History Main / QuestToTheWest

So you're reading a story/watching a movie/playing a game and someone, usually TheProtagonist, has to embark on a journey somewhere. Maybe TheHero has to go rescue the oppressed, maybe it's a family migrating to a place where they hope to live better lives, maybe someone has to escape a powerful enemy. Whatever the case, it's very likely that they'll be headed west.

-->-- '''"Go West"''', The Music/VillagePeople

* ''Film/TheBookOfEli'': Eli has been told to go west until he finds a place where the titular book will be safe and useful.

Going west means our hero(es) will be coming from the east, which means the sun will rise behind them. It is widely accepted that the sun is a metaphor for light and all that is good and righteous. Similarly, dawn is a metaphor for new beginnings and hopes. So going west is a sort of VisualMetaphor, showing that our hero is bringing new hopes for better life with them. Furthermore, from a cinematic perspective, it makes for a very [[RuleOfCool heroic and awesome]] shot.

* ''Literature/WagonsWest'': the original wagon train members in the first four novels travel west to Oregon in order to have better lives for themselves.

* ''VideoGame/WarcraftIIIReignOfChaos'': The plot gets kicked off when the Prophet urges Thrall and later Jaina to take their people (orcs and humans respectively) to the previously-unknown western continent of Kalimdor, as the eastern kingdoms are lost to the Undead. By allying themselves with the local night elves, they can oppose a sufficient force to repel the demonic invaders.

[[folder:Film]]
* In the post-apocalyptic movie ''Film/TheBookOfEli'', Eli has been told to go west until he finds a place where the titular book will be safe and useful.
* ''Film/GangsOfNewYork'': Jenny talks of her desire to leave New York for San Francisco to start a new life. At the end of the film, she and Amsterdam do just that.
* Inverted and parodied in the comedy ''Film/WagonsEast'', where the failing settlers hire a wagon master to help them ''leave'' the West, and return to the homes they left behind when they tried frontier life.
* In ''Film/TheGodfather'' saga, Michael Corleone decides to leave New York and its old organized crime ventures and moves to Las Vegas to build a legitimate business empire. He's successful at that, but loses his family in the process, prompting him to eventually go back to New York. His rival Hyman Roth explains that the founding of Las Vegas was a genius idea, a city built out of a desert stop-over for [=GIs=] on the way to the West Coast.

* Book 2 of ''Literature/SonOfTheMob'' starts with Vince, Kendra, and Alex making a cross-country trip to California, where they will be starting college. Vince's movie script version of the scene describes them as {{Riding into the Sun|set}}rise for symbolic reasons, but Kendra points out that would be impossible since they're going west.

* At the start of the second series of ''Literature/WarriorCats'', the main characters receive a sign that they must head toward a place where the sun drowns in the water each night--i.e. journey to the west, toward the sea.
* ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'': The heroes head west twice--once to Emerald City and again to defeat the [[AlliterativeName Wicked Witch of the West]].

* The ''Series/TheXFiles'' episode [[Recap/TheXFilesS06E02Drive "Drive"]] has Agent Mulder drive stricken Patrick Crump due west at high speed. Crump and his wife lived near an antenna array that caused their inner ear pressure to escalate. Driving fast due west through the Earth's magnetic field was the only way to relieve the terrible pain.
* In ''Series/{{Vikings}}'', Ragnar Lodbrok is an ambitious man of humble origins who is dissatisfied with the established Norse practices of tending poor homesteads and raiding bankrupt villages to the east. Instead, he looks west, dreaming of the riches and glory that await anyone brave enough to sail the open sea.

* Music/TomWaits has a song, "Goin' Out West", where the singer is trying to escape his current life and start a new one "out west", where people will "appreciate him".

* In ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', Odysseus is trying to go home from Troy to Greece, after the events of ''[[Literature/TheIliad The Iliad]]''. The story is about the seven-year journey it takes him to return to his wife.
* In ''Literature/TheAeneid'', Trojan prince Aeneas takes his family from the recently sacked Troy and escapes westward across the sea, encouraged by a prophecy that the city he founded would one day give rise to a mighty empire.

