Normal Things Become Quests

Ashton Garcia
Chapter 1
First Blog
June 28th, 2015

Creating a story using specifics can change the feeling and the tone of the story, allowing the audience to see something much greater than just a trip to the grocery store, which introduces the book. The author goes on to explain how and why plain, normal, even boring things can be changed to something that gives great symbolism such as the Holy Grail, and creating a quest.

I never thought of reading a story in such a way, nor have I analyzed it in a way for a trip to the grocery store become a quest for the Holy Grail. Not necessarily because it's far fetched or unrealistic (although some could argue that statement), but just because I've never seen that truth behind a story such as this this one. What's even more interesting is that the author gives specific examples of modern problems, and compares with with a classic piece as he sees in a book he uses to teach his own classes. Although the stories seem very different, they obtain the same criteria, if you will, of having a "quester," "a place to go," "a stated reason to go there," "challenges to go there," and "the real reason to go." These are the straightforward requirements for the story to be  a quest.

At first, I will admit, that I was a bit skeptical, as I'm sure some people would be, because the general public associates quests with knights in shining armor battling beasts for a princess locked away, or explorers who set out to find treasure. Naturally, I was a bit confused as to where the author was going with the grocery store story. coming from a year of analyzing many forms of texts, I thought the story had something to do with the way the author uses specificity, tone, diction, and syntax amongst other things to make a normal story into one that you can't stop reading. However, there was a twist in that it was a story of a quest.

Essentially, what the author put on the table was at first odd, but eventually understandable. His reasoning was much different from what I'm used to hearing. It's quite simple, really, as long as you connect the story with a certain criteria, you have a quest story, not just going to the store to get some stuff for your mom while running into the girl of your dreams and that one guy that you can't ever beat. When creating a story, if one can write based on the given criteria, a quest can be made in any situation. You just have to connect one thing with another creatively.