There_is_only_one_story_SD

Lets walk through Murdock's heroine's journey diagram and see if we can apply any of it to everything everywhere all at once. Separation from the feminine: As we saw when we analyzed quicksand, we can see separation from the feminine as separation from the mother, which definitely applies to Everything Everywhere all at once. In a way, the defining struggle of the movie was the disconnect between Joy and her mother Evelyn. In the original universe, Joy and Evelyn fight over how to introduce Joy’s girlfriend to Eveyln’s dad. Underlying this, is Joy’s belief that her mom thinks she’s a screw up. Joy’s alpha-verse self, also known as Jobu Tupaki, expresses this belief in a scene where she tells her original universe Evelyn that when one puts everything on a bagel it becomes nothingness. In this metaphor, Evelyn’s expectations of Joy/Jobu are the “everything” being put on a bagel. This leads to the bagel, or Joy/Jobu, collapsing in on itself and turning into a quasi-black hole. Sep...

  While reading the most recent chapter of Quicksand, I realized there were a couple parallels to Siddhartha, at least as far as the ambiguity of a particular step in the hero’s/heroine’s journey. In Siddhartha, one of the biggest debates was about whether Kamala represented Temptation or the Goddess. Likewise, I noticed that Katrina Dahl is similarly ambiguous. According to Wikipedia, Murdock’s characterization of the goddess is someone who “represents all the positive values of femininity she has left behind” and inspires the heroine to return to “femininity”. By superficial standards and the typical characteristics of “femininity”, Katrina certainly seems like a contender for the Goddess character. She prepares parties and tea outings, matchmakes Helga, dresses Helga, etc. Her main role is making sure the Dahls have a positive reputation and a great social standing. I believe that looking after the family’s image is typically stereotyped as a feminine role as well.  It's al...

In Siddhartha, I think the most complicated step to “diagnose” is the step of Temptation. In fact, I would argue that there is no “true” step of Temptation as Joseph Cambell describes it – a step that may lead the hero to abandon or stray from his or her quest. At first, it seems like the 20 years Siddhartha spends “Among the People”, is a clear deviation from his path towards enlightenment and true inner peace. However, Joseph Campbell’s description of the step has a key caveat — the step of temptation must feel and be a step in the wrong direction if followed.  However, while Siddhartha is with Kamala and Kamaswami, he clearly doesn’t think he is deviating from the path. Instead, he sees this embrace of materialism and carnal relationships as a necessary part of enlightenment. He says “He had known for a long time that his Self was Atman, of the same eternal nature as Brahman, but he has never really found his Self, because he had wanted to trap it in the net of thoughts”(47). To...