Whether or not we give it much thought, there is a literary device known as “The Hero’s Journey” that repeats often in literature, from classical tales like Homer’s The Odyssey and Dante’s The Divine Comedy, to modern novels, and even action films.

There is a formula to the device: (1) a departure from the ordinary world and entry into the unknown; (2) an initiation, with trials and ordeals; (3) a transformation, with new insight and maturity; and (4) a return to the ordinary world in this resurrected form. The movement is one of descent into literal or figurative hell, and the ascent into a purified life.

In the Odyssey, the Trojan War begins when Paris of Troy abducts Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Menelaus calls on all Greek kings to fight for the return of Helen, and Odysseus, king of Ithaca, becomes one of the most effective fighters.

Odysseus departs his known world to rescue Helen, and his trials include the war itself and a return trip in which he fights monsters, temptation, and exile, and descends into the underworld. He returns home to Ithica a changed man, having gained wisdom.

In Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, it is a spiritual journey with Dante cast as the protagonist. He leaves his ordinary world and with mentors, explores the afterlife. There he descends into the trials of Inferno, Hell and Purgatory. His transformation is in obtaining moral purification, and in his return to the ordinary world, he has enlightenment in a clear vision of God.

The Hero’s Journey is at the center of the entire King Arthur myth, and I’ve come to expect the device in most action films, but I was surprised to discover the journey in my reading of the quiet little book, Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.

Wood slowly develops the unnamed character who serves as her protagonist. She is a woman in her 40’s who has become disillusioned with life and leaves her ordinary world—abandons her marriage and her career as a conservationist in Sydney. Although she’s an atheist, she moves into a convent in a rural area of New South Wales.

Her trials include adapting to the stark, simple life in the nunnery and the ever-presence of a religion she questions. There’s an infestation of mice that overruns the retreat, and a visit by a nun who was a childhood classmate treated poorly by the narrator and others.

The real trial is in the narrator’s search for atonement and forgiveness of what she sees as her life failures. The change is subtle as she begins to understand she must forgive herself. The return is not a departure from the nunnery, but an acceptance of this life of service in her new home.

It is a gentle book, quite lovely, and a reminder to us all that there will be descents into difficulties in life, but ascents as well as we work at being human.

JONNIE MARTIN