\section{The Hero's Journey Considered}

\lettrine[lraise=0.15]{T}{he} Hero's Journey is another archetypal pattern that describes the structure of transformation through ordeal.

It begins with a Call --- sometimes refused, sometimes accepted --- that pulls the hero away from the ordinary world. 
The hero crosses a threshold into a realm of danger and strangeness. There, they face trials, encounter mentors and adversaries, and endure death and rebirth. 
They are tested in ways that strip away their former self.

And then, if they survive, they return. But they do not return unchanged. The hero who comes back to the ordinary world is fundamentally different from the one who descended. They bring gifts --- knowledge, power, wisdom, or objects of value --- that could have been obtained no other way. These gifts are not theirs alone; they belong to the community. The hero returns not for themselves, but to bless humanity with what they have learned or gained in the darkness.

This is the crucial difference between mere survival and the Hero's Journey proper. 
Countless people endure hardship. But the hero's hardship is transformed into meaning, into gifts that serve others. Bach's music.  Dostoyevsky's novels. Kepler's laws of motion. Dante's \textit{Divine Comedy}. These are not personal consolations; they are offerings to the world, made possible only by descent into darkness.

