The Monomyth in James Cameron's The Terminator: Sarah as Monomythic Heroine

In addition to serving as the underlying plot structure in the initial Star Wars trilogy (Gordon, Mackay, Sherman, Tiffin), for which it is most popularly known, Campbell's interpretation of the monomyth likewise occurs in meticulous detail in some of the most highly regarded and artistically successful science fiction novels from the second half of the twentieth century-such as Alfred Hester's The Stars My Destination, Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon, each of the six volumes in Frank Herbert's Dune series, and Gene Wolfe's four-volume The Book of the New Sun and its sequel, The Urth of the New Sun-as well as in numerous additional science-fiction films from this period, including The Time Machine (I960), 2007: A Space Odyssey, Dune, Back to the Future, The Last Starfighter, Time after Time, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (Lundquist), Lagan's Run, Escape from New York, Dreamscape, Tron, The Matrix (Kimball), all ten Star Trek films (Baker, Reid-Jeffrey, Roth), and The Terminator.1 All but one of these works, as does Campbell's analysis, features the archetypal adventure of a male hero, yet The Terminator diverges significantly from nearly all of the great many myths, legends, and fables upon which Campbell bases his study, and is unique among the monomyth's many manifestations in twentiethcentury science fiction novels and films, in that its protagonist is a woman, Sarah Connor, who becomes the heroine through sharing with Kyle Reese, her protector from the future, most of the monomythic hero's characteristics and nearly all of the incidents that comprise his adventure. The adventure's "separation" or "departure stage" entails up to five incidents: receiving a "Call to Adventure" in the guise of a blunder that reveals an unknown world or the appearance of a herald character from that world; refusing the call; receiving supernatural aid; crossing a magical threshold that leads to a sphere of rebirth; and being swallowed in "The Belly of the Whale," a descent into the unknown symbolizing death and resurrection that may involve an underground journey symbolic of a descent into hell (36).