Action Heroism in Everest Expedition

This article explores Mountaineering as a heroic journey toward self knowledge, authenticity, and ultimately wisdom; the power to make meaning and give something back to the world in which we live; and the necessity of transformation.

Every historical epoch needs a new hero and common people to follow the unknown space after a hero makes a victory over it. Since the first ascent of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgey Sherpa; hundreds of people are following their footsteps each year. After the successful ascent over Mt Everest, the common man Tenzing, became a national hero throughout India, Nepal and Tibet. Sir Edmund Hillary-a hatched faced beekeeper from Auckland, New Zealand-was knighted by Queen Victoria on 2 June 1953, on her coronation day.

The visceral impact of this first successful ascent can be equated to the first landing on the moon and the celebration of Tenzing and Sir Hillary has instilled a deep sense of heroism in the Everest expedition culture. As a Campbelliean hero bestows boons on society, Sir Edmund Hillary has given back to the Himalayas by operating numerous development programs including schools, clinics, airstrips and bridges. The mountaineers depend on physical power to overcome obstacles and have thus become a heroic figure across the world over centuries.

The hero, who overcomes hardships and obstacles, returns to society with a renewed sense of energy and utility. This research work explores mountaineering accounts of Mount Everest Climbers, like Jon Krakauer, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgey Sherpa, based on the Campbell's monomyth structure separation-initiation-return. The proposed study will attempt to unfold the heroic journey as a process of transformation of consciousness and explores mountaineer heroes' revelations with their perennial actions in Mount Everest Expedition.

The common perception of a hero is of someone who is strong, intelligent, handsome, and daring. The definition of heroism changes with times and cultures and heroes of the past are not necessarily heroes of the present and visa versa. In the Campbellian monomyth, the hero embarks upon a ritualistic quest of adventure:

The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. [It] is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal-carries the cross of the redeemer-not in the bright moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair. (Campbell, 362)

Joseph Campbell, in The Hero With a Thousand Faces retraces the narratives of the hero of diverse cultural settings. Bringing together the mythological hero and the hero of history, Campbell marks between the hero in the real world and his multiple manifestations.

Citation

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 2d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1972. Print.

Mr Ghimire travels Nepal Himalaya and offers Nepal travel programs. See his work at Everest Trekking and Volunteering in Nepal

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