injured Elites), you'll see affixes such as base increases to your Movement Speed, Max life, or single ranks of a Core Skill. Dropped Items are now simpler to evaluate, and we've moved their complexity and customization to our new crafting systems, Tempering and Masterworking, which we will describe in more detail below. We've also increased the overall values of these affixes, so they should feel more powerful!

This screenshot displays an item under the Itemization changes with a Greater Affix.

Item affixes after Itemization changes, with Tempering and Masterworking applied.

By making items more individually impactful, we’ve significantly decreased the number of items that drop when slaying Monsters. The goal here is to spend more time obliterating and less time sorting through the many items that drop. The result is that fewer items will drop overall, but those items will be more likely to be valuable. To compensate and stay on par with the norm, materials gained from Salvaging and Crafting have been adjusted to match this change. Also, Forgotten Souls can now be earned from Whisper bounties and are a rare drop from all Elites. The Gold cost to re-roll items when Enchanting now has a maximum, and we’ve cut down on the materials needed to perform all activities when at the Blacksmith.

Additionally, which World Tier you play in will directly affect the rarity of the items you earn. Sacred items or higher only drop in World Tier III, and only Ancestral items will appear in World Tier IV. Similarly, Legendary items dropped from enemies over Level 95 will always have a value of 925 Item Power.

However, keep an eye out for Uniques—some have a chance to appear starting in World Tier I and II. All Uniques have a chance to drop starting in World Tier III, and Uber Uniques can start appearing as once you’re killing monsters that are Level 55 at max Item Power level.

Codex of Power Updates

Extracting Aspects from Legendary items now stores them in your Codex of Power to be used indefinitely. Instead of taking up space in your inventory, the Codex of Power is a library that stores your most-powerful extracted version of that Aspect, which can be used as many times as you want.

The Codex of Power displays all available Aspects, so you can spend more time seeking the highest Aspect rolls possible. Once the Aspect with the maximum potential value is extracted, a specific border indicates the Aspect has been completed.

Aspects can now be favorited within the Codex of Power, and a tooltip will denote whether you already have that Aspect equipped when searching within the Codex. Note that in the Seasonal Realm, when the Season ends, your Codex of Power will reset and retain those learned affixes for the Eternal Realm. If you already have the same Aspect learned in the Eternal Realm, the Codex of Power will keep the higher of the two.

Tempering: Sharpen your Steel and make it Sing

As you find and learn Tempering Manuals, Blacksmiths across Sanctuary will be able to use these manuals of craftsmanship to shape the qualities of your equipment. Tempering allows you to add potent affixes to your item.

Crafting Manuals can be found as a regular item throughout the game. Once learned, they can be used as many times as desired (like the new Codex of Power changes). Each Crafting Manual contains a small number of affixes, and typically correspond to six different categories: Weapons, Offensive, Defensive, Mobility, Utility and Resource. Simply head to a Blacksmith to Temper your item and add one of the available affixes, greatly reducing the time it takes to ensure your weapon has the affix you desire. Note that Ancestral items can have two Tempered affixes from different categories!

Remember, the Tempering Durability indicates how many times you can Temper an item…even the most battle honed blades can lose their edge. The manuals you learn on the Seasonal Realm last until the end of the season, and manuals learned on the Eternal Realm will be known permanently.

Masterworking: Refine your Weapon to Untold Prowess

Using the rarest of materials found within the deepest mines and caverns, improve your weapons to the absolute pinnacle of their potential. Masterworking is an end-game crafting system, using materials earned from The Pit of Artificers to upgrade your weapons.

Masterworking improves the overall strength of all affixes on your weapon, and at every 4th tier, massively upgrades one of your equipped affixes. The affix that receives the bonus will turn Blue. If the same affix is improved again, it will change to Yellow, and in rare cases, it will turn Orange if improved a third time.

If you hit the max level of Masterworking on a given weapon and you’re unsatisfied with the improvements on your weapon, you can reset and begin the process again.

