The Road Back Home stage of ‘The Hero’s Journey’ represents a reverse echo of ‘The Call to Adventure’ in which the Hero has to take action to move from the ordinary world to ‘Cross The Threshold’ into an unknown world. Now he must return home with his reward. This time the anticipation of danger is replaced with that of anxiety around the expectation of acclaim and perhaps vindication, absolution or even exoneration from those that knew him in the world he departed from.
‘The Hero’s Journey’ is not yet over and he may still need one last push back into the Ordinary World. This motivation could come from within, or from without.
Before the Hero finally commits to the last stage of his journey (to live a more authentic life) may be a moment in which he must choose between his own personal objective and that of a Higher Cause. Devout readers who have followed this series might remember the reference made to Harry Potter’s ‘Call to Adventure’ in our first blog (if not here’s the link). It is on Harry’s road back home that he reaches the conclusion that it is his responsibility to face Voldemort (his greatest challenge) once and for all.
As this narrative makes clear, even when one has mastered a craft, whether wizardry or coding (my personal knowledge of both is equally poor), challenges can still be found along the way. As Code4000 director Jim explained in his ‘The Ultimate Prize’ blog, these challenges may often seem insurmountable for many newly released prisoners, producing a re-offending rate in the UK of around fifty per cent. But as Amanul’s interview reveals, these obstacles can take other forms. Most notably, the reticence of employers to take on ex-offenders. This has left many newly released prisoners unemployed and overwhelmed. Indeed for Amanul, it was ‘very difficult’ to find coding employment after prison, and he felt like he ‘wasn’t going to get an opportunity’ at all.
But the nature of Amanul’s new obstacle also underlines the value of the Code4000 programme. His challenge lay not in resisting the temptation to re-offend — indeed this did not ever cross his mind — but as a product of his sheer determination to gain employment in the coding industry. As Amanul explained ‘I don’t want that life [a return to crime], I want a career’.
As this shows, even on the road back home, having been released from prison, the rehabilitated prisoner (transformed hero) still faces the challenges of stigmatisation and employment exclusion. But imbued by the confidence and skill-set granted to him by Code4000, Amanul was happy to take on his Higher Cause and pursue further coding experience and tech employment. This came in the form of the Code Your Future training camp. In accepting this final challenge, Amanul was constantly thinking ‘about the end goal…the finishing line’. As future additions to this blog series will explore, it was the decision to accept this last challenge that allowed Amanul to not give up but to ‘Ascend to a Higher Plane’.
You can support the work Code4000 do by donating on our Enthuse page, here.
