The Initiation Process in the Hero's Journey

A Hero’s Journey: Steamboat Bill, Jr. The Initiation stages of the hero’s journey are evident in the 1928 silent comedy classic Steamboat Bill, Jr. starring Buster Keaton as the titular hero. In the film, the young college grad Willie Canfield returns back home to River Town Junction to rejoin his father, Steamboat Bill, a big tall burly man who wears blue collar river boat clothes and owns and operates the steamer Stonewall Jackson.

There is new competition on the river in the form of the new steamer King, owned by the wealthiest man in town J. J. King. The film opens with King’s steamer paddling up to a grand reception at the pier while Bill in his dilapidated steamer looks on and expresses his disdain. It is then that a letter arrives telling Bill that his son is heading home.

Bill tells his partner excitedly that he has not seen young Willie since he was a little boy and reckons he must be big and tall like himself now. This is what sets the action in motion. Before describing the Initiation stages, however, a brief summary of the movie will be given. When Willie arrives, he is dressed like a dapper dandy and is small, frail-looking and thin. He also acts like a bumbling idiot, lacking all sense of balance, constantly tripping over steps and wires.

Bill is dismayed but attempts to explain to Willie how the Steamboat works and, though Willie keeps falling over things, it turns out that this lesson plays a critical part in his development into a hero later on. Willie also happens to be in love with J. J. King’s daughter—and both fathers forbid the romance when they discover evidence of it. Bill specifically forbids Willie from seeing the girl.

When Willie sneaks out later to meet her and is discovered, Bill buys Willie a one-way ticket back to his college town. The next morning, however, Bill is arrested and sent to jail after getting in an altercation with King. Willie, who is on his way to the train station, sees his father being locked up, tears up his train ticket and determines to make things up with his father by busting him out of jail.

But because he is such a bumbling, inept fool, he blows the break-out and is wounded and hauled off to a hospital to recover in the process while Bill remains locked behind bars. Then a hurricane arrives and barrels up the river tearing the town apart. The hospital literally blows away and Willie scrambles to get out of harm’s way while the townsfolk flee for safety. A tree knocks the prison into the river and Bill, still locked up, cannot escape and is in danger of drowning.

Willie escapes the town wreckage, leaps into the Stonewall Jackson, ties ropes to the necessary levers needed to power and push the steamer, and steers the thing into the floating prison, breaking Bill free and saving his father’s life. Willie then sees his love, J. J. King’s daughter, crying for help: she is on King’s steamer, which is sinking. Willie ties himself off to Stonewall Jackson and dives in to rescue her.

She clings to him as Bill pulls them both back up to safety on the Stonewall. Then they all hear J. J. King crying for help from the river. Willie dives in for him as well and saves his life. All reconcile and the lovers embrace. As Ebert (2002) observes, Keaton’s Willie rises to the heroic by demonstrating “grace under pressure”—i.e., courage when it really matters most.

This is especially true in the final act of the film when Willie transforms from a bumbling fool into a kind of Olympian, vaulting over obstacles, climbing railings and the side of the steamboat, diving into the river and saving lives as if it all came second-nature to him.

His hero’s journey starts, however, with many awkward steps that allow him the opportunity to absorb helpful information—such as how the steamboat works—though he hardly wins any accolades from his father during their initial time together due to his bumbling manner. The Initiation pattern applies well to Willie’s story.

There is first of all the “call to adventure.” This literally arrives in the form of a telegram and the call comes not to Willie but to his father from Willie: the telegram announces to the father that the son is coming home. Bill cannot wait to introduce Willie into the family business.

However, Willie is reluctant to obey Bill’s rules where love is involved and the “refusal to call” comes into play when Willie refuses to stop seeing King’s daughter despite his father’s order. King’s daughter represents the “goddess” who is the “temptress” (though she is not evil in reality—just in the eyes of Bill because he is biased against King).

Willie sneaks out of his room but, true to form, causes a mess through his bumbling idiocy, and inadvertently alerts both King and Bill as to his intentions to continue courting King’s daughter. Bill is furious, which is why Willie’s actions result in his exile from the Steamboat and a ticket back east. However, a kind of “supernatural aid” arrives in two forms: first, it comes with the arrest of Bill, after Bill gets into a fight with King in the street.

Since King pulls weight in the town, Bill is thrown in jail while King stands back and gloats. Bill’s arrest provides Willie with just the (kind of serendipitous) opportunity he needs to make it up to his father. Willie plans a break-out, which, at first, looks promising and does indeed cheer up his father and win Willie some much needed affection. However, the prison guard quickly catches on and Willie is confronted.

This is the “crossing of the first threshold (test)” moment: the guard mocks Willie (which offends Bill) and Bill tells the guard that Willie could knock the guard out with one punch if he wanted to. Since Willie is so small and weak-looking, the guard laughs, sticks out his chin and dares Willie to hit him. Willie hesitates but is encouraged by his father who is still behind bars. Willie draws himself up, rears back and socks the guard right in his fat belly.

The guard falls over flat on his back, hits his head and is knocked unconscious. Bill celebrates by leaping for joy as Willie passes the “test.” Willie grabs the guard’s keys and frees his father. The two make for their escape but Willie gets tied up on the prison door without Bill realizing it. Willie is clubbed over the head by another officer who enters just then.

Bill sees this attack on his son, returns immediately, knocks the officer out, and puts himself back in the prison cell as his son is hauled away by the medics. At this point the second form of “supernatural aid” arrives—the hurricane that blows up river to demolish the town. This leads to a fast-paced, literal “road of trials” as Willie escapes one crashing structure after another, making his way down the main town road in an attempt to find shelter from the storm.

It is through this “road of trials” that he is finally able reconcile with his father by rescuing him from drowning after putting the training he received from his father to good use by single-handedly using his college smarts to rig the levers and pulleys of the steamer with ropes.