Move Over, Odysseus: Christopher Robin Takes a Classic Hero’s Journey

Last updated on: August 9, 2018 at 10:15 am by Paul Asay

Move Over, Odysseus: Christopher Robin Takes a Classic Hero’s Journey 2018-08-03T10:16:29-06:00 Paul Asay

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Winnie-the-Pooh and Ewan McGregor from Disney’s Christopher Robin, photo courtesy Disney film clip

1. Most heroic journeys begin rooted in the “ordinary” world: Frodo’s Shire, Luke’s home on Tatooine, Dorothy’s Kansas, etc. Our hero’s an ordinary person in an ordinary place, not so different than ordinary us.

Christopher Robin starts his own journey in the ordinary city of London—working as a middle manager for a luggage company and struggling (and failing) to balance home and work. But then he receives …

2. A call to adventure. In Christopher Robin’s case, I think the initial call is pretty prosaic, too. He’s being called to go off to the family cottage in Sussex for a weekend, to spend some good, quality, all-too-rare time with his wife, Evelyn (Hayley Atwell), and daughter, Madeline (Bronte Carmichael). Sussex, we know, was where Christopher Robin did all his adventuring as a child, and it’d be a great opportunity to reconnect with those closest to him. But Christopher’s boss wants him to work over the weekend. And when Evelyn presses him to go to Sussex anyway, Christopher says …

3. “It can’t be helped.” This is dubbed, in Campbell, the refusal of the call. We see this refusal in Frodo’s reluctance to leave the Shire, in Luke’s initial insistence that he has to stay on Tatooine, even in Moses’ excuse-making by the burning bush. “I can’t do this,” our heroes say. “Are you crazy?”

Christopher feels like it would be crazy to shirk his duties just to spend time with his family. Madeline’s crushed by Christopher’s refusal, and Evelyn’s gently furious. “Your life is happening now,” she tells him. “Right in front of you.” Christopher’s lost, and on some level he knows it. He needs …

4. A mentor, and he finds one on the park bench—a stuffed, surprisingly lively bear named Winnie-the-Pooh. He’s not your prototypical wise mentor in the mold of Gandalf or Obi-Wan. But despite being a bear of very little brain, he knows a thing or two about what’s really important in life and how to enjoy it to the fullest. He implores Christopher Robin to join him on a quest (a secondary call to adventure, really) to find his lost friends. Christopher Robin would really like to reject this call, too, but eventually he …

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