Captian America and Wizard of Oz Jung Hero Journey

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Hero Archetype Movie Assignment Emily Hughes In director Joe Johnston’s 2011 movie Captain America: The First Avenger the title character, Captain Steve “America” Rogers, experiences Carl Jung’s archetypal hero journey. Carl Jung’s hero must face and conquer several steps within his journey. This paper will discuss the journey of Captain America and the journey of Dorothy in the 1939 Victor Fleming classic The Wizard of Oz. A hero is a person who is admired for the courage or nobleness that they possess. Heroes are typically men and a heroine is the female counterpart. Within literature the hero is almost always the chief character. They are defined with good qualities such as strength and patience. In 1919 Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung developed a definition for archetypes as “ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective unconscious.” Jung then identified five main archetypes: the self, the shadow, the anima, the animus, and the persona. A hero is defined as an archetypal image that reoccurs in folklore, life, movies, and stories. Captain America is a wonderful example of the Jungian hero. There are about seventeen steps within a hero’s journey. The hero does not have to complete all of them and some of them can be summed into one. Captain America’s journey can be described in nine steps. The first part of Steve Rogers’ journey is the unusual birth. Captain Rogers was born into a military family and orphaned later on in life. This gives him the want and the drive to join the military. He applies for enlistment five times and is denied on multiple occasions. He even fakes forms, which is a crime, to enroll in the army. This could also be classified as his unusual birth. The next part of Captain America’s journey is leaving his land to live with others. Steve Rogers is finally accepted into the army with help from Dr. Abraham

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