Rick Grimes is the Luke Skywalker of The Walking Dead
By Josh Hill
The Walking Dead is one of the best shows on television, but the mythos involved in the series is out of this world and is very much embedded in the series and its characters.
Joseph Cambell has made a career out of linking classic hero character to the roots of storytelling back in the days of ancient Greece and even the theology of The Bible. The most prominent example of this is Luke Skywalker, from the classic story of Star Wars. According to Campbell, that story is modern day Greek Mythology, but his criteria for a classic hero character isn’t just confined to Star Wars or Luke Skywalker.
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As The Daily Beast very accurately points out, Rick Grimes is basically Luke Skywalker of The Walking Dead, from a psychological standpoint.
"In the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell explores the similarities among heroic tales from all cultures and time periods. He notes that most of these stories follow a three-cycle structure. The hero first enters a period known as separation, where he leaves his past and enters a new life of adventure. Next, he enters the initiation phase, traveling through the underworld to face a series of trials which transform him from the person he was into the hero he is meant to be. Finally, in the return, he emerges anew, free from the troubles of the past."
This is pretty much Rick Grimes in a nutshell, which goes to show just how important of a character he is. But as we’ve learned throughout the course of both history and storytelling, some characters are made most important by being martyred, which could end up being the case with Rick at some point in The Walking Dead.
Either that, or him losing a hand at some point isn’t that far off base for The Walking Dead.
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