The 5 basic tenets of Quests

This chapter deals with the most basic of plotlines: The Great Quest. Of course The Great Quest is rather varied and complex when you consider every little detail such as the Antihero, the Antidote, etc. However, Foster (refreshingly) breaks it down into 5 basic tenets: a quester, a place to go, stated reason for going, challenges and trials that come up, and the actual reason to go, which he says to always be 'self-knowledge'.

I appreciate the simplification of the Quest's structure. Of course, the other components are still important; its' importance does not diminish simply because it isn't mentioned here. However, the neat structure he has set up takes a lot of pressure off of budding student writers who often just want to write without having an actual idea to work with. In my 9th grade English class, my teacher assigned the class the task of actually finding nearly every facet of the Quest - the major characters, the minor characters, settings, all plot devices, all objects, the whole lot. Although I had it a bit easy (I chose 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' to work with), it was still stressful trying to find … well, everything.

I also appreciate Foster making mention of patriarchal and racial writings. Too often, gender and race aren't considered important if you're not male or white. Girls can't be heroes (even if they are far more competent than some of their male counterparts) because, well they're girls, not women.  Being called a girl instead of a woman takes away agency because girls denote being younger and more immature, versus being older and more mature, hence more competence. (This is strictly speaking for cis-women: trans women face a whole other type of misogyny known as transmisogyny.) African-Americans are often depicted through stereotypes (such as the Mammy or the Magical Negro) because some people, i.e. racists, have an extraordinarily hard time picturing them as whole, complex people. Such racist stereotypes and tropes still exist in a lot of writing today, both contemporary and traditional. It's important that we remember authors such as Ishmael Reed, Eavan Boland, and Angela Carter and keep their voices and others like them heard.