The Coming of Age Quest Theme Analysis

The story’s narrative centers on the journey that John takes to the Place of the Gods as part of his initiation into manhood and the tribe’s priesthood. John’s journey is a good example of the “hero’s quest,” an archetypal story arc that is common in both ancient myths and modern stories. The “coming-of-age” journey of the hero’s quest often contains certain archetypal elements, and John’s journey has many of these. These elements include time spent in the ordinary, pre-quest world, a call to adventure, a meeting with a mentor, crossing the threshold from ordinary life to the quest, a series of challenges leading to an ultimate ordeal, a reward, and the return home with that reward.

John introduces the readers to his ordinary world in the first paragraphs of the story, explaining his identity as the son of a priest and introducing us to the traditions and laws of his tribe. John’s call to adventure appears as a series of signs which he and the other priests interpret. In John’s quest, his father plays the role of “mentor,” guiding him through the ritual purification that priests undergo before their initiation. When John chooses to travel east, he breaks the laws of his tribe and crosses the threshold from ordinary life and truly begins his quest. During the quest he faces many trials – avoiding the Forest People, successfully hunting food alone, and crossing the river and entering the place of the gods, where he believes he will die. In crossing the river, John demonstrates that he is willing to risk his life in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the city he must escape from feral dogs, and is forced to spend the night in a Dead Place for the first time. There, he has a vision of “newyork” in the time of the “gods” and finds the body of the dead god, who he realizes is a human. By undergoing the ordeal, John gains his reward—knowledge that the Place of the Gods is, in fact, a ruined human civilization, and the understanding that humans are capable of acquiring vast knowledge and power. John’s journey has transformed him, made him a man, both in the sense that he has cast off his former innocence/ignorance and in the sense that when he returns to his tribe he is seen as ready to enter the priesthood, and is likely to ascend to head priest.

The concept of coming-of-age then extends beyond John to the way that Benét represents the development of human society as a whole. The story presents three societies and cultures at different stages of technological development: the Forest People, who John describes as “ignorant” and less-advanced than his own Hill People; John’s tribe, the Hill People, who keep written records of the past and seem to have some rudimentary technology; and the glorious past society of the “gods,” who John eventually learns were humans of a technologically-advanced society. Put another way, like John with his thirst for knowledge, the Hill People exist in a middle place; they are more aware of and interested in science and history and technology than the “innocent” Forest People, but the ancient “wise” humans were so advanced that to the Hill People they seem like gods. Yet also like John, the Hill People seem ready to leave behind their superstitions and to seek the sort of advanced civilization of “newyork.”

Upon his return to the village, John reveals his new knowledge to his father and his hope that this knowledge will allow his people to rebuild the civilization that was lost. Though his father warns him against telling the people of the tribe the whole truth too quickly, he does not disapprove of John’s choice to break the laws of the tribe, telling him that the laws change over time. In saying so, John’s father implies that John has ushered in a new era in which previously transgressive acts are acceptable and even necessary. John’s father’s reaction shows that John’s “hero’s journey” and the knowledge he acquires from it has already begun to fundamentally change the way the Hill People live. And yet, his father’s warning that sharing too much truth at once can be dangerous, along with the fact that the “advanced” civilization of the “gods” managed to destroy itself, also suggests that coming-of-age from innocence to knowledge, whether for an individual or a society, is not a simple good. Rather, it is an emergence from a primitive yet relatively safe existence into a world filled with new possibilities for both progress and terrible destruction.