The Wild West Hero's Journey Analysis

Have you ever found yourself longing to escape reality? Have you ever fallen into a state of daydream during that one mind-numbing history class? I have. I remember imagining that I was back in the Philippines, sitting there on the beach. The chatter of other kids running around in the sand mixed with the crashing of the waves against the shoreline was so relaxing to me. That was a time where I didn’t have a care in the world. I wasn’t plagued by the never-ending perturbation of homework, tests, or projects. For the first time in a long while, I felt free. But that freedom was short-lived as the bell confined me back into a colorless classroom filled with my jaded companions. You could say that feeling disappointed was an understatement. But,

This provides the boys a means of escape from the humdrum of school. The narrator says this clearly, “The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape” (1). I also noticed that Joe Dillon must have picked the Wild West for a reason. The Wild West refers to the American Frontier, a symbol of exciting adventure and freedom. This contrasts with the boring life of Dublin that the boys are incarcerated in. But, this boring life starts to overpower the thrilling nature of the Wild West. According to the narrator, “This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of the Wild West for me” (1). We have to remember that we are talking about boys in the story. While men can stay content to whatever situation they are currently in, boys want more. It is in their youthful nature to have endless desire to want what they can’t have. The adventures and battles of the Wild West are now lackluster to the author. He needs something else to give him that feeling that he felt when he first started playing. The narrator contemplates, “I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. The mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to him as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real

If they get there, they can say they have “escaped” Dublin. But, they encounter an old man and are sidetracked and never get to the Pigeon House. Although the narrator tried to escape their life of school, they are faced with the uncomfortable experience of the perverted elderly man. His dialogue resembled very similarly to school: “he expressed these sentiments which bored us a little” (3), “his mind was slowly circling round and round in the same orbit” (3), and “he repeated his phrases over and over again, varying them and surrounding them with his monotonous voice” (3). There is something in common between the old man’s conversation and school. It was boring, repetitive, monotonous. The boys never fully escaped school because it came back haunted them in the form of this man. They never reached the Pigeon House either. It was