Greater Affixes

Appearing only on Ancestral Legendary and Unique Items, Greater Affixes are 1.5x more powerful versions of normal affixes. Items with Greater Affixes drop with a distinct audio cue, alerting you to their presence, and have a unique icon both in the world and within your inventory. Each affix on an item has a chance to be a Greater Affix in World Tier III and IV. You cannot Enchant an affix into a Greater Affix—their awesome power may only be discovered.

Gems are simpler, streamlined and more effective across your Character’s journey. Crude Gems have been removed, and crafting levels have been shifted back. Normals Gems are available at Level 51, Flawless at 71, and Royal at 91. Diamonds have had their All Resistance values increased. Topaz now provide increases to Intelligence, and Sapphires increases to Willpower. Amethyst increases your Strength, and Emeralds now provide bonus Dexterity.

The legions of the Burning Hells regroup to coordinate a most formidable display of force in a Helltide reborn. Inspired by the Vampiric Blood Harvest in Season of Blood, your ferocity in combat draws the attention of increasingly dangerous foes. Only the strongest and most well-prepared can survive this potent onslaught. Unless otherwise noted, these Helltide changes affect both Eternal and Seasonal realms and persist beyond the end of Season 4: Loot Reborn.

Threat Levels and Becoming Hell-Marked

As you cleave your way through Helltide, you will now generate Threat. Threat is earned based on the difficulty of the monsters you slay and how often you’re opening Tortured Gifts within Helltide. There are three Threat Levels in total, with each level increasing the danger and frequency of ambushes. Once you hit Level 3, you will become Hell-Marked.

When you’ve been Hell-Marked, you’ll be besieged by a frenzy of densely packed monsters. If you make it out alive, a Hellborn will come for you: one of Sanctuary’s most formidable fallen warriors, now an immensely powerful agent of Hell. The Hellborn can embody one of the classes in Diablo IV. Your Threat Level resets once the Hellborn ambush has been activated, or if you succumb to the overwhelming forces of Hell and perish.

Unholy Blasphemy: Accursed Ritual

At a scene of shocking gore, the Accursed Ritual is the ultimate testament to the disturbing lengths these manic Cultists will go to appease their dark desires. It is here where you can begin the Accursed Ritual.

Baneful Hearts can be earned by opening Tortured Gifts throughout Helltide and by defeating Hellborn enemies. Deposit three Baneful Hearts to begin the ritual, which will commence with a swarm of demonic enemies. This ambush will end with the arrival of the formidable Blood Maiden, an immensely powerful demon who offers great reward upon her death.

Contributing any Baneful Hearts to initiate this dark ritual will grant you increased rewards as a contribution bonus, but sacrificing more Baneful Hearts will yield you further individual rewards!

Helltides in World Tier I and II

To get your feet warmed up to the awesome threat of Helltide earlier on in your character’s journey, Helltide is now available in World Tier I and II. The overall Monster density will be suited relative to these World Tiers, and no roaming bosses or lethal meteors will be present.

Additional Hellish Changes

For the wanderer that want to push the limits of Helltide, an exceptionally valuable new elixir called Profane Mindcage is available to up the ante. Consuming a Profane Mindcage increases the level of Helltide Monsters by 10 and boosts Cinder drop rates. These are a guaranteed drop after killing Hellborne. You will see diminishing returns on boosted Monster levels closer to level cap—keep progressing in World Tiers to retain the same benefit from this potent elixir. The Profane Mindcage will only last until the end of Season 4: Loot Reborn.

Fresh demonic events have been added to Helltide, including new encounters with the fabled Iron Wolves. Stay vigilant for these encounters of demonic treachery.

As a recent change since our Public Test Realm for Season 4: Loot Reborn, Doomsayers no longer drop Chests of Doomsaying. Instead, they now drop the equivalent rewards that a Chest of Doomsaying would have granted on death—entirely removing the Cinder cost it previously held.

There are rumors that there are strange varieties of ore deep within the network of dungeons crisscrossing the north of Sanctuary, perfect for crafting exceptionally-made armor using secret Horadric techniques. However, the horrors that lay in wait for intrepid wanderers seeking to unearth these riches are unspeakably terrible.

