What Indiana Jones Never Learned
It was the opening night of the play Peter Pan. Four boys were preparing at home to go to the theatre. Their mother was seriously ill and could not keep them company. They needed to attend the premiere because the play was based on their life story, and the playwright was their best family friend. After the show, the playwright came to greet the children, only to learn the news of their mother’s irreversible illness. He looked at the eldest boy and said:
“Magnificent. The boy is gone. In the last 30 seconds… you became a grown-up.”
This is a scene from the movie Finding Neverland (2004). The playwright is J. M. Barrie, played by Johnny Depp. He says this to George Llewelyn Davies, the eldest of the four Llewelyn Davies boys — the real family who inspired the Peter Pan story.
George Llewelyn Davies does not go on any journey. He realizes the possibility of his mother’s foreseeable death, and he transforms.
No quest. No monsters. No battles.
Disturbing news arrives on an ordinary evening, and a boy is transformed. This kind of journey is barely visible from the outside, noticeable only to those close to the character, yet the change is significant.
These profound journeys are not always the loudest ones. Some unfold almost invisibly, until a person discovers that the meaning of the world — and of the self — has quietly changed. They usually happen internally, through events rather than actions.
The Limit of Visible Transformation
We have seen those Hero’s Journeys in which characters depart from one place, go through various movements, win trophies, and return with a different identity.
These journeys change a person’s visible identity:
A farm boy becomes a universal hero.
A dethroned prince gains the right to reclaim his throne.
An exiled CEO returns and rebuilds a commercial empire that transforms human communication forever.
Those are clear movements and visible actions, but we are not entirely sure if the characters have really changed after the journeys.
Noah Lukeman, literary agent and author of The Plot Thickens, states:
“Not all journeys are the same. There are overt, easily relatable journeys — what I call ‘surface journeys’ — but there are also beneath-the-surface, inner, less recognizable journeys — what I call ‘profound journeys.’”
These two different kinds of journeys unfold stories differently and have different impacts on characters.
Surface journeys are mostly external and plot-driven, focused on what the character physically does, the obstacles he overcomes, and the quest he needs to achieve. Profound journeys are usually internal, focused on what the character experiences psychologically and how he changes his perspective of the world.
These two journeys can be completed in parallel — but they can also diverge completely. A character can complete the surface journey and fail the profound journey entirely.
Luke Skywalker is the clean example of synchronization: his surface journey and profound journey move together. He becomes braver and stronger as he moves through the plot, and his internal growth is confirmed by his external victory.
The Surface-Only Journeys
An immediate example is Indiana Jones. He starts as a cynical, treasure-hunting archaeologist. He goes through every stage of the adventure — departure, trials, near-death, triumph. And he ends as… exactly the same cynical, treasure-hunting archaeologist. The movies are spectacular, but after the adventures, he is still the same old Indy.
Frank Underwood from House of Cards is another example. He is a senior Democratic congressman — House Majority Whip — who is promised the position of Secretary of State in exchange for helping the new president get elected. When the president breaks that promise, Underwood begins a methodical, years-long campaign of manipulation to seize power for himself. He destroys allies, manipulates journalists, betrays his mentor, and commits murder — all while maintaining a charming, controlled public persona. He manoeuvres his way to Vice President, then engineers the president’s resignation and takes the Oval Office. He starts the story wanting power. He ends the story having it. Nothing else about him shifts.
Frank’s surface journey is relentless and successful, from House Majority Whip to Vice President to President.
His profound journey never begins. He starts ruthless and ends ruthless. Power nourishes him. He is Jason in a suit — the quest completed, the man untouched.
However, Frank does become darker and more lawless as he ascends in his career. He starts murdering people, disguising enemies, and strengthening allies as he propels his career. He applies and masters Machiavellian principles without conscience; there is no good or evil in his dictionary, only usefulness and uselessness. Frank enjoys manipulating people, and the higher he climbs, the more power he grabs; the more power he grabs, the more he can manipulate; and the more he manipulates, the more satisfaction he receives. It is an ego trip — fed by never-ending ambition, his ego grows bigger over the years.
He has no profound journey. If anything, he has a self-indulgence journey.
