Joseph Campbell was a twentieth-century scholar of comparative mythology and religion and among the first public intellectuals to bring myth beyond the classroom and scholarly circles. His formulation of the “monomyth,” or hero’s journey, influenced generations of artists and filmmakers, most notably George Lucas’s Star Wars, and helped popularize the idea that myths function as templates for psychological and spiritual development.

After Campbell’s death in 1987, the PBS series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth introduced his conversational, story-rich style to a wide public audience, firmly establishing his role as a guide to myth in contemporary culture. The companion book, edited from interviews with journalist Bill Moyers, was published in 1988 alongside the broadcast of the series.

The Power of Myth presents myth as a living language of the human psyche—one that helps people experience what Campbell called the “rapture of being alive,” locate themselves within the cosmos, and learn how to live meaningfully under any circumstances. Throughout the book, Campbell and Moyers examine how ancient stories continue to offer insight into love, suffering, vocation, and community, especially in modern societies that have lost shared rituals and symbols.

A central theme of both the series and the book is Campbell’s claim that people are not primarily seeking the “meaning of life,” but rather an experience of being fully alive. When external events resonate with inner reality, he observed, life feels charged with meaning and vitality.

Campbell also insisted that contemporary culture requires shared myths to remind us that “we are all one.” In an era marked by polarization and a widespread loss of meaning, his perspective feels newly urgent and enduringly relevant.

"Darth Vader has not developed his humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? . . . The thing to do is to learn to live in your period of history as a human being ...by holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you.

"Well, you see, that movie communicates. It is in a language that talks to young people, and that's what counts. It asks, Are you going to be a person of heart and humanity––because that's where the life is, from the heart––or are you going to do whatever seems to be required of you by what might be called 'intentional power'? When Ben Knobi says, 'May the Force be with you,' he's speaking of the power and energy of life, not of programmed political intentions.

"...of course the Force moves from within. But the Force of the Empire is based on an intention to overcome and master. Star Wars is not a simple morality play. It has to do with the powers of life as they are either fulfilled or broken and suppressed through the action of man.”

BOOK: The Power of Myth

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