Quests vs. Adventures

When I first decided that I’d read travel narratives while I was traveling, I assumed they’d mainly be quest narratives, where the main characters set out to achieve something specific. This was probably because I couldn’t think of many beyond The Lord of the Rings and the journals from the Lewis and Clark expedition.

This held true for the first two books I read. There’s never been a quest with a more obvious goal than the one undertaken by Frodo and Sam and in Travels with Charley Steinbeck has a very specific plan laid out for his journey. He’s going to be in this city for these days, and this national park by this date, etc. But then I moved onto the stories of Don Quixote’s adventures and, as I’ve already pointed out, he didn’t try and reach any particular destination. He had a goal definitely, but it wasn’t a physical one. He was searching for things that were more qualitative than quantitative. He happily wandered in circles seeking adventures and glory, because there wasn’t a specific location where adventures and glory would be found. They could be stumbled across anywhere.

Now, I’ve finally come to the end of Don Quixote’s story. (And to go off topic for a moment, it’s sad in a way that seems awfully similar to the ending of another travel narrative I hope to get around to reading on my wanderings: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The ends of both of these travel narratives wrap-up the story by undoing any character development the titular character may have accomplished over the course of their adventures. Don Quixote turns his back on chivalric literature, to such a degree that he includes a clause in his will saying that his niece gets no inheritance if she marries someone who’s read any of it, ever. Like Huck Finn who regresses to a childish, selfish, cruel version of himself under the influence of Tom Sawyer and abandons any sympathy he’s developed for Jim, Don Quixote becomes, suddenly, in the last few pages, Alonso Quixano, an entirely unfamiliar character who moralizes with his last few breaths and then dies. It was hard for me not to feel betrayed, as all the work I put into learning and caring and empathizing with him was tossed out the window. Ahem. Clearly I have feelings about this character who I’d admitted reminded me of myself a lot, giving up on everything that had made him like me: his desire to live out the fantastical stories he’d read and live life through their lens.)

So, now I’ve started the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (pentalogy) because it’s silly to be carrying such a huge book around with me, and once again I find myself reading about the adventures of characters with no particular goal traveling by an almost entirely random means. Even when Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect aren’t hitchhiking they’re on a ship like the Heart of Gold that runs on an Infinite Improbability Drive, not exactly a structured means of getting around.

I think I’ve come dangerously close a couple times on this journey to thinking of it as a quest instead of an adventure. As soon as you have quantitative goals–reaching the Bay Area if it kills me; managing to stay on the road a whole year, from one Michfest to the next–objectives that can either be achieved or failed, it is possible not to reach them and it’s possible to get embittered or to miss the awesome thing that is happening right in front of you. That’s why I’ve been focusing on the qualitative as much as possible, adventuring instead of questing.

So, it’s nice to be reading a narrative where the characters aren’t pursuing any one particular thing. Although Zaphod certainly has a goal, even if he’s not quite sure what it is all the time since his previous self hi-jacked his brain, Arthur is our hero (I use the world loosely) as we go gallivanting around the galaxy. And while I think I’ve got just a touch more agency than Arthur does, I did stay in New Orleans as long as I did because other people convinced me that Mardi Gras was a thing worth staying for. I had a fantastic adventure while I hung around waiting for Fat Tuesday but if I was on a quest that wouldn’t’ve been possible. If I was following Steinbeck’s mode of journeying I would’ve planned something to do in Austin and it would’ve been vital that I left that fantastic city weeks earlier.

These are both obviously valid ways to travel, and quests might make for slightly more compelling narratives than adventures. After all, if there is a possibility your hero can fail than there is inherent drama added to a situation. So, dear reader, I’m sorry I’ve deprived you of the opportunity to see me struggle to achieve something I’ve longed to do for years, but one experiences so much more when one’s adventuring, I like to think you’ve won out in the end.