HTRLLAP: Quests

Quests are prevalent in literature, but one of the examples I am most familiar with is in the show Once Upon a Time. The show begins with the protagonist, Emma Swan, on her birthday, blowing out the candle on a cupcake in her empty apartment. We have our “quester”: Emma is a young woman who grew up an orphan. She tracks people down for a living, most likely because of the absence of a parental figure in her own life. Because of the confidentiality of her job, Emma lives a lonely life with no friends, no family, and no significant other. As Emma eats her cupcake, the doorbell rings. A child no more than eight years old stands on the mat. “My name is Henry,” he says, “I’m your son.” Throughout the first season of the show we find out that Henry lives in Storybrooke, a town whose residents are all characters from different well-known fairy tales and stories. However, the mayor, or as Henry believes, the “Evil Queen”, has cursed the town so that no one knows who they really are (for example, Snow White believes she is a schoolteacher named Mary Margaret). Now we have our “place to go” and our “stated reason to go there”: Emma must go with Henry to Storybrooke and break the curse. On the way there, Emma meets Regina (the Evil Queen) and Mr. Gold (Rumpelstiltskin – he’s in league with the queen and remembers who he is… it’s complicated!), who try to stop her from breaking the curse. Emma must also find out exactly how to break the curse. These are our “challenges and trials” of the quest. Emma finally breaks the curse, but as Foster says, that’s not important. The “real reason to go”, like all quests, is self-knowledge. In season six, Henry feels bad for forcing Emma to become the Savior of the town (and thus causing Emma’s involvement throughout the life-threatening events of the show) and tries to apologize. However, Emma says, “You didn’t force me to do anything. You helped me… [coming here] gave me a family. It made me a mother. I have actual magic in my life; I have you! If I had to go back I wouldn’t change a thing.” Throughout this quest, Emma finds where she belongs. She has a family, a boyfriend, Kilian (Captain Hook), and a true home.

So, why are quests so prevalent in literature and film? I believe it is because books, shows and movies would have no plot without it. One of Foster’s examples of a quest is that of a sixteen year old boy’s trip to the grocery store to get bread. If a quest simply consists of the five components listed in the chapter, then couldn’t most events in literature be a quest? Think of Pip’s trip to the churchyard to give the convict the provisions in Great Expectations, or of Gru’s travels to steal the moon in Despicable Me. Think of moments in your daily life that consist of these five things – going to school, or studying for a test. Would any book, movie or show be as entertaining as they are without these components? Even the characters of reality TV shows go on quests, even though it looks like we’re just watching their daily lives. Quests are so prevalent because they are necessary to any plot.

Apachean Creation Myth

The Apache myth of creation is this: In the beginning there was only Tepeu and Gucumatz, or the “Feathered Serpent”. They sat in thought together and whatever they thought came into being. They thought of everything that exists today – the Earth, the trees, the mountains, the sky. They were pleased with their work but saw that none of these things praised them, so they fashioned advanced beings out of clay. However, these melted when they got wet, so they didn’t work; and when they tried to make beings out of wood, they weren’t good enough either. So the gods sent down a flood to destroy these beings and make a new beginning, and with some help from Mountain Lion, Coyote, Parrot, and Crow, they made four human beings, the ancestors of the Quiche.

This myth, like all creation myths, describes how the world was created. Creation myths often answer the questions, “Who were the first humans?”, “Why was the Earth created?”, and “Who created everything?”. We can see multiple connections between this myth and the creation myths of other cultures. In John 1 in the Bible it states, “In the beginning there was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God”. This relates back to Tepeu and Gucumatz, who are the only beings in existence before they create Earth. Egyptian creation starts similarly, with the sun god Ra in existence before anything else. All in all, these myths explain how the Earth was created and who created it.

I’m going to leave you with a question that was bugging me as I wrote this post: Why are most of the creation myths so similar? Are they connected in any way? I’m curious to see what you guys think. Until next week!

 

Free Week: My Doggies

Tonight I’m struggling to come up with content worthy of your time, and I believe that information concerning my precious dogs is sufficient. Let’s see…

HTRLLAP: Intertextuality

Thomas Foster defines intertextuality as “the ongoing interaction between poems or stories” (Foster 29). He then goes on to explain that all stories are connected to past stories and to each other, and that if you look hard enough you can find connections between any pieces of literature, their characters, or their archetypes. I agree with this concept and think that it has the capability of furthering understanding of literature.