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hermann hesse's siddhartha
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STRUCTURE AND SETTING OF NOVEL MORE READING QUESTIONS |
The Quest in Literature There are many examples of the quest in literature, but the common origin of them all is the classic “knight’s quest,” in the tradition of King Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail. In this series of stories, we have several variations of the same quest as well as examples of success and failure. Frodo Baggins’ quest to destroy the ring of power in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien is a more recent example of a quest story. In history, Lewis and Clark’s expedition to explore the newly-acquired Louisiana Purchase can also be considered a quest. All throughout human history, writers have been writing about questing heroes. For a closer explanation, we can look to analytic psychologist, Carl Jung. Jung theorized that the quest is an archetypal phenomenon. Literature and art that fall into typical identifiable patterns are based in archetypal phenomenon. Some examples would be the quest, the rite of passage, utopia, rebirth, and the hero. The quest itself may date back to human origins and man’s desire to seek out and explore new lands. Mythologist, Joseph Campbell’s MonoMyth cycle is based heavily in the psychological theories of Carl Jung. The MonoMyth cycle identifies three common elements in Mythological quest literature: the Departure, the Initiation, and the Return. 1. There is a quester or questers who are in need of achieving a goal. The goal may be to reach a destination (as in the Lord of the Rings and Lewis and Clark’s trip), to retrieve some treasure (The Holy Grail), or to fulfill some command or task (as in The Odyssey). 2. The quester(s) will encounter difficulty along the way and there is usually some final test when the destination is reached. 3. There is a return home. Knowing this definition allows the reader to analyze literature from this particular viewpoint. It is not how well a story fits the pattern; merely, it offers a starting point for analysis whereby we may be able to better understand how and why a story affects us. |