I sat in the big, squishy chair, my shoulders tense and my eyes dilated. My brain was racing like an out-of-control semi truck on a mountain road. I had thought I was at least marginally intelligent, but now that assumption was dangling by a spider’s thread. In the partial darkness, my husband leaned over and said, “Well, what did you think?” I couldn’t even formulate an answer as I sat staring at the screen, watching the credits roll by for the movie Interstellar.

Now, I’d love to write a whole post on that movie and my love/hate relationship with its premise and plot. I’d enjoy telling you how it drove me to scour countless articles and scientific videos for any explanations of relativity. But instead, I’ll save that for another day and choose to focus on the motif of death and resurrection in Interstellar.

Are You Making This Up?

I do believe this death-and-resurrection motif was intentional, as the beginning of the movie makes clear in a conversation between Cooper and Dr. Brand. The Professor mentions to Cooper that a previous mission had already been sent out to look for other habitable planets: the Lazarus Mission. Cooper replies, “That sounds cheerful.” The professor reminds him that Lazarus came back from the dead, to which Cooper quips, “Sure, but he had to die in the first place.” So with this foreshadowing in mind, let’s look at the death and resurrection of Cooper as an example for Stage Eleven: the Hero’s Resurrection.

By the way, if you haven’t watched the movie yet, you might want to take a sec and go do that. Otherwise the examples won’t be as enjoyable for you. But I will tell you that, at this stage of the movie, Cooper’s death seems imminent since he has detached himself from the main spacecraft, ejected himself from his small shuttle, and ended up trapped in a black hole. Eventually, the black hole itself seems to unravel, and he is left stranded and unconscious in space, floating around near Saturn. For all intents and purposes, he is dead.

Tying Up Loose Ends

Now, I acknowledged in Part One that we often see the hero undergo a version of death (or at least near-death) and resurrection during the Ordeal. But this final stage of Resurrection—of climax and resolution—can take on many forms, Vogler points out. It can range from a complex series of resolutions for several plot points to a simple but critical choice for the hero to apply what he or she has learned.

The ending of Interstellar does both; it ties up many loose ends of the plot such as Cooper’s black hole predicament, his estrangement from his daughter Murphy, the impending suffocation of earth’s inhabitants unless Murphy solves a complicated equation, and even the solitary heartbreak of fellow-astronaut Amelia Brand. But the movie also gives Cooper a chance to apply some of the lessons he’s learned throughout his adventure. One of the best examples is his choice to sacrifice his chance to see his family again in order to save Amelia Brand and thereby, he hopes, humanity itself.

Catharsis

The thing about this stage of an adventure is that it’s often emotional. If it’s a comedy, the situation has reached its highest point of absurdity, and the audience is probably busting a gut with laughter. If it’s a drama, then someone we’ve come to love is either dying, watching a loved one die, or is at least coming to terms with an important lesson. Either way, the audience may be crying at this point.

While I, personally, struggle to feel comfortable expressing emotions like this, I’m told that it’s cathartic. Christopher Vogler explains the term catharsis in this way: “This Greek word actually means ‘vomiting up’ or ‘purging,’ but in English has come to mean a purifying emotional release, or an emotional breakthrough.” [210]  I’m also deathly afraid of vomiting, so maybe there is a connection here.… But before we get carried away psychoanalyzing me, let’s re-focus on the point: a good story, whether comedy or drama, should reach its climax at this point, allowing the audience to experience a catharsis for the tension that the previous struggles introduced.

Now, after enduring a move as tense as Interstellar, you would be justified in demanding some pretty serious catharsis at the end. For example, you want peace and resolution for the broken relationship between Cooper and his daughter, Murphy. Although you don’t get the full satisfaction of a long-lasting relationship, you do get to release the fear that one or both of them would die without seeing each other again and make things right. You also want the assurance that the human race isn’t going to suffocate in the dust of a dying Earth, and the movie provides that for you as well.

Souvenirs from the Special World

When a hero returns home from an adventure, his family and friends may have a hard time believing what happened to him unless he’s managed to bring back some sort of proof.

Vogler says that “providing proof is a major function of the Resurrection stage….A common fairy-tale motif is that proof brought back from the magic world tends to evaporate…. The real treasure from traveling is not the souvenirs, but lasting inner change and learning.” [215-216]

Cooper himself is the greatest proof of the adventure he went through. Physically, he has aged an inconsequential amount compared with the people back on earth (thanks to relativity, a mind-bending property of time). Internally, however, he carries more proof in the form of an expanded mind and a softened heart. He has experienced unfathomable situations with gravity and time and has learned the secret inner workings of a black hole. But he has also learned that logic may not always be the best decisive factor. He comes to see the importance of love after all.

Show or Tell

I studied creative writing in college. While I don’t remember most of the information that I took notes on and wrote essays about, I do remember a crucial piece of advice from one of my professors: he said, “Don’t tell us what the character is thinking. Show us.” And this, as it turns out, is much easier said than done.

Vogler echoes the same advice, saying, “The trick for writers is to show the change in their characters, by behavior or appearance rather than by just talking about it.” [203] If a hero has resurrected from the Special World back into the Ordinary World, he may find himself feeling out of place, a changed man in an unchanged world. It’s the author’s job to display this in reactions and interactions. The resurrected hero won’t be the same as when he left.

When Cooper wakes up after having been rescued from space, he is actually a changed man in a changed world. He finds himself living on a space station simulated to look like Earth; however, he isn’t comfortable in his replica farm house or his seemingly-pointless life. The script doesn’t philosophize about his inability to re-assimilate; instead, Cooper simply states, “I don’t care much for this pretending we’re back where we started. I want to know where we are, where we’re going.” After making peace with his daughter, he decides to strap into a spaceship once again and head out in search of Amelia Brand and a new planet to colonize.

Example from The Hobbit

After all that talk about Interstellar, will it come as a shock to your system to talk about Bilbo’s Resurrection in The Hobbit? Probably, but it’s tradition by now, so let me simply say that Bilbo’s reappearance at home actually does seem like a resurrection to the folk of Hobbiton. They had presumed him dead and had begun auctioning off all of his belongings! After all he’s been through on his adventure, Bilbo finds that there is one last hurdle before he can get back to normal: he must reclaim his property.

In fact, he has to convince them he truly is alive, and some hobbits considered that fact doubtful for quite some time afterward. And it’s no surprise that they didn’t recognize him; he is a changed hobbit. Gandalf remarks on this just outside of Hobbiton when he says, “My dear Bilbo! …Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were.”

So whether a hero is simply resurrected in the minds of his fellow hobbits or even brought back from near-death in the vacuum of space, Stage Eleven is a vital part of the hero’s journey. But what has the hero gained from this journey? Find out next week in our final installment of the Hero’s Journey: the Return with the Elixir!

Today’s Question: I’d love to hear your thoughts on the movie Interstellar! It doesn’t even have to be about resurrection, but it certainly can be.

Sources:
Nolan, C., Nolan, J., Thomas, E., Obst, L. R., McConaughey, M., Hathaway, A., Chastain, J., … Warner Home Video (Firm),. (2015). Interstellar.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. New York: Ballantine Books, 1937.
Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Second Edition. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 1998.