Joseph Campbell's term for the universal story pattern underlying myths and narratives across all cultures.
Monomyth is the scholarly term Joseph Campbell coined in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) to describe his theory that the world's myths, legends, and religious stories all share a single underlying narrative structure. Campbell identified 17 stages that a hero typically passes through, from the call to adventure through trials and transformation to the return home. The word itself comes from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, and the idea draws on Jungian psychology and comparative mythology. While "hero's journey" is the popular shorthand, "monomyth" emphasizes the bigger claim: that this isn't just a useful story pattern, but a fundamental shape of human storytelling itself.
Understanding the monomyth helps you see why certain story patterns feel hardwired into audiences' expectations. When a reader says a story feels "off" or "unsatisfying," it's often because the narrative breaks from this deep pattern without offering something equally compelling in its place. You don't have to follow it, but knowing it exists gives you a vocabulary for diagnosing structural problems and making deliberate choices about when to follow the pattern and when to depart from it.
The book that launched the concept, drawing parallels between Prometheus, Buddha, Moses, and dozens of other mythological heroes to argue they all follow one story.
Lucas credited Campbell directly as an influence. The film became the most famous modern proof-of-concept for the monomyth's commercial power.
Neo's arc follows the monomyth almost beat for beat: ordinary world (office cubicle), call to adventure (the red pill), supernatural aid (Morpheus), ordeal (the Agent Smith fight), and resurrection.
It's one lens among many. Plenty of brilliant stories, especially in non-Western traditions and experimental fiction, don't follow this pattern at all. Kishōtenketsu, for instance, works without a central conflict.
They're related but not identical. 'Monomyth' is Campbell's broader theory about universal myth patterns. 'Hero's journey' is the practical story framework derived from that theory.
The monomyth describes a deep pattern, not surface details. Two stories can follow the same mythic structure and feel completely different depending on voice, character, and specificity.
Pick a myth or fairy tale from a culture different from your own and identify which stages of Campbell's monomyth appear and which are missing. Write a paragraph about what those differences reveal about what that culture values in a story. Then consider: does your own work-in-progress follow the monomyth pattern, and if so, is that a conscious choice?