Reconstructing the Hero: Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth in Amish Tripathi’s Shiva Trilogy

Abstract

Amish Tripathi’s Shiva Trilogy reimagines Shiva through a narrative that joins mythological memory with political conflict and ethical uncertainty. This paper reads The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas, and The Oath of the Vayuputras through Joseph Campbell’s three broad movements of the monomyth: departure, initiation, and return. Using qualitative textual analysis, it examines how Shiva’s movement between communities’ changes both his public identity and his understanding of justice. The argument is that Tripathi borrows the recognisable architecture of the heroic journey but shifts its emphasis from the fulfilment of a predetermined destiny to the testing of authority through choices and consequences. Meluha’s treatment of the Vikarma, the suspicions surrounding the Nagas, and the conflicts that culminate in the final novel expose different limits in the social and moral systems Shiva encounters. The trilogy therefore makes heroism a matter of interpretation and responsibility: a heroic title may create expectations, but it cannot settle the ethical value of a character’s actions.