Upon entering World Tier IV, you’ll receive a priority Quest to complete a Tier 46 Nightmare Dungeon. Upon completion, you’ll begin to collect Runeshards by playing through different Endgame activities. They’ll appear when you encounter Helltide Chests, World Bosses, Legion Events, Nightmare Dungeons and Whisper Bounties.

Collect Runeshard to activate the Obelisk in Cerrigar, allowing you to descend into the beckoning depths of The Pit. Your task is to slay enough monsters before your 10-minute time limit runs out to summon a final boss. Each player death removes time from the clock: first death removes 30 seconds, second death removes 60 seconds, third and subsequent deaths will remove 90 seconds.

After enough monsters are slain, a portal materializes, transporting you to the boss’s arena. Slay the boss before the timer expires to earn coveted Masterworking materials… and the next brutal tier of The Pit. If you can manage to kill the boss with time left on the clock, the benefit increases. With 4-6 minutes to spare, you skip a level and unlock an additional Tier of the Pit. Killing the boss with 6 or more minutes to spare grants you two additional Tier unlocks. The Pit has 200 total levels of difficulty to try and conquer, if you dare face the challenge.

The Pit can be entered in groups of up to four players, with the player who spends the Runeshards to open the Pit earning the lion’s share of materials. Only the player who opened The Pit has the chance to receive tantalizing Stygian Stones used for summoning Tormented Echoes—Level 200 variants of the summonable bosses found in Diablo IV. The further you descend into levels of The Pit, the more frequent these Stygian Stones will appear.

The Maiden of Anguish has returned in all her tormented glory. She joins the boss ladder at the same tier as her brother Duriel, with the same Uber Unique drop rate. With a mix of Shadow, Fire, Lightning, and her iconic Poison attack, Andariel stands ready to face all who dare fathom to bring about her demise.

Found east of Tasarak, in Hanged Man’s Hall, you’ll need summoning materials from both Lord Zir and Beast in Ice to fight Andariel.

Tormented Echoes

All summonable bosses are now available at Level 200 as Tormented Echoes. Summonable with their regular summon Materials alongside Stygian Stones—which can be found deep within The Pit—these bosses cost more to summon but drop far more rewards. To summon a Tormented Echo, simply go to their typical summon location and select the Tormented Echo variant. Note that to summon the Beast in Ice, you’ll need to craft a different Nightmare Dungeon Sigil.

All items dropped from Tormented Echoes will be Item Level 925. Defeating your first Tormented Echo drops one Resplendent Spark as a first-time reward (account bound).

Seek out the battle-hardened and stalwart Soudeh the Anvil, a stoic field commander of the Iron Wolves. The Iron Wolves are a band of noble Mercenaries in the South, seeking to protect the common people of Sanctuary and hold themselves to a higher code of honor than other mercenary companies of similar mettle. Mysteriously, members of their ranks have been dying under suspicious circumstances—seek out the source of this slaughter to earn the Iron Wolves’ favor.

Meet Soudeh in Khejistan to start your journey to uncover this deadly plot. Working with the Iron Wolves will earn you several Tempering Manuals, which are key to unlocking the potential of your items in Season 4: Loot Reborn.

Any Iron Wolf Events that occur in Helltide will persist past the end of Season 4: Loot Reborn.

As you fight side by side to vanquish demons with the Iron Wolves, you’ll earn rewards from the Season Journey and Battle Pass.

The Season Journey is broken into Chapters with tasks to complete. As you progress through the Journey, you’ll earn rewards befitting Sanctuary’s defenders, such as new Legendary Aspects, and 3 Scrolls of Amnesia, which provide a free Skill Tree and Paragon Board reset. The Journey also provides Favor—the resource used to climb through the Battle Pass’ Tiers— also earnable simply by playing aspects of the game.

The Season 4: Loot Reborn Battle Pass begins on May 14, 10 a.m. PT and hosts 90 Reward Tiers (28 Free Tiers and 62 Premium Tiers).

If you get the Premium Battle Pass , not only will the rewards of the Free Tiers be yours to wield, but Awoken Demigod Armor Sets , Platinum, and more also await you, including the Awoken Demigod Plating Mount Armor , Purified Demigod Thoroughbred Mount , and Divine Banner Mount Trophy , which unlocks at Tier 90 .

