6 SIGNAL Journal I magine you are a reluctant reader. You walk into your Eng- lish/language arts class, and for the irst time, you are asked to write a response to literature using a critical lens. You could be handed hings Fall Apart and asked to apply postcolonial criti- cism to it, or you could be given he Scarlet Letter and asked to in- terpret it through a feminist/gender lens. When the introduction of critical lenses is combined with challenging reading, students must learn new ways of transacting with literature while at the same time grasping more complex texts. Oten this can be a reci- pe for failure that turns students of to both criticism and reading; however, there is no reason that a student’s irst foray into liter- ary analysis need be a painful experience. Most adolescents are intimately familiar with the traditional hero and with the Hero’s Journey, and beginning with this motif immediately allows stu- dents and teachers to share of wealth of texts and cultural experi- ences. By starting with the traditional hero and progressing to the tragic hero, another staple of secondary English/language arts classes, teachers can provide students with engaging instruction that allows for numerous ventures into additional critical lenses. The Traditional Hero and the Hero’s Journey Harry Potter, Spongebob Squarepants, Cinderella—in years of in- troducing secondary students to critical lenses, I have found that starting with heroic archetypes is the most engaging way to begin the journey into literary analysis. Archetypal analysis examines literature for “mythic elements” that give it a “deeper resonance” (Gillespie, p. 114, 2010), and one of the most frequent subjects of this type of analysis is the hero. While there are numerous typolo- gies of heroes such as the Byronic Hero, the Code Hero, the An- ti-Hero, the Romantic Hero, and the Promethean Hero, starting with the “traditional hero” of the Hero’s Journey (Campbell, 1949) rarely fails to grab the attention of even the most reluctant learn- ers. By introducing students to archetypes using the Hero’s Jour- ney, teachers and students instantly share a wealth of common literary texts in the form of ilm, television, young adult texts, and videogames that can be the basis for teaching, discussions, and assignments. While the seminal work Hero with a housand Faces (Campbell, 1949) is necessary reading for teachers, it can oten be a diicult book for many secondary students. Originally intended as a guide for screenplay writers, he Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters (Vogler, 1992) provides a much more accessible text either for use in the class or as a basis of instruction. While there are myriad resources on the for using the Hero’s Journey for a variety of purposes Internet (e.g.: Dunn, 2012; IRA/NCTE, 2013; Web English Teacher, 2013), I will focus on some of the foundational elements of the Hero’s Journey that allow for providing engaging assignments and for introducing other critical lenses. Rites of Passage and the Monomyth Integral to the Hero’s Journey is the concept of the cultural rite of passage ceremony. he term, which comes from anthropol- ogy, refers to rituals that accompany the transition of people from one life stage to another (Holm & Bowker, 1994). Van Gennep (1908/1960) described rite of passage rituals to include separa- tion rites, transition rites, and incorporation rites. Rites of pas- sage can be introduced to students by describing the need of early tribes to diferentiate girls who were ready for marriage (repro- duction) and boys who were ready to join the hunt or go to war. his knowledge was important because taking a young boy on a hunt who was not ready could not only get the boy killed but also endanger the hunt, which could oten lead to starvation for the tribe. It is also reasonable to imagine that there were ceremonies that marked girls as available for marriage/mating to increase the population of a tribe as the best ways to ensure survival. Cer- emonies marking both of these transitions are early versions of cultural rite of passage ceremonies—such as Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, Conirmations, Sweet Sixteens, and Quinceañeras—that are an integral element of modern cultures. Campbell (1949) applied van Gennep’s work (among others) to literary texts and myths and delineated the stages as separation, in which the hero departs one’s “ordinary world” to journey to an unknown realm by either intent, chance, or force; initiation, in which the hero undergoes a series of tests that must be survived and temptations that must be resisted; and return, in which the hero, changed in some way, returns to society. hese stages form what Campbell calls the monomyth, and in its most basic form, the monomyth (and therefore the Hero’s Journey) is about mak- ing the transition from childhood to adulthood; in essence, it is about growing up, and that is what makes it so appealing to ado- lescents. Harry Potter’s journey in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling, 1998) illustrates this: Separation, he starts the se- ries as a child and is separated from his home to attend school at Hogwarts; Initiation, while at Hogwarts he completes a series of tests (Quidditch, tests, battling Quirrell/Voldemort) and resists temptations (the Mirror of Erised); and Return, once the school year is completed he returns to the Dursley’s. he monomyth is ubiquitous in young adult (YA) literature and innumerable texts such as the Twilight saga, Hatchet, Holes, and Touching Spirit Bear can be used for examples. Rite of Passage Family Biography Assignment Because students oten are more engaged with material when they see how it is part of their personal and social lives (Powell & Rightmeyer, 2011; Spears-Bunton & Powell, 2009), this assign- ment, that I have used repeatedly with 8th grade students whose ages ranged from 12 to 17, asks students to interview a parent or an older relative. In the interview, they inquire about any rite Traditional and Tragic Heroes: Using Archetypal Analysis to Introduce Students to Critical Lenses by: Victor Malo-Juvera