The Hero’s Quest in Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko is a film released in 2001, written and directed by Richard Kelly, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Noah Wyle, Jena Malone, and Mary McDonnell. It is a science fiction thriller involving a schizophrenic young man, Donnie Darko, who experiences the effects of a collapsing universe. Donnie takes a 28 day journey in October 1988 through time to figure out how to save the world from destruction. This journey, like many in film and literature, follows the structured monomyth, a theory explored and developed by Joseph Campbell, which traces the hero through his or her experience.
Stage 1: Departure
The Call to Adventure
At the beginning of the movie, Donnie Darko meets an “imaginary friend”, Frank. Frank in this story represents the supernatural aide that gives guidance to Donnie through his journey. He is a product of Donnie’s schizophrenic identities. Throughout the movie, Frank is dressed in a rabbit costume with a skull-like mask and speaks to Donnie in only few words. This happens because he is a product of Donnie’s imagination; so, he has a psychological connection to Frank and the tasks he must accomplish.
As the hero in this journey, Donnie Darko’s archetype changes throughout the movie. On the other hand, several other characters have established archetypes that mostly stay the same throughout. Frank is a ruler in most situations of the movie. He is able to manipulate Donnie into performing the necessary tasks so that the world will not end.
Donnie’s call to adventure is represented by his first visit from Frank. He tells Donnie that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. This is the time that Donnie is given to stop the world from ending.
Refusal of the Call
To combat Donnie’s schizophrenia, he is seen regularly by his psychologist, Dr. Fisher. He goes there to talk about his encounters with Frank and tries to make sense out of the events that have been affecting his life. He is hypnotized into his alternate persona to talk about Frank and how the world will end, however this offers little help in dealing with his problem.
Crossing the First Threshold
The first threshold that Donnie crosses is when he decides to follow Frank into the “future” in the middle of the night. This refers to how Donnie and the world will experience a secondary universe until, if or when Donnie saves the world, the end of the countdown. Frank will guide Donnie through this universe so that Donnie can ultimately save it. He will force Donnie into situations that will guide him to his ultimate goal.
Belly of the Whale
During Donnie’s first outing with Frank in the middle of the night, he is drawn away from his house which is the site of a freak accident. During the night, an unmarked airplane engine falls out of the sky and crashes into Donnie’s bedroom while Donnie is away. The FAA cannot identify the source of this engine. In reality, this engine came from the future, which is an indication of the end of the world because of a corruption in the time-space continuum. This initiates the countdown to the end of the world.
Stage 2: Road of Trials
Road of Trials
As mentioned before, many of Donnie’s personal experiences in the movie are intended to ultimately guide him to saving the world. Most of these are guided by Frank while one is seen as water-like projection coming out of his chest.
In Donnie’s second meeting with Frank, he takes an axe and breaks the school’s water main and puts an axe through the steel statue of a lion in front of the school. He spray painted “he made me do it” on the ground around the statue. These events parallel a short story that Donnie reads in his English class called The Destructors by Graham Greene (Wikipedia).
Later, Donnie follows the water-like projection that comes out of his chest. This projection reflects him seeing into the future, as to where he will go and what he will do. This leads him to finding a pistol in his father’s closet.
Finally, Frank appears to Donnie in a movie theater. This is one of the greatest, most powerful scenes I've ever seen in a movie. Frank takes of his mask and reveals a young man with a bullet wound through his eye. When he asks Frank what happened to his eye, Frank replies “I’m so sorry.” Frank then leads Donnie to the house of a local celebrity, Jim Cunningham, who, to Donnie, is a fraud.
Jim Cunningham in this story is both a creator and a destroyer. People would buy into Jim’s characterization of life as a simple division between love and fear. It was later recognized that Jim is a destroyer, as he is involved in a child pornography ring, which is damaging to both the community and society.
Meeting with the Goddess
During the school year, a new girl moves into town named Gretchen. She becomes Donnie’s girlfriend and they spend a lot of time together. Gretchen’s father also had mental problems “like Donnie”; he stabbed her mother several times in the chest. The actual reason she moved into town was because her father was never caught by authorities, so she had to move away with her mother and change their names.
Gretchen acts somewhat as an emotional anchor to Donnie, as they have both been victimized some way or another by mental sicknesses. Later, Gretchen comes to Donnie saying that her mother was gone and thinking that her father has found them.
Gretchen reflects the orphan archetype as she has been abandoned (or abandoned) her father. She seeks dependence with Donnie as recognized by her immediate willingness to go out with him.
Atonement with the Father
During a Halloween party, Donnie once again begins visualizing the water-like projections that come out of people’s chests. They show him that he must go visit an senile old woman, Grandma Death, also known as Rebecca Sparrow, who wrote a book on time travel many years ago.
Grandma Death is the Sage of this journey, her books provides Donnie with some wisdom and knowledge that helps him make conclusions about the situation and recognize that she is the only person that can help him resolve this situation.