The Accelerated Seasonal Battle Pass also contains 20 Tier Skips and the Wings of Hell’s Legion Emote.

Smoldering Ashes earned from the Free Tiers can be spent on Season Blessings that provide helpful bonuses to beat back Hell’s armies. There are three new Blessings for Season 4: Loot Reborn:

Urn of Nightmares: Boost Paragon Glyph XP earned in Nightmare Dungeons.
Urn of Iron: Boost your reputation with the Iron Wolves from Helltide activities.
Urn of Burning Obols: Boost the amount of Obols you can find in Helltide chests, which contain Obols during this season.

The bonuses gained from the five Season Blessings only last until the end of Season 4: Loot Reborn.

We’re dialing up the heat in the Shop with new Equipment, Armor, Accessories, Mount and Mount Armor bundles that will have you slaying in style. Starting on May 14, pay Tejal a visit to browse her wares—remember to check back often, as she’ll update her stock throughout Season 4: Loot Reborn. One such rarefied find from the far reaches of Sanctuary is the the Demon’s Heart Bundle for the barbarian, which contains the Demonheart Armor Set and 2 Demonheart Weapon Cosmetics.

If you need sage guidance in your Character’s journey throughout Season 4: Loot Reborn, look to our Community guides for tips and insights on builds for every class. From levelling in World Tier I, all the way to end-game builds for The Pit.

Visit our trusted Community resources here:

On May 2 at 11 a.m. PT , there will be a Developer Update Livestream, which will take a deep dive into Season 4: Loot Reborn. Join community director Adam Fletcher and members of the development team as they discuss the many learnings from the Season 4 Public Test Realm, system features, balance updates, and more.

Watch the Diablo IV Developer Update Livestream on our Twitch or YouTube Channels on May 2 .

Master the forge and flame to conquer emerging threats in Season 4: Loot Reborn!

-The Diablo IV Team

Mount up for the northrend cup, featured news, the cataclysm classic pre-expansion patch is now live, get up to 33% off select classic game services, diablo immortal bug fixes and patch notes for all platforms, step right up at the darkmoon faire, hotfixes: april 29, 2024, arena world championship returns may 3, floral fancies festoon may’s trading post, this week in wow: april 26, 2024, cataclysm classic: leveling in a shattered landscape, an update on this year’s blizzcon and blizzard’s 2024 live events, tune in to our next developer update, 29.2.2 patch notes, embrace two new races in cataclysm classic, hotfixes: april 24, 2024, mwiii content drop: season 3 reloaded, the wow companion app retiring, dragonflight season 4 content update notes, dragonflight season 4 is now live.

Journey of the Magi Summary & Analysis by T. S. Eliot

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
Poetic Devices
Vocabulary & References
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
Line-by-Line Explanations

"Journey of the Magi" is a poem by T.S. Eliot, first published in 1927 in a series of pamphlets related to Christmas. The poem was written shortly after Eliot's conversion to the Anglican faith. Accordingly, though the poem is an allegorical dramatic monologue that inhabits the voice of one the magi (the three wise men who visit the infant Jesus), it's also generally considered to be a deeply personal poem. Indeed, the magus in the poem shares Eliot's view that spiritual transformation is not a comfort, but an ongoing process—an arduous journey seemingly without end. The magus's view on the birth of Jesus—and the shift from the old ways to Christianity—is complex and ambivalent.

Read the full text of “Journey of the Magi”

The Full Text of “Journey of the Magi”

“journey of the magi” summary, “journey of the magi” themes.

Spiritual Death and Rebirth

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “journey of the magi”.

'A cold coming ... ... dead of winter.'

And the camels ... ... girls bringing sherbet.

Lines 11-16

Then the camel ... ... had of it.

Lines 17-20

At the end ... ... was all folly.

Lines 21-25

Then at dawn ... ... in the meadow.

Lines 26-31

Then we came ... ... might say) satisfactory.

Lines 32-36

All this was ... ... Birth or Death?

