Hero's Journey

• The middle class: A class of social grouping within society based on occupation and material wealth, usually comprising professional and business people and their families.
• Literate: Able to read and write language through the written word.
• The hero’s journey: An often repeated narrative structure which involves a central protagonist leaving the known world and undergoing challenges to achieve both spiritual and material reward and status. This journey can be both metaphorical and literal.
• The ordinary world: The world inhabited by the protagonist before his or her journey begins, which enables readers to identify with and understand the hero, and which provides a place to compare and contrast with after the journey begins.
• Status quo: The existing state of affairs; things as they currently are.
• Antagonist: The opposing character within a narrative who incites both the tensions and the actions of the protagonist.
• Buccaneer: Sea man, pirate.
• Black Spot: A summons.
• Miscreant: A person with no morals.
• Keel-hauling: Punishment by tying a rope around the offender, throwing him overboard and dragging him under the ship so as to be scraped against sharp barnacles covering the keel, or bottom of the ship.
• Boatswain: A ship's petty officer who controls the work of other seamen.
• Coxswain: Helmsman of a ship; one who steers the ship.
• Grog: Rum diluted with water.
• Quartermaster: Supply officer.
• Duplicity: Being two-faced; deceptive.
• Pious: Devoutly religious; god-fearing.
• Mutineers: Men who plan mutiny, or overthrow a ship's authority.
• The Jolly Roger: The flag flown during a pirate attack.
• Promontory: A rocky elevated area that juts out into the sea.
• Cache: Hidden item.
• Protagonist: The hero or main character in a narrative.
• Antagonist: The opposing character within a narrative who incites both tensions and actions of the protagonist.
• Resurrection: A common element in the Hero’s Journey narrative structure wherein the hero emerges from the extraordinary world, cleansed or purified, and can be considered “reborn.”
• The ordeal: A common element in the Hero’s Journey narrative structure wherein the hero faces a moment of life-or-death crisis, faces a great fear and/or confronts a most difficult challenge, and wherein s/he might even experience “death.”
• The extraordinary world: A world that strongly contrasts the hero’s ordinary world - often typified by adversity, ever-increasing danger, and strange or unknown peoples and settings - through which the hero’s journey must be made.
• Ally: A character who accompanies the hero, offering support, assistance and friendship.
• Character archetype: Categories of character, such as hero and joker, which recur across many texts with similar characteristics and role within the plot.
• Mentor: A character - often older or more experienced - who provides training, motivation, insight or equipment necessary for a hero to undertake the upcoming journey.