Questing : Chapter 1

Though the word "quest" is used specifically and deliberately throughout this chapter to get a point across, the way I see it, any word could take it's place without dramatically altering the point. Our characters could venture off on any number of expeditions, journeys, we could go on a trip, an excursion, etc. and what we're getting at remains the same. The point here is that every time a journey is undertaken in literature there is the very probable possibility that that journey is being used to symbolically represent growth. Questing, I assume, just insinuates drama and magic to further contrast the surface appearance that a trip is just a trip.
 A sort of sub-genre that uses this "questing" symbol really transparently is road trip novels. Maybe I shouldn't go so far as to name road trip novels their own sub-genre, but it is simpler to talk about them collectively. The reason these work so well as a modern version of a quest is that a physical point A to point B makes the perfect skeleton for a personal or emotional transformation. Even though our physical journey works so well with nonphysical transformations, we don’t always find our abstract personal changes on the road. It is completely possible to hop in a car and travel across the country without even a bit of emotional change. Our characters can journey all this way and still be the same static people they were when they left the house. Our silly little characters could cross state lines or countries’ borders or oceans for no reason at all. They probably won’t do that and it would be an odd book if they did, but anything is possible.
So we know we can have a trip without a quest, but can we have a quest without a trip? Does a quest necessitate travel? Must we fight actual dragons and forge actual streams to complete our actual quest? Or can we have an actual quest, but filled with only metaphorical dangers? Could a quest take place in a single location, entirely in one’s mind, questing for answers or knowledge or change? Could I ask more rhetorical questions? Probably. It all comes down to how we define a quest. My good friend Google has assisted me in my cliché of defining an idea by presenting me with this: A quest is a long or arduous search for something. Thank you, Google. I now have this definition that is so wonderfully specific, yet also delightfully vague. A quest must be long or arduous and it must be a search. A search for what? Something. With this handy definition I could cram an infinity of stories under the heading of quest. Anything and everything can be a quest if difficult and warped enough. A quest can be the endless search for self-understanding and acceptance, but it can also be my inability to find the turkey bacon at Albertsons. I guess that’s pushing it a bit, but the point still stands. Perhaps my struggle to find a pork alternative was representative of something else, perhaps it wasn’t. Whether a trip is a quest, or simply a trip, it’s probably also a metaphor so there will always be something to talk about.