Lines 36-39

There was a ... ... Death, our death.

Lines 40-43

We returned to ... ... of another death.

“Journey of the Magi” Symbols

Biblical Imagery

Line 23: “running stream”
Line 24: “three trees on the low sky”
Line 25: “an old white horse”
Line 26: “vine-leaves”
Line 27: “pieces of silver”
Line 28: “empty wine-skins”

“Journey of the Magi” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Alliteration.

Line 1: “cold coming”
Line 4: “ways,” “deep,” “weather”
Line 5: “dead,” “winter”
Line 9: “summer,” “slopes”
Line 10: “silken”
Line 11: “camel,” “cursing”
Line 12: “wanting,” “women”
Line 18: “Sleeping,” “snatches”
Line 19: “singing,” “saying”
Line 20: “That this”
Line 21: “dawn,” “down,” “valley”
Line 22: “snow,” “smelling,” “vegetation”
Line 27: “Six,” “door dicing,” “silver”
Line 31: “say) satisfactory.”
Line 35: “were we,” “way”
Line 37: “doubt,” “death”
Line 38: “But,” “different,” “Birth”
Line 39: “bitter,” “Death,” “death”
Line 42: “gods”
Line 43: “glad”
Lines 1-5: “'A cold coming we had of it, / Just the worst time of the year / For a journey, and such a long journey: / The ways deep and the weather sharp, / The very dead of winter.'”
Lines 17-20: “At the end we preferred to travel all night, / Sleeping in snatches, / With the voices singing in our ears, saying / That this was all folly.”
Line 4: “The,” “the weather”
Line 5: “The very dead”
Line 6: “And,” “camels,” “sore,” “refractory”
Line 9: “The summer palaces,” “the terraces”
Line 10: “the silken,” “bringing sherbet”
Line 11: “Then,” “men,” “grumbling”
Line 12: “running,” “liquor,” “women”
Line 13: “n,” “ight-fires”
Line 15: “high prices”
Line 16: “time”
Line 18: “Sleeping in”
Line 19: “With,” “singing in,” “saying”
Line 20: “this,” “all folly”
Line 22: “below,” “snow,” “smelling,” “vegetation”
Line 23: “stream,” “beating”
Line 24: “three trees,” “low”
Line 25: “And an,” “ old,” “meadow”
Line 26: “vine”
Line 27: “dicing”
Line 28: “wine”
Line 29: “no information,” “so”
Line 30: “too soon”
Line 31: “place,” “you,” “say”
Line 41: “ease”
Line 42: “people”
Line 3: “journey, and”
Line 6: “galled, sore-footed, refractory”
Line 9: “slopes, the”
Line 12: “away, and”
Line 13: “out, and”
Line 19: “ears, saying”
Line 22: “Wet, below,” “line, smelling”
Line 29: “information, and”
Line 30: “evening, not”
Line 31: “place; it”
Line 32: “ago, I”
Line 33: “again, but”
Line 35: “This: were”
Line 36: “Death? There”
Line 37: “doubt. I”
Line 38: “different; this”
Line 39: “us, like Death, our”
Line 40: “places, these”
Line 41: “here, in”
Line 2: “Just,” “ worst”
Line 4: “ways deep,” “the weather sharp,”
Line 7: “Lying down in,” “melting snow”
Line 8: “There were,” “ times ,” “we regretted”
Lines 9-10: “The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, / And the silken girls bringing sherbet.”
Lines 11-12: “Then the camel men cursing and grumbling / and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,”
Line 13: “night,” “-fires,” “out,” “shelters”
Line 14: “cities hostile,” “towns”
Line 15: “villages dirty ,” “high,” “ prices”
Line 16: “hard,” “had”
Line 17: “travel all”
Line 18: “Sleeping in snatches”
Line 19: “With the voices singing,” “our ears, saying”
Line 20: “That this was all folly”
Lines 21-25: “Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, / Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; / With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, / And three trees on the low sky, / And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.”
Line 32: “All,” “long”
Lines 33-35: “set down / This set down / This”
Line 35: “were we led all,” “way”
Line 37: “evidence,” “doubt,” “death”
Line 38: “different,” “Birth”
Line 39: “Hard,” “bitter,” “Death,” “death”
Line 42: “alien people,” “gods”
Line 43: “glad,” “death”

