By Jesse Clinock
I’ve been on an epic journey lately. 
No, I haven’t been tasked with a grand quest to save the world, battled with the gods, nor rescued a fair maiden and swept her away to my castle far, far away. My journey started as an academic one, and has quickly devolved into a full-blown rabbit hole-delving nerd-fest into narrative epics. Like the stereotypical overachiever I am, I am currently simultaneously reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil’s Aeneid, Homer’s Iliad and Beowulf – and I’m loving it.
For many, the thought of an epic brings about dark memories of forced highschool readings or mouldy leather-bound volumes. Beowulf, The Odyssey, Gilgamesh. Lengthy lists of long-lost names, wordy arguments over honour, violent rapist deities – should we care about these ancient texts? Who would voluntarily read one, at any rate?
I would argue that we are all reading, watching, listening to and living epic stories every day. Epic poetry’s influence in media and philosophy is so pervasive that most of us probably miss it in our daily life. I Invite you to think of your favourite movie from when you were a child (I’m making an assumption that everyone here is a movie buff, like me, but think instead of your favourite book, TV show or video game if this is more applicable to you). Got it?
For me, my favourite movie series (and book series) has always been Lord of the Rings by the venerable J.R.R. Tolkein. Tolkein was outspokenly inspired by epic tales from the ancient past, specifically Norse mythology1. Tolkein’s world of Middle Earth, if read closely, can be understood as an alternative mythical history of our own world, and therefore can be read as an epic foundation myth similar to tales such as the Aeneid, in which the titular hero Aeneas founds the city of Rome after many trials and tribulations. Tolkein’s heroes, too, follow the classic path of the epic protagonist: the Hero’s Journey. And you do too, I would argue.
(A great Ted-Ed video on the Hero’s Journey)
Let me qualify that last one. The late Joseph Campbell, professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College, can be credited with the idea of the “Hero’s Journey”, the concept that the story arc of epic heroes, from Achilles to Katniss Everdeen, reflects a universal reality of the human experience. Campbell sees the Hero as cycling between the “normal world” of everyday life and the “special world”, a seemingly unreal world where the protagonist must face trials, tribulations and tears. The part that makes the journey so relatable to humans in the ancient world as well as humans in 2025 is the last part of the story: the hero (usually) returns home, even though they are fundamentally now a changed person.
I think many of us can relate to this concept of life as a journey full of cycles between normal and uncomfortable existence. If you don’t relate, why not try considering your life through this lens, even as a thought experiment. At some level, I could relate on a human level to Frodo and his gang of underdogs, and their trials. I could relate to the feeling of inadequacies, anxiety about the world changing around me, and maybe most importantly, the life-affirming support of family and friends. I think this is why I loved LOTR so much as a child, without even realizing it. Everyone is on a hero’s journey, where normal life and “unprecedented times” come and go. If you see yourself as the main character of your poem/book/movie/video game, who knows, life might feel a little more Epic.
References
Parry, Hannah. 2012. “Classical Epic in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Open Access Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington. https://doi.org/10.26686/wgtn.17000002.v1.
Winkler, Matthew & TED-Ed. 2013. “What makes a hero?”