While sneaking around Grandma Death’s house, Donnie and Gretchen are jumped by bullies trying to rob her (which again references the story the Destructors by Graham Greene). While fighting with the bullies outside, the living, non-imaginative version of Frank is driving his car down the street wearing his rabbit costume. He swerves to avoid hitting the senile Grandma Death who is standing in the middle of the road, and instead runs over Gretchen, killing her. Frank gets out of the car and confronts Donnie as a real person for the first time. Donnie responds by taking out the gun he found in his father’s closet and shoots Frank in the eye. Donnie does not consider the consequences as the world would be ending in a matter of hours.
Refusal of the Return
Donnie walks Gretchen’s body back to his house and drives it to a lookout. While he is watching the world begin to end, he hears Frank’s voice saying “28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds. I’m going home.” Hearing this, he realizes that he can bring Frank and Gretchen back to life, as all of the requirements of time travel, described to him earlier by a professor, have been met.
Stage 3: Return
The Magic Flight
While on his way back home, there is a flashback montage of all of the people and events, both good and bad, that he has influenced since the jet engine has crashed into his room. However, most important of these events are the deaths of Gretchen and Frank.
Crossing the Return Threshold
The final threshold is when Donnie gets back into bed, where the jet engine will crash. Because Frank at this point is dead, there will be nobody to draw Donnie away from the crashing jet engine in either universe. Now, he has accepted to sacrifice his life in return for saving the lives of Gretchen and Frank, and healing the pain that he has caused people in the past 28 days.
Freedom to Live
By being killed by the jet engine, he rerouted the divided universe back to its original, linear path before it was corrupted by the wormhole with the engine. The remerging takes the first universe, which was experienced before the engine crashed into his bedroom the first time, and the secondary universe, which was experienced for the rest of the movie until the engine killed him at the end of the movie. By remerging the universes, which were bound by the jet engine, into a singular event, he prevents the universe from collapsing.
Finally, the movie goes back to the beginning, except this time Donnie is crushed by the jet engine. There is a montage of all of the characters in the movie being awakened by the crash and looking as though they have just experienced the events of the secondary universe as a dream.
In the end, the world returns to the way it was before the corruption in the time and space continuum, except this time without Donnie. However, most importantly, Gretchen has to live her life without Donnie. This leaves an open end to show the reality of life while also showing how it only takes one person to make a difference.
Donnie Darko is a very interesting movie which uses a teen movie genre to explore many interesting themes, including those of destiny and death. There are not only characters and archetypes which are used in this movie. Donnie Darko uses any elements which have symbolic meaning.
First is the obvious motif of the Rabbit – the ‘Frank’ character – that guides Donnie through his story. The rabbit is a nocturnal creature, and in the film Donnie only meets the rabbit at night. In mythology the rabbit is very often associated with the moon, and the shapes on the moon’s surface have often been interpreted as a rabbit. The association with the moon links the symbol of the rabbit with the phases of the moon, and the rabbit’s reputation for fertility adds to this so that the rabbit comes to symbolize death and rebirth.
The time that Donnie has to live during the film is about the interval of a lunar cycle, 28 days. It is also worth observing that at the end of the film, Donnie’s youngest sister sits on the airplane holding a toy rabbit.
Another symbol in the film is that of water. Water, or being underwater, is a symbol of the unconscious, and rising out of the water is related to coming into consciousness in some way. The first act that Donnie does is the releasing of water in the school, symbolizing a release from the unconscious. The rabbit is also often seen next to water in the film.
Donnie inserts an axe into the head of a bronze dog on the school grounds. The dog has an ambiguous role in as a symbol, often representing fidelity, but also ignorance in the sense that the dog follows blindly. The symbolic overpowering of the dog can therefore refer to the overcoming of ignorance in the journey into knowledge.
Cherita is a guardian angel; in all of her scenes she is close to Donnie and often behind him, except when she plays an angel in the school play. Donnie wears a skeleton T-shirt at his party, referring to his own mortality. There is a repeated use of the number 8 throughout the movie.
Donnie Darko is a fantastic film that is so thought-provoking, it made some people run the other way. Only those interested in something beyond the ordinary stayed to ponder and analyze its meaning. However, it has been somewhat of a victim of its own cult success. The limited release of the film occurred during the month after the September 11 attacks. Despite its poor box office showing, the film began to attract a devoted fan base. In March 2002, the Pioneer Theatre in New York City's East Village began midnight screenings of Donnie Darko that continued for 28 consecutive months, despite being available on DVD. Also, at the end of 2008 the same theater closed its doors for good and the last public screening was a Friday midnight showing of Donnie Darko.
Works Cited:
“The Pearson Archetypal System.” www.herowithin.com. 7 December 2010.
< http://www.herowithin.com/system.htm >
“Destructors, The.” www.wikipedia.com. 7 December 2010.
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Destructors>
“Donnie Darko.” www.wikipedia.com. 7 December 2010.
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_darko>
“Richard Kelly.” www.wikipedia.com. 7 December 2010.
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kelly_(director)>
Donnie Darko. Kelly, Richard, dir. Pandora Cinema. 2001
