Now that it is halfway through our spring semester of English 121, there are a lot of things that Marlen has covered with us. The theme of this course has been all about heroism and the hero’s journey. In life, everyone has their own hero. Heroes can come in any shape or form and there is no wrong or right definition of one. Your hero could be a member of your family, a celebrity, a cartoon or someone you imagine in your head.
Marlen has guided us through the stages of what we learned to be the “monomyth.” If you studied the monomyth which include departure, initiation and return, you can compare them to many modern day movies and books. In this class so far, I have learned that I have just past the departure stage in the monomyth and am starting into the initiation stage in my own life.
There have been many people in my life that has helped me get to where I am today and I am very grateful for them all. I consider all of them to be my heroes. However, there is one certain person who I have always physically been close to up until about two years ago but never quite as emotionally close to. He is my older brother, Donovan. We were the typical siblings as we fought all the time and never got along whenever we lived in the same house. We never believed our aunts and uncles whenever they told us that someday when we grew up we would be close, but now that I’m older and more mature then I was when I was seven, I believe that we will always be close, no matter how far apart we may be.
It never really struck me how much of a hero Donovan has been to me, my family and the entire country until this course. Donovan has been with me through every step of my own monomyth and I know he’ll always be there for me until the day we die.
You may ask why I chose my brother to be the main hero in my life and I’ll tell you why. His journey to get where he is today has been a long and curvy road, but that never stopped him from his dreams. Donovan was a breech baby and had dislocated hips at birth. This is where the monomyth starts out in Donovan’s life in the stage of “Call to Adventure.” Even when he was just born he was able to overcome some serious damage that he was faced with when he first came into this world. As Donovan became older and I was born, he looked upon me when I didn’t even realize it.
As we both grew older, and more different I can recall several times when we have disagreed on things. In junior high he once hit me over the head with his math book because I wouldn’t do something for him. When we got into high school he would be terribly mean to my boyfriends and I could never get away with anything I tried to get away from my parents because he would make sure they knew. Those are just a few examples on how we had such a “typical” brother and sister relationship.
All during high school, Donovan was very devoted to working. For as long as I can remember Donovan has been an absolute work-a-holic. As we were growing up, our family was not rich in any way and Donovan’s mind was always on things that he wanted. Everything that Donovan has in his life he has worked very hard for. Starting work in Jr. High mowing grass from 8am till sometimes 6pm was what he loved to do. He never complained about it at all because he knew that in life if you want something that you were going to have to work for it.
When he graduated he decided not to go to college like all of his other classmates. Instead Donovan’s calling was to go into the Air Force. He believed that he valued his freedom and now it was his turn to fight for our freedom in our country. He is one of those people who is not afraid of going into this war because this is our land of the free. I believe that our country should be very lucky that he is apart of our military and that we need more people in our country that are more like him who is very selfless and isn’t afraid to risk his own life.
Whenever Donovan left for basics I thought it would be the greatest time of my life. He has finally entered his “Belly of the Whale” stage and going into his initiation part of his monomyth in his life.
Now that Donovan was gone I would be the oldest one in our family with a little brother who could look up to me. After a few months I had realized how important and how I loved having Donovan around even if we did bicker a lot when he was home. Without Donovan around I found myself getting into more and more trouble because he wasn’t there to protect me like he was in the past.
The “Crossing of the Threshold” stage of departure is one that I can recall very easily. It is defined as when the hero, as in myself, must cross into from the comforts of his home to the adventurous new world filled with mystery and danger. On my seventeenth birthday my mom decided that she was going to leave our family. This happened a mere three months after my brother had left for basics. Going from a five person family to a three person family had many adjustments that were a big handful. It was a long and hard two years, until I left for college, until I finally left this stage in my life.
As I crossed over my “Belly of the Whale” stage and went onto college I was finally on my own. I won’t lie, It was very hard to get adjusted to being around people that I didn’t know and who didn’t know me. During my first semester at school, it took me some time to adjust to the new world that I was living in.
Right now I’m currently in my stage of initiation with “Road of Trails” I have confronted so many series of challenges and tests to help improve my character, personality and skills to become a better person and to grow and be able to be a hero to others.
Some challenges I have went through were obviously whenever my brother left, and then my mother and then when I myself left for college. I have been a hard working student in school at all costs and also in the work world. I have had a steady job since the day I turned sixteen. Everything that I own I have paid for myself. My parents have never helped me like other had and if I want something I know that value of work and how to work hard to get it. I don’t take things for granted and I am not a material girl as my one ex boyfriends have called me before. That was a clear decision to break up with him whenever he believe that about me.
I believe that I am a hero to others because of all these reasons and many more. Our Pepley familymust have the genes of it because I know that my dad is the same way and once my little brother matures a bit he will also be just as hardworking, loving, caring and dedicated just like the rest of us.
My older brother has helped me in ways that I was very blinded to at first. But now I know that it is very important to have some kind of hero in your life and I want to be a hero in life to many.
Wanting to become a teacher I believe will be a great way to be a hero in someone’s life. I know that there are many teachers out there that I have had that if I didn’t have them, I would of not of been able to get threw my high school years.
Personally my home economics teacher was a huge influence on me. In high school I was so confused about what I was suppose to do with the rest of my life but my “Meeting of the Goddess” came early when she came into my life. She made me realize how much I loved doing what I did there and in life, it won’t matter how much money you have because as long as you are doing something that you love, it will be worth it.
Some people these days I know hate their job. I can’t imagine putting myself through waking up every morning dreading what I’m going to do to the whole day. We are to work more then half our lives and I rather be making not a lot of money at all then making a lot of money and hate doing what I do.
Now that this course has opened me up to what a hero is and what a hero can be, I have focused and appreciated my older brother as well as my dad more then ever before. We have learned that there is no right or wrong answer to what a hero is. It is just all about what you consider a hero is and who that hero is in your life. For me, a hero is someone who is there for you, who loves you and someone who can be happy with their life. Even though all the heroes in my life, especially my older brother, don’t even realize that they are heroes I hope that I can become one to others before I die.
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