The Hero Journey In "Smoke Signals"

Smoke Signals Guiding the Hero.

The character Victor Joseph in Sherman Alexie’s film “Smoke Signals” experience Joseph Campbells’s 12 stages of the Hero’s Journey.
“Smoke Signals” isa simple but compelling story. In an Indian reservation, a young man, abandoned by his father several years ago, received the call asking him to pick up his father ashes. The journey for the ashes isnot just physical, it is emotional too. He has to face the resentment, anger, and sadness of his father-son relationship now that his father is gone.
1. Ordinary World. The everyday world of“Smoke Signals” character Victor is the Indian reservation Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho.
2. The Call to Adventure. Victor is called to his journey when he receives a phone call letting him know his dadhas passed away, and he needs to pick up his ashes.
3. Refusal of the call (the reluctant hero). He hesitates to pick up the ashes. He does not have the money for the travel to Arizona.
4.Mentor (the wise old man or woman). Thomas, his cousin, despite being young and naïve, has the empathy, values, and light hearth that help Victor fight his internal turmoil.
5. Crossing thefist threshold. He accepts Thomas offer of paying the trip; takes the bus to get to his destiny, and the bus trip itself.
6. Tests, Allies, and Enemies. The bus is the place where Victor facestests and finds allies and enemies. Thomas is his ally; his enemies are two cowboys who take Victor and Thomas sits; another enemy is his own sad memories of a house fire. In Victor’s mind the enemy iseverywhere. He cannot make the cowboys give him the sits back, but he makes a song about John Wayne (the ultimate cowboy), as a rebuttal.
7. Approach to the Inmost Cave. When Victor arrives tothe arid and desolated landscape where he has to pick his father ashes up, he does not know what to expect.
8. The Supreme Ordeal. After Victor receives his dad ashes from Susie, he talks...