Polysyndeton

Line 11: “and”
Line 12: “and,” “and,” “and”
Line 13: “And,” “and”
Line 14: “And,” “and”
Line 15: “And,” “and”
Line 23: “and”
Line 24: “And”
Line 25: “And”
Line 3: “journey,” “journey”
Line 36: “Birth or Death,” “Birth”
Line 37: “ birth and death,”
Line 38: “Birth”
Line 39: “ Death, our death”
Line 43: “death”

Rhetorical Question

Lines 35-36: “were we led all that way for / Birth or Death?”
Lines 4-5: “The ways deep and the weather sharp, / The very dead of winter.'”
Lines 11-16: “Then the camel men cursing and grumbling / and running away, and wanting their liquor and women, / And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, / And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly / And the villages dirty and charging high prices: / A hard time we had of it.”
Line 22: “Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;”
Lines 24-25: “And three trees on the low sky, / And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.”

“Journey of the Magi” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

The Old Dispensation
(Location in poem: )

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Journey of the Magi”

Rhyme scheme, “journey of the magi” speaker, “journey of the magi” setting, literary and historical context of “journey of the magi”, more “journey of the magi” resources, external resources.

Eliot's Reading — The poem read by its author.

Lancelot Andrewes's Sermon — The 1622 Christmas sermon of the British bishop Lancelot Andrewes, which Eliot adapted for the poem's opening.

A Documentary on the Poet — A BBC production about Eliot's life and work.

Eliot and Christianity — An article exploring Eliot's relationship with his religion.

More Poems and Eliot's Biography — A valuable resource on Eliot's life and work from the Poetry Foundation.

LitCharts on Other Poems by T. S. Eliot

Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

La Figlia Che Piange

Morning at the Window

Portrait of a Lady

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

The Hollow Men

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Waste Land

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

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Revolutionizing Thrills: Six Flags Sets New Standards in a Digital Transformation Overhaul to Elevate the Guest Experience

April 29, 2024

ARLINGTON, Texas --(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (NYSE: SIX), the world’s largest regional theme park company and the largest operator of water parks in North America , proudly unveils a complete digital transformation to revolutionize every facet of the guest journey. AI has been a cornerstone of our strategy, enabling us to introduce groundbreaking enhancements that improve guest experiences and streamline park operations.

"Our guests are at the heart of everything we do, and this digital transformation is a testament to our commitment to providing unparalleled experiences where technology meets fun and excitement," said Selim Bassoul, CEO of Six Flags. “AI allows us to enrich and personalize every guest touchpoint.”

The technology enhancements are spearheaded by The Digital Alliance, a first of its kind in the theme park industry that brings together best-in-class companies to identify the best solutions for our guest enhancement journey.

"We are transforming Six Flags into a technology-centric entertainment company. With the formation of the largest global digital alliance in the theme park industry, we are setting the foundation to lead with innovation and digital excellence," said Omar Jacques Omran, Chief Digital Officer of Six Flags. “Six Flags is reinventing amusement, making every moment more personalized and efficient."

Noteworthy advancements include:

AI is at the forefront of elevating our customer engagement, pre-visit planning and personalizing the guest experience.

Our new website, set to launch this year, will leverage AI to revolutionize the guest experience, including personalization and a new upcoming loyalty program.
Missi Six, our new digital concierge powered by Generative AI, will debut on our app and website.
Revamped mobile app to include interactive maps for easier park navigation, mobile food ordering, and upcoming customized recommendations based on user’s preferences.
New Six Flags Digital Wallet, soon to launch, will enable guests to access their loyalty benefits and use their favorite payment methods via the app, smartwatch, or wristbands across all our theme and water parks, eliminating the need for physical wallets.
Rolling out new integrated, state-of-the-art, real-time video, and photo-capturing technology on our roller coasters, enabling guests to relive their exhilarating moments with instantly accessible, high-quality imagery that captures the thrill of each ride.
Introducing a new endeavor to expand the digital entertainment frontier by launching the largest e-gaming initiative in the theme park industry and a new metaverse gaming platform designed to merge the thrill of our theme parks with the immersive world of online gaming.

