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Previous posts took an introductory look at Joseph Campbell's Monomyth and a more in-depth view of the first rite of Campbell's monomyth, the separation. Today, in the third part of the series, the focus turns to the middle of stories—and the initiation.

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"Beyond [the known world]," writes Campbell, "is darkness, the unknown, and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the member of the tribe" (77-8). He continues, "The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades" (82). The purpose of this rite is " self-annihilation" (91) through "a succession of trials" (97). Simply put, the character "has to encounter and master a number of differing obstacles which are not easily overcome" (100), and “the ordeal is a deepening of the problem of the first threshold and the question is still in balance: Can the ego put itself to death?" (109).

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By ego, Campbell means the attachment to the old belief systems, as seen by a character's sentiments, beliefs, understandings, attitudes, behaviors, perceptions, insights, and the like. Most of us like our selves and would not willingly destroy who we are now to become another. Safe and comfortable in a world where we know the orders, patterns, and laws, we remain attached to our personal identities. Only by taking away that world—by separating the self from the beliefs that define it—does the self find itself in a position to be challenged. Thus, the purpose of initiation is to cut away the hero's attitudes, attachments, and life patterns, to shift the hero's consciousness from the external world to the internal world, to force upon the character the loss of the perception of order.

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The character must enter chaos, the natural world in a natural state. Chaos forces upon the hero a return to the time before creation, symbolized by the journey into chaotic zones, such as darkness, jungles, mountains, the unknown, the watery abyss, madness, the cosmic night, deep forests, deserts, caves, subways, the void, the belly of the beast, battlefields, war zones, and so on.

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"Whenever intention is denied," Robert Tobias argues, "the effect is tension" (19). For characters, the initiatory tasks should provide the greatest challenge imaginable. While the randomness of life ensures us that anything can happen at any time, the structured, constructed quality of story-world requires that a character "venture forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered…" (30). The supernatural wonder is achieved by the transformation of the world into one specifically designed both to thwart the character's intentions and to create a need for the very action the character seems most incapable of making. In simplest terms, the agoraphobe is forced to confront the outside; the mourning father, the image of his dead wife; ex-Alaskan governors, a geography test. And so on.

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In short, initiation involves the thwarting of the protagonist's intentions. Each ordeal should require the protagonist to look deeper for the power to overcome these obstacles. Each task asks the protagonist if he can destroy the person he was and become the person he is to be. Can the ego put itself to death? Sacrifice—the decision of the ego to cut itself off for the betterment of the self, the choice of the protagonist to venture forth beyond what is known for the recovery of a sacred revelation—lies at the heart of the initiation stage.

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The central task of initiation—the destruction of the previous self that could not meet the demands of the world and the creation of a new, empowered self that can—takes the character on the "really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed—again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be multitude of preliminary victories, unretainable ecstasies, and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land" (109). Each task prepares the character for that final confrontation, what Campbell describes as "the crisis at the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart" (109).

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So, in short and in this middle section, by far the longest section of the story, the character acts and fails. How many times for a flash piece? Once. Twice. Thrice. No magic number here. For the ending to be earned, the character has to work, and work hard, to fulfill that brutal drive initiated by the beginning incident. Fortunately, for readers, writers, and characters, such chaos cannot last forever. Eventually, the desire must ebb and the ending provide a resolution.

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Stay tuned for the final installment in this series, the return, the story's end.