Description
A Myth in Action: The Heroic Life of Audie Murphy relates the life of a Texas farmboy who enlisted in the Army in 1942. By the end of WWII, at five feet six inches and barely twenty years old, he had been field commissioned and had won more medals for valor than any soldier in American history. Coming home a legend, he spent the rest of his life portraying heroes in Hollywood films. He died tragically at forty-five. His story echoes those of mythological heroes described by comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell (Hero with a Thousand Faces), psychologist Rollo May (The Cry for Myth) and others. Heroes’ lives follow an “archetypal” pattern, from Homer’s Perseus through the Arthurian Percival, to Luke Skywalker—and Audie Murphy.