Introducing new innovations to expedite access to rides, food, and retail

Food and beverage self-serving kiosks provide a seamless selection process while maximizing the benefits of guest passes.
Guests can swiftly order food using QR Codes or NFC technology at tables without having the need to download the app.
Our upcoming retail self-checkout options, available via kiosks or the app, will allow guests to quickly purchase merchandise without waiting in line.

Leveraging technology to improve operational efficiency and excellence

We are implementing Live Ride Wait Times across multiple parks, featuring new sensors that provide accurate wait times, making every minute at Six Flags a minute well spent.
Speedy Parking, a new toll plaza automated entry, uses computer vision and AI to recognize registered license plates, allowing automatic car entry within 3 seconds.
The rollout of the world's most comprehensive AI drowning prevention system across our waterparks.
We are revamping our Point-of-Sale ecosystem with 3,200 new devices and the introduction of 1,000 handheld POS for quicker transactions.

About Six Flags Entertainment Corporation

Six Flags Entertainment Corporation is the world’s largest regional theme park company with 27 parks across the United States , Mexico and Canada . For 63 years, Six Flags has entertained hundreds of millions of guests with world-class coasters, themed rides, thrilling water parks and unique attractions. Six Flags is committed to creating an inclusive environment that fully embraces the diversity of our team members and guests. For more information, visit www.sixflags.com .

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240429443813/en/

Media Contact: [email protected]

Source: Six Flags Entertainment Corporation

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News A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring Anime's 2nd Promo Video Previews Opening Theme

The staff for the television anime adaptation of Shizuru Minazuki 's A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring ( Isekai Yururi Kikō: Kosodate Shinagara Bōkensha Shimasu ) light novel series began streaming the show's second promotional video on Saturday. The video reveals and previews Tebasaki Sensation's opening theme song "Yururing Travel Days."

The anime will premiere in July on TV Tokyo , BS TV Tokyo , and other channels. Cruchyroll will stream the series as it airs.

The anime stars:

Yusuke Shirai as Takumi Kayano
Haruka Tomatsu as Sylphyleel
Aina Suzuki as Allen
Miharu Hanai as Elena

Atsushi Nigorikawa ( Love Tyrant , A Destructive God Sits Next to Me , Beast Tamer ) is directing the anime at EMT Squared , with Bros. Bird, Inc credited for production cooperation. Atsushi Maekawa is overseeing the series scripts, Yūki Nakano is designing the characters, and Akinari Suzuki is composing the music. GENCO is producing the anime. GOHOBI is performing the ending theme song "MAKUAKE."

The staff describes the story:

Due to a mistake by a god, Takumi Kayano loses his life and is reincarnated. Bestowed with various skills, he finds himself transported to another world—a perilous forest infested with monsters. In that forest, Takumi discovers what appears to be twin young boys and girls, whom he names Allen and Elena, and takes them under his protection. Despite being surprised by the two effortlessly defeating monsters with their martial arts skills, Takumi eventually reaches a town and registers with the adventurer's guild to make a living. Thus begins a laid-back adventurer's life as Takumi watches over the growth of Allen and Elena!

AlphaPolis began releasing the ongoing novel series with illustrations by Yamakawa in April 2017. Tomomi Mizuna launched a manga adaptation on AlphaPolis ' website in January 2018. AlphaPolis is releasing the manga in English through its Alpha Manga service.

Source: Press release

this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history

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JusTheme 4+

Capturing the moment‪.‬, designed for ipad, screenshots, description.

Download your favorite photos. Get wallpapers optimized for your own device. Find out where the photo was taken. Add them to your travel itinerary for a different experience. Stay tuned for my journey. Photos will be updated irregularly but continuously.

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- Fix download bug on cellular condition. - New Photo Selection Method I've changed the photo selection method so that I can visit you more often. A new interface has been applied to help you find the desired photo faster and easier. - List View Feature A list view has been added to quickly explore different photos within a single theme. - New Backgrounds Added Photos on various themes have been added.

