The quest story has existed for centuries, with Homer’s The Odyssey serving as the prototypical example. Also known as the hero’s journey, plot aspects of the quest often appear in the modern English-language romance novel and may be identified in international literature. In a classical quest, the male hero completes a journey focused on “winning” a prize through the application of wits and daring. As the plot developed, females also became hero figures and, beginning in the latter half of the 19th century, the quest could focus on an internal, or psychological, journey toward self-realization or actualization, generally signaled by an epiphany on the part of the protagonist. Closely related is the Arthurian romance legend, later used in the service of English nationalism, as well as the religious myth of the pursuit of the Holy Grail.
The journey itself must be understood as a series of steps, labeled and analyzed by critics and philosophers such as the 20th-century American expert on mythology, Joseph Campbell. His The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and The Power of Myth (1988) use an approach based on the psychoanalytic theories of Carl Gustav Jung, who used the theory of the collective unconscious to explain the similarities in the hero story across cultures, which lack any knowledge of one another’s existence. Jung believed that such an unconscious dwells in the depths of the psyche, housing the cumulative knowledge, experience, and imagery of the entire human race. From that accumulation emerged, in literature, recurrent plot patterns, images, and characters, referred to as archetypes, that can arouse emotions due to each individual’s collective unconscious. His archetype theory can be applied to an understanding of traditional symbols, such as the seasons, colors, water, and other objects representing human ideas and emotions, many of which occur in the quest. Canadian critic Northrop Frye gained fame using archetypes to develop a codification of symbols, seen in his famous work The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance.
The initial stage of the hero’s journey may be referred to as “Of the Ordinary World,” featuring the man/woman who acts as protagonist of the story tending to everyday matters. The second stage, called “Departure,” depicts substages such as “A Call to Adventure,” when a particular occurrence stirs conflict in the hero over whether to depart a comfortable routine to accept a challenge to seek a reward outside his normal sphere. That call may be met with “Refusal,” when the protagonist for a time declares he will not embark on the journey. He immediately suffers a loss, of someone or something dear, and then comes to understand the importance of the task he has been given. He is then observed “Crossing the Threshold,” indicating he physically departs his familiar world to enter a new one. The journey from home undertaken by countless young male protagonists in countless novels who leave to “seek their fortunes” represents this stage. While Odysseus traveled over water, the journey may be cross-country, through outer space, or through the subconscious.
In the “Initiation” stage, the hero must meet, and prove his valor or intelligence in, a number of challenges, which may be physical, spiritual, or psychological. He may have help from a guide figure, as Athena helped Odysseus, or Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda help Luke Skywalker in the popular Star Wars movie trilogy. With this guidance, the hero may fight monsters, deal with shape-shifters, witches, or other enchanted beings, see and interpret visions, be caught up in disorienting magical spells, and learn new skills affording him new powers. The hero will also suffer a loss during the journey, often of the guide, which may plunge him into depression or cause him to feel he cannot complete the journey. This necessitates a renewal of purpose, moving the hero into the next stage, labeled “Descent.” He may undertake a literal descent; Odysseus descended into Hades to consult with past heroes, collecting their wisdom. Hades may be represented by any number of dark locations, generally reached by a movement downward, whether into a cave, a tunnel, dark woods at the bottom of a hill, or a concrete bunker. An example of these stages may be clearly identified in the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. Jonah is ordered to make a journey, he refuses, attempts to hide, and loses his independence when he is swallowed by a whale. The belly of the whale represents an archetypical symbol, a dark, forbidden, frightening, sometimes deadly location, into which the hero descends. The colloquial phrase “in the belly of the whale” or “in the belly of the fish” indicates a threatening retreat from the real world where a person may be tested.
Once the hero gains the necessary knowledge, he emerges, moving literally upward or outward from the low ground, reemerging with renewed strength and confidence. While he may be further challenged, he will successfully reach his goal, procure his treasure, and begin the final stage, “The Return Home.” The hero may at first refuse or resist, necessitating an event to convince him, or the return may become a lengthy quest on its own, as was that of Odysseus; it may also be completed quickly and without event.
An additional stage might involve a responsibility on the hero’s part to share what they have learned, through storytelling and writing, as in the German version of an initiation story that traces the development of a writer, called a Künstlerroman. The Bildungsroman, which features the development of a young person into maturity, may feature many aspects of the quest. Examples are legion and include romance-genre novels by Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Gothic-genre novels by the Brontë sisters, Henry Fielding, seafaring tales by Frederick Marryat, and adventure/survival tales by Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Henry Rider Haggard. Modern darker versions of the quest may be designed to question what constitutes success, or may exist as ironic quests, in which no reward is gained by the protagonist, or the protagonist even loses his/her life or a grasp on the meaning of life or self-identity. Works by Thomas Hardy offer excellent examples, as do works incorporating the supernatural or science fiction, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. Reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968.
———. The Power of Myth. Edited by Betty Sue Flowers. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Fraser, Robert. Victorian Quest Romance: Stevenson, Haggard, Kipling and Conan Doyle. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
Frye, Northrop. The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Harvard University Press, 1976.
Luttrell, Claude. The Creation of the First Arthurian Romance: A Quest. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1974.
Schechter, Harold, and Jonna Gormley Semeiks, eds. Discoveries: 50 Stories of the Quest. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishers, 1983.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Myth Criticism, Novel Analysis
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