The Antihero, never enough

I’ve recently been rereading Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” but when Mary Trump’s “Too Much and Never Enough” was released I felt compelled to immediately start reading it. Reading the two at the same time appeared to be a true paradox because if Dr. Campbell’s book is about the essence of “the Hero”, Dr. Trump’s is anything but.

While “the Hero with a Thousand Faces” tells the uplifting, universal story of how human beings hope for a hero in their lives and sometimes even hope to be a hero, “Too Much and Never Enough” tells the depressing story of how the ascendency of Donald Trump in the public life of Americans became nothing more than a national tragedy on a grand scale

According to Dr. Campbell Heroes are ordinary people who are “called to action” for a noble cause. After answering the call heroes encounter “Threshold struggles” they never imagined they could overcome but they do and after doing so they return to normal life to offer an example of how we can all be heroes in our own lives. In complete contrast, Mary Trump tells the story of a family, especially the patriarch, Fred Trump Sr., who produce the anti-hero, reprobate that is Donald Trump. For those unfamiliar with the term “reprobate” it generally means “morally corrupt” which is the vapor that permeates the entire story of the trump family.