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Journey is an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1973 by former members of Santana, the Steve Miller Band, and Frumious Bandersnatch. ... the band released "Only Solutions" and "1990s Theme" for the 1982 Disney film, Tron. Schon had also made time to work with Jan Hammer on a few albums.
Journeys: Exploring Inner Journeys in Art and Text
Authors: Sara Jatcko, Terra Foundation for American Art Manuel Valderrama, Lane Tech College Prep High School Summary: By conducting close readings of works of visual art and poetry, students will explore how artists connect physical journeys with inner journeys of human experience. Students will also write narratives that depict real and imagined journeys. Lesson Overview […]
Journey Soundtrack (PS3)
Trailer theme
Analysis of the Poem 'Journey of the Magi' by T.S. Eliot
The theme of the poem is the effect of spiritual/cultural events on individual identity and society; the process of renewal, the journey of the human psyche through history. 'Journey of the Magi' specifically focuses on the epiphany (Matthew 2. 1-12), despite the lack of named references to this event.
AFK Journey
Brace for the storm and find what is waiting for you at the Edge of the World. 🌪️ Stream the official theme song of #AFKJourney now.🔗 https://bit.ly/afkjou...
A Sentimental Journey Themes
A Sentimental Journey presents key themes to the audience throughout Yorick's narration. Sentimentalism, travel, and sex and scandal emerge as the themes of the novel. Sentimentalism. Sentimentalism in literature is the preference for thoughts, feelings, and emotions over reason and rationality.
Lessons from Amazon's Early Growth Strategy
April 24, 2024. So much has been written about Amazon's outsized growth. But Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta says it's the company's unusual approach to strategy that has ...
Galvanize your Legend in Season 4: Loot Reborn
Unlike previous Seasonal themes that affect only the Seasonal Realm, with Season 4: Loot Reborn, these Itemization changes persist beyond the Seasonal Realm and affect the Eternal Realm as well. ... and 3 Scrolls of Amnesia, which provide a free Skill Tree and Paragon Board reset. The Journey also provides Favor—the resource used to climb ...
Journey of the Magi Poem Summary and Analysis
Learn More. "Journey of the Magi" is a poem by T.S. Eliot, first published in 1927 in a series of pamphlets related to Christmas. The poem was written shortly after Eliot's conversion to the Anglican faith. Accordingly, though the poem is an allegorical dramatic monologue that inhabits the voice of one the magi (the three wise men who visit the ...
The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty
Hello! Today we are glad to share the theme song of our game with you, which named "Journey of Starving". This song is for you and we hope you will like it! Credits: Vocals: Hanser Composer: Taku Lyricists: Ji Ling & Hanser Arrangement: Xiang Wang Erhu: Erhu Mei Guitar: Da Niu MV: Opens Studio
Revolutionizing Thrills: Six Flags Sets New Standards in a Digital
ARLINGTON, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (NYSE: SIX), the world's largest regional theme park company and the largest operator of water parks in North America, proudly unveils a complete digital transformation to revolutionize every facet of the guest journey.AI has been a cornerstone of our strategy, enabling us to introduce groundbreaking enhancements that ...
A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring Anime's
GOHOBI is performing the ending theme song "MAKUAKE." The staff describes the story: Due to a mistake by a god, Takumi Kayano loses his life and is reincarnated.
2024 Exploring George Conway's Weight Loss: A Detailed Guide!
The Start of George Conway's Weight Loss Journey. A personal goal life swingin' gave him Driving him to L.A to lose weight He wanted to feel good and have more energy For his new high-profile career So he hit the gym, got his routine A little help from coca-leaf extract Got him in the zone I guess you could say The diet DID help Juice Fasting's the way New York State of Mind by Bruce ...
‎JusTheme on the App Store
‎Download your favorite photos. Get wallpapers optimized for your own device. Find out where the photo was taken. Add them to your travel itinerary for a different experience. Stay tuned for my journey. Photos will be updated irregularly but continuously.