When the Inner Journey Begins
Self-awareness is the essential marker of a profound journey. The profound journey is complete when the character arrives at genuine self-awareness — confronting something internal, such as loss, fear, betrayal, or misjudgment, rather than merely external challenges.
Unlike a surface journey, a profound journey is not built merely from events. It is built from how the character looks at the world and how he interprets the meaning of events.
George Llewelyn Davies experiences a profound journey through the realization that he might lose his mother. The inevitable death of a parent works like a huge pressure cooker, turning a young teenager into an adult within a moment.
Hamlet — The Hesitation Journey
Hamlet’s father, the king, dies; his uncle Claudius takes the throne and marries his mother within weeks. The late king’s ghost appears and tells Hamlet that he was murdered by Claudius. Hamlet spirals — the Prince of Denmark knows the truth but cannot act on it. He stages a play to confirm his uncle’s guilt, accidentally kills Polonius, his lover Ophelia’s father, and is sent away to England. Ophelia goes mad and drowns. Hamlet returns, and in a final duel manipulated by Claudius, nearly everyone dies — Hamlet’s mother drinks the poisoned wine meant for him, Hamlet is cut with a poisoned blade, and he finally kills Claudius before dying himself. He achieves revenge. It costs him everything.
This is never a Hero’s Journey. If it were one, Hamlet would have set out on a revenge journey to kill his uncle and reclaim his throne. Yet Hamlet’s journey is about hesitation, consciousness, mortality, and self-awareness. His struggles are all inside his mind, not in the outside world. He keeps pondering whether he should or should not act, and he misses several opportunities.
In this affliction, delay matters. Pressure matters. He finally acts, but it is already too late — he has lost everything: his lover, his mother, and eventually his own life. Yes, he kills the evil uncle, but his hesitation drags him from one irreversible loss to another.
This profound journey offers no heroic battles, but no theatre-goer forgets its sadness, anger, depression, and endless regret after the curtain falls.
Anthony Warlow, the Cancer Fighter
Anthony Warlow was, by his early thirties, the undisputed king of Australian musical theatre — an opera-trained baritone with an imperial, towering voice who had originated the lead in Australia’s The Phantom of the Opera in 1990. One year later, he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He withdrew from the stage without announcement to fight for his life. During six months of chemotherapy, too exhausted for live performance, he recorded the concept album for Jekyll & Hyde in Los Angeles, working only a few hours a day. That album put him on the international map. He returned to performing in 1993, but the man who came back was not the man who had left. Before cancer, he was a people-pleaser who said yes to everything. After cancer, he began saying no. He chose roles deliberately, performed with a depth drawn from knowing what it felt like to nearly lose everything, and at fifty made his Broadway debut — something he said would have paralysed him twenty years earlier.
Warlow’s surface journey was: get sick, survive, return. The profound journey was becoming someone who could finally say no, take risks, and, at fifty, pack his bags for Broadway — something he said would have paralysed him twenty years earlier.
Sickness obviously had a profound impact on him. A fan who saw him in both runs wrote in a discussion forum that she saw Warlow as the Phantom in 1990, when he was 28, and found his performance too youthful, lacking the angst of life experience, despite his wonderful vocals. Then she saw him at the first preview of the 2007 return — after the cancer — and was stunned by the transformation.
Warlow himself admits the impact of the disease in an interview:
“I’ve had my cancer and I discovered what that loss of confidence and fear of losing one’s life is like. Even though it was hard physically and vocally, it made the [Phantom] role a lot easier to execute, because of that knowledge I had.”
He returns to the same stage, the same music, even the same role — yet the relationship between body, mortality, art, and self no longer remains identical.
What Makes the Journey Profound
Self-realization itself can be satisfying to watch, as the character changes and absorbs new perspectives. Yet a profound journey becomes even more powerful when the character decides to act.
We all experience profound journeys in daily life. Grief, illness, failure, shame, misjudgment, moral collapse, or surviving something irreversible can become triggers. They make us realize something we were not aware of before, and begin to look at the world differently.
Some heroes cross galaxies and return victorious. Others sit in silence, confront mortality, lose faith in themselves, or slowly realize that the person who began the journey no longer fully exists.
Comments
Post a Comment