by J Thomas Walden

Created on: May 19, 2008

The journey serves as a catalyst in literature by removing a hero from his natural equilibrium, and initiating a reason for action; namely toward reestablishing a sense of normalcy and peace in the hero's life. Classically, the hero's journey begins in stasis. For example, the classic hero Odysseus' journey begins at his own home, where his life as a farmer is far more satisfying than any epic journey he could imagine. He attempts to evade being drafted, to allow his life to continue in normalcy; however, he is thrown into war, followed by a decade-long journey home. His journey becomes the catalyst for his eventual heroism, continually testing his worth. In The Illiad he devises the fall of the Trojan army through a hollow, wooden horse. In The Odyssey he cleverly defeats the Cyclops with a name change (calling himself "No man," and attacking the Cyclops, who calls for help by exclaiming that "No man" has harmed him). Episodes like these provide the simplest explanation of the journey's role in literature, but the journey, often re-imagined, has not always served its purpose as catalyst in the same way.

In Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the journey, rather than create a hero, destroys one. The narrator, Sal Paradise, follows his eccentric friend Dean Moriarty across country, east to west to east and over and again searching for the fabled "it:" the indefinable life force that masquerades as meaning, well beyond what lies on the surface. But as Sal frantically journeys from place to place, he finds only boredom and a dull existence that does nothing to enhance his own. He finds that his hero is scared of "it," and rather than searching, he is running away. Kerouac's position on the journey's role seems to be its unattainable promise of fulfillment, rather than the mythical, Odyssean conception from Homer's time.

Written a few years later, Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road positions the journey as an escape from the drudgery of picket fence, suburban life; however, it is also never attained. As a result it is not the journey, but its absence that becomes the catalyst for the novel's most poignant moments. Frank Wheeler and his wife April plan to uproot from their established life in a 1950's Connecticut suburb, for the promise of real freedom and a new life in Europe. Their romantic view of this journey, however, is revealed from the beginning to be little more than a faade. Frank, a World War II veteran who served in Paris, hides the fact that his skills in the

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