The Elements of a Quest

When the ideas for this issue’s theme were being discussed around the coffee pot and over endless texts & “messenger,”  images of Tolkein’s brave hobbits, magic artifacts, and the Holy Grail immediately emerged in our discussions. When the final copies of CFP went out last Autumn, I was at a Celtic festival in Oregon watching Kevin Carr perform on traditional bagpipes on a rocky beach at sunset. Mr. Carr’s musical mastery floated on the sea wind like an invitation to explore deeper . . . further . . .  . The question, for this writer, became, “What are the elements that make up a quest?”

To find some answers, I went to the book shelves that always call to me when considering a mythic subject and like noted scholar, Mircea Eliade (1969), I approached this editorial with not a small amount of trepidation.

It is not without fear and trembling that a historian of religion approaches the problem of myth. This is not only because of that preliminary embarrassing question: what is intended by myth? It is also because the answers given depend for the most part on the documents selected. (p. 72)

There is a standard literary answer to this question. “The form of a quest narrative is simple. Basically, the author describes his or her desire to do something, see something, experience something, discover something.” (The Writer’s Workshop, 2010)

Kori Morgan, in How to Do Plot Development in a Quest Story (n.d.) states,

. . . the quest narrative has captivated the imagination of readers. A classic story of an unlikely hero coming into his own on a challenging journey, the plot follows a specific set of stages that both advance the events and gradually develop the main character. Knowing the elements of a quest story plot can help you create your own narrative of a thrilling adventure.

Morgan (2010) goes on to describe 5 stages of a quest story:

• The Call
• The Refusal
• The Journey Begins: The Threshold and Descent
• Into the Abyss: The Trial
• There’s No Place Like Home: The Return

If one follows this arc of plot development, the quest tale becomes a tale of a journey and return having gained wisdom and experience.  This story arc may explain why so many modern quest tales, from Oz to Labyrinth to The Dark Crystal (and, more recently, the many chapters of the Star Wars saga), essentially, are coming-of-age stories. A young hero or heroine embarks, at the brink of adulthood, on a journey to find or retrieve something lost and, thereby, rescue his or her community—or in the case of Labyrinth, a little brother from (a very memorable) Goblin King. The trajectory seemingly follows that of Joseph Campbell’s influential hero’s journey, which describes 12 steps.

The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a coming and a returning. (Campbell, 1988, p. 123)

Campbell’s stages of a quest are as follows:

The hero begins in the (1) Ordinary World, the world of the everyday. There, the hero will receive a (2) Call to Adventure where the hero will either accept or give a (3) Refusal of the Call.  If, after events that allow for the right conditions for the hero to change his mind and he accepts – and sometimes if he doesn’t, he will meet 4. The Mentor who (Bronzite, 2020):

At this crucial turning point where the Hero desperately needs guidance he meets a mentor figure who gives him something he needs. He could be given an object of great importance, insight into the dilemma he faces, wise advice, practical training or even self-confidence. Whatever the mentor provides the Hero with it serves to dispel his doubts and fears and give him the strength and courage to begin his quest (retrieved 2/12/20)

The hero will then  5. Cross Threshold and begin the adventure. Along the way he will 6. encounter tests, meet adversaries and allies, and must overcome each obstacle in turn. Finally, the hero will reach the final danger and test his new-found skills and wisdom as he reaches the 7. Approach To The Inmost Cave (Bronsite)

At the threshold to the inmost cave the Hero may once again face some of the doubts and fears that first surfaced upon his call to adventure. He may need some time to reflect upon his journey and the treacherous road ahead in order to find the courage to continue. This brief respite helps the audience understand the magnitude of the ordeal that awaits the Hero and escalates the tension in anticipation of his ultimate test (retrieved 2/12/20)

As the hero enters the “inmost cave”, he will undergo an 8. Ordeal which will be a matter of life or death until he finally wins through and finds the object of his quest and will 8. achieve his quest. Campbell (2008) “He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable.” (p. 89)

What awaits is now 9. The Return and 10. the Road Back to find 11. Resurrection, his own or that of a character in the tale who caused the Quest to begin (examples: the Fisher King, an imprisoned character, or a lost item that will save the community). The 12th and final stage of Campbell’s hero’s journey is the 12. Return With The Elixir where the hero returns to the ordinary having been changed at some deep level. He may, now, take up a new role within his community or set out on another quest.

On this journey, the hero will meet several archetypal figures, among them the trickster or “holy fool”, various “guardians” of gateways into the next stage of the journey, allies who help him along the way as he is forced to confront his fears and weaknesses. (Campbell, 2008,  p.89 )

Campbell imagined his heroes to be masculine. Although he also imagined the hero’s journey as universal to the human condition, he focused on the myths containing masculine heros, Gilgamesh, Gawain, Heracles, among others. Many recent women writers have imagined a feminine quest, postulating that such a quest would contain different parameters.  These tales describe a journey into an “otherworld”, a symbolic or actual death and rebirth, citing the tales where the protagonist is female, such as northern folktale “East of the Sun West of the Moon” (Asbjørnsen & Moe, 2001) ,

The next morning, when she woke up, both the prince and the castle were gone, and she was lying on a little green patch, in the midst of the thick, dark forest, and by her side lay the same bundle of rags she had brought with her from her old home.

