The Stages of Heroes: Jesus Christ and Batman

Batman Begins

Stages

1. Predeparture: We first meet Bruce Wayne as a child. He has a traumatic experience with bats. Later on that night his parents and him go to a show and Bruce wants to leave early because he keeps having flashbacks of the bats. They all leave early and his parents are killed in the alley behind the theatre.

2. Call to adventure: Parents are killed. So seeks to stop injustice in Gotham.

3. Refusal of the Call: Batman never refused a call to stop crime, the only reason why he would ever miss a call for justice is if he is incapable of responding in enough time, due to an angry villain that incapacitated him, or had him in restraints.

4. Supernatural Aid: Roz Agul leader of the league of shadows, trains him and Bruce becomes an awesome fighter.

5. Crossing of the Threshold: Goes down into the well where he had his bad experience with bats and discovers a cave. It is then when he decides to become a masked hero who tries to get rid of all the crime in Gotham. He uses his wealth to acquire many modern gadgets to help him fight crimes.

6. Belly of the Whale: This could be described in the actual experience that he under goes when he begins to fight crime. He starts to feel good as he saves more and more people as he fights crime.

7. The Roads of Trials: The obstacles Batman encounters are the villains that cross his path. One of Batman’s enemies ends up being his mentor Roz Agul.

8. The meeting of the Goddess: Bruce Wayne has known his goddess Katherine since he was a little boy. They grew up together and when Bruce returns from the Call to adventure they become closer and closer.

9. Atonement w/ father: Roz Agul taught Batman to fight for what he wanted which was for all the crime in Gotham City to stop. Roz lets Batman believe they are both fighting against the same injustice, when in reality Roz and Batman had different views of how to fight an injustice. Roz wanted to kill the entire city of Gotham, both good and bad people because he believed the city doomed due to its crime. Batman on the other hand, believed that the good people of Gotham should not be blamed for the crimes committed in the city.

10. Apotheosis: When training with the League of Shadows he is put through a series of test to complete his initiation. At the end of his training he is told to kill a man who has made an injustice. He refuses to take a man’s life because he does not consider himself an executioner. He then turns against The League of Shadows and decides to fight crime his own way.

My Religious Figure: Jesus Christ

The religious figure I chose for my essay is Jesus Christ. I chose him because he is the religious figure that I know most about. Growing up I took Catechism classes that explained the story of his life and everything he did for us. He is a very great hero in my eyes and in the eyes of many other people. I am writing this essay from the perspective of a Christian. The first stage in the several stages of a hero is the predeparture, which is when we first meet the hero and he has some kind of unusual birth. Jesus had a very unusual birth, his mother Mary was a virgin when God told her that he had chosen her to be the mother of his child. Jesus was conceived from his virgin mother in a manger of her hometown Bethlehem. Another unique fact about Jesus’ birth is that it was written for hundreds and maybe thousands of years before He was born, and that is why everyone knew when He was going to be born.

The second stage of a hero is the Call to Adventure, which is an outside force that makes them go a certain way. In this case, Jesus was born to go a certain way right from the beginning, meaning that Jesus was not made into a hero, he was born a hero. Since he was put on this earth with a purpose already planned out and set for him that makes it difficult for him to have a call to adventure knowing that He is going to save the world.

This third stage of a hero is the refusal of the call, which is when a hero refuses a call of adventure for any unknown reason. When it comes to Jesus, this does not apply to him. He is the son of God and was put on Earth to save us from our sins.