Reading William Gibson's Selected Works in Light of Joseph Cambel Theory

It could be argued that myths always have a salient role in the human’s life, in a sense that all the human’s intentions, motives, deeds, and judgments have their roots in myths. Seemingly, the death of myths causes the annihilation of the world. This research aims to divulge the portrait of myths and the hero’s journey in the technological world of William Gibson’s novels in order to reveal if the metamorphosis of the human to the post-human in the technological world could be considered as the adventure of the hero. On the other hand, the present study is based on the hypothesis that the traces of myths could be found in all times and in all places even in the technological world. William Gibson, who is a significant author of cyberpunk fictions, recreates the old myths through technological features. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to critically investigate the mythical elements, including the hero and the hero’s journey and examining them in William Gibson’s novels, Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) to delineate that Gibson portrays a novel picture of myths and indicates that myths underlie all the stories and narratives. Gibson’s view has its roots in Campbell’s ideas regarding the existence of myths in all places and all times. In his The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Campbell argues that the permanent presence of myths in human history demonstrates that “man, apparently, cannot maintain himself in the universe without belief in some arrangement of the general inheritance of myth” (3). Since, according to Campbell, all myths follow the same patterns, the individual can find himself and his status in regard to the myths of the world. He also claims that all the stories, narratives, and works of literature could be more comprehensible through scrutinizing ‘monomyth’ and ‘the adventure of the hero’ which are variously represented.