When she had rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and cried until she was tired, she set out on her way, and walked many, many days, until she came to a high cliff. An old woman sat under it, and played with a golden apple which she tossed about. The girl asked her if she knew the way to the prince, who lived with his stepmother in the castle east of the sun and west of the moon, and who was to marry the princess with a nose three yards long. (pp. 268)

Another source for the discussion concerning a woman’s quest is the ancient cycle of poems written by Akkakian Priestess, Enheduanna, The Descent of Inanna (c. 1900-1600 BCE). As translated by Wolkstein and Kramer, (1983):

The annuna, the judges of the underworld, surrounded her
They passed judgment against her.
Then Ereshkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death
She spoke against her the word of wrath
She uttered against her the cry of guilt
She struck her.
Inanna was turned into a corpse
A piece of rotting meat
And was hung from a hook on the wall
(p. 60)

Inanna’s return to her status as Queen of Heaven for half the year, giving over to her sister, Geshtinnana for the other half, is often interpreted as a seasonal tale describing the fertile and dry seasons of ancient Mesopotamia. Inanna’s rite lasted for many thousand years as she gained new names and titles: Ishtar, Ashera, Astoroth, even the Biblical Esther (Silverstein, 2006) has been identified with Inanna by some writers. It is remarkable in that each of the main players, Eriskegal, the ruler of the Sumerian underworld, Geshtinnana, Inanna herself, and even the Annuna are female. Interpretations of this text are many, one writer, Joshua J. Mark (2011) states:

The moral which an ancient hearer of The Descent of Inanna might take away from it, far from a ‘symbolic journey of the self to wholeness’ is the lesson that there are consequences for one’s actions and, further, might also be consoled in that if bad things happened to gods and heroes due to the unpredictability of life, why should a mortal bemoan unhappy fate?

It seems that when approaching a discussion of the “woman’s quest” in myth and story, one is also discussing the entering of what Mercea Eliade calls “mythic time”. Mythic time is not ordinary time, it does not run linearly, but in circles, spirals, and labyrinthine mazes. Eliade went so far as to say, in The Sacred and the Profane, that mythic heroic tales should only be recited within the confines of sacred space, where mythic time may be experienced directly. He attributed the idea of a “cyclic” view of time in very ancient societies to the “eternal return”: seasonal ritual cycles that celebrate annual mythical events, making each year a repetition of a primordial mythical age of creation, the “sacred time”.

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time. (Eliade, p. 23)

It is within this mythic time that the great quest stories take place: in a “time not of this time. A place not of this place”.[1] We can, by reciting these tales within a self created mythic time, learn how to integrate the Grail stories, how Raven stole fire, or how Gilgamesh sought his companion Enkidu in the wilderness into our personal mythologies and quests.

There are other quests one can embark upon, both life changing and the trivia of modern life, a shopping trip for a special ingredient for a holiday dish or for a symbolic item such as an engagement ring or a magical tool used in an esoteric tradition that serves as harbinger of a journey into a new stage in life.

Jung, who had something to say about just about everything said, of quests, that one should view one’s life as a quest. Terrence McKenna, in his podcast  “The Evolution of a Psychedelic Thinker”, said of Jung,

Again I was very lucky, I read Carl Jung very early. What Jung is saying about conceiving your life as a quest is absolutely true. Psyche is some kind of semi-malleable medium and if you set yourself up as a loser – if you image yourself as a loser, you will be a loser. This is not big news. What’s big news is, if you set your life as a quest, you will actually find something transcendental and unimaginable. (2013)

After reading all of these thinkers over the course of editing this issue, I find myself at the beginning, looking at quests and viewing The Quest as an archetypal approach to storymaking that may have begun in the flickering firelight on those ancient winter nights during the long ago ice age when we humans were young and the world vast and unknown, and as new as the next story teller to open with the words, “Listen my friends, of a tale of long ago and far away…”.

Life as a quest, the quest we all undertake to make our mark on the world, to make that journey with a lover or friend, toward self-discovery, or the quest for meaning as we travel through life is something every person experiences one way or another. Yet, at times, we are called to quest in the world for an actual artifact: in a laboratory or a library, or on a plane, or a highway to some distant place. Sometimes that quest comes from a research project, an inspiration, or, even, from a dream.

In these times when doubt and anxiety about our future on this earth is ever present, whatever it is, be it the journey to find meaning in life or to find that perfect spice for that holiday meal, or if you are seeking The Holy Grail, may your quests all bring you wisdom and, maybe, a bit of  adventure and, even, joy. May you come safely home again, with new wisdom and renewed strength to face all the things you need to get done. Again, Campbell ( 1949):

The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved—by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through millenniums. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart. Alas, where is the guide, that fond virgin, Ariadne, to supply the simple clue that will give us courage to face the Minotaur, and the means then to find our way to freedom when the monster has been met and slain? ( p. 17 )

In her “7 Types of Plots: The Quest”, author, Liz Bureman (2004) , writes,

The Quest is a search for a place, item, or person that requires the hero to leave home in order to find it. Sometimes the item is just a MacGuffin to drive the plot along; other times the thing driving the quest is specific to the story’s circumstances. Either way, the hero is leaving home to find whatever the heck the story demands, and we get to come along for the ride.

It’s often a ride worth taking.

On a Wednesday afternoon, February 12, 2020, Berkeley, CA 

Endnotes

References