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...…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 that he can pull to get the boat moving in the right direction. “Atonement with the father” takes place once Bill is saved, and the “ultimate boon” occurs when Willie is given the opportunity to save both King’s daughter and King himself after that. This serves as the climax of the film as well—the grand “apotheosis”—as it all happens in quick succession, one salvation after another. Finally, with gratitude expressed all around to Willie and all reconciled, the storm calms, and the final scene is the “return”—Willie and Bill Canfield working the Stonewall Jackson together, Willie dressed in the same apparel as his father, now a legitimate chip off the old block.

This is a great film for understanding the Initiation because each of the ten stages is represented in the hero’s journey. What is better is that it is all done in a very comical way while still being very exciting in the final apotheosis. While I had always enjoyed this movie, I had not realized that it hit ever single note of the Initiation process, and now I see it as a very good representation of the hero’s journey.