* ''[[VideoGame/WarCraft Warcraft III]]'': the plot gets kicked off when the Prophet urges Thrall and later Jaina to take their people (orcs and humans respectively) to the previously-unknown western continent of Kalimdor, as the eastern kingdoms are lost to the Undead. By allying themselves with the local night elves, they can oppose a sufficient force to repel the demonic invaders.
* The initial scenario of the campaign mode of ''Videogame/RailroadTycoon 3'', called "Go West", is set in the 19th century and requires the player to connect Boston and Buffalo. The next mission connects Cleveland and Saint Louis, and the third one finally connects Salt Lake City with Sacramento and San Francisco before 1875.

* In ''Webcomic/ChasingTheSunset'' Leaf's party is headed west because that's the direction the big flood swept his father towards.

* Fievel's family does this twice. ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail'' tells the story of their travel from Europe to America, as they escape the cats of Russia. Then the sequel, ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTailFievelGoesWest'', has the family continuing to a midwest frontier town where "cats and mice live in harmony".
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'', Littlefoot is told to follow the Great Circle (the sun) to find the Great Valley, meaning that it lies west.
* WesternAnimation/TomTerrific and Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog help a gold prospector make his way to the California gold rush in "Go West, Young Manfred."

* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'': West of Narnia lies its equivalent of the Garden of Eden, where Digory is tasked to travel in ''Literature/TheMagiciansNephew'' to find an [[TemptingApple apple of immortality]] for Narnia's protection. ''Literature/TheLastBattle'' returns there, ending with a journey even further west past an impossibly high waterfall into Aslan's Country itself.
* ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians: The Lightning Thief'': The prophecy given before the quest to retrieve the Master Bolt starts with "You shall go west, and face the god who has turned" (west being the West Coast of the United States, specifically LA).

* ''The Literature/{{Anabasis}}'' chronicles the March of the Ten Thousand from deep inside the Persian Empire to Greece.
* ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'': In ''Mossflower'', Martin the Warrior and his companions travel west from the Mossflower Wood to the mountain of Salamandastron, looking for a smith who can fix his sword. Part of the riddle that guides their journey tells them to follow the setting sun. Other books also feature westward quests to Salamandastron, which sits on the coast of the LeftJustifiedFantasyMap.
* Book 2 of ''Literature/SonOfTheMob'' starts with Vince, Kendra, and Alex making a cross-country trip to California, where they will be starting college. Vince's movie script version of the scene describes them as {{Riding into the Sun|set}}rise for symbolic reasons, but Kendra points out that would be impossible since they're going west.

* The cultural belief from 19th-century United States, the UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny, mantained that American settlers were destined to expand across North America, from the East Coast to the Pacific.

In the Eastern world, the passage of the great ocean seemed impossible, so Japan was the furthest East one could travel. If one wished to explore new things, then West to the mountains is where you had to go - as popularized by ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest''.

In the Eastern world, the passage of the great ocean seemed impossible, so Japan was the furthest East one could travel. If one wished to explore new things, then West to the mountains is where you had to go.

* The following quote, attributed to Horace Greeley:
-->"Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country."

Another reason has to do with recent history. When the European nations entered their expansionist periods, they started going north, east, and south. To the west was a vast and dangerous ocean. When Europe was running out of room, they tried going west and found a continent that was entirely new. So "west" became the direction of exploration, challenge, and great rewards. As America became colonized and then independent, and the United States purchased the Louisiana territory, the west was STILL waiting for European-descended explorers and held challenge and land for anyone who could defend their territory. This concept was further promoted by the discovery of gold in the western and northwestern mountains, prompting [[GoldFever the Gold Rushes]] as people flocked successively further and further westward to seek riches and fortune on the frontier. These events are still recent in a sense to the human race, and so "west" has become associated with "frontier", "adventure" and "unknown" tropes, and the braving of great risks for great rewards.

* ''Anime/{{Mushrambo}}'': The heroes head west to Shinzo, where the last human city is, in order to save humanity. Also throughout the show, Yakumo repeatedly says something along the lines of "always going west, to Shinzo".
* ''Anime/PrincessMononoke'': While defending his village, [[TheHero Ashitaka]]'s arm becomes infected by an angry forest god. The CoolOldLady who heads the village sadly expels Ashitaka, advising him to journey west to the great old forests, there perhaps to plead for forgiveness from the other forest gods.

-->-- '''"Go West"''', Music/TheVillagePeople

-->-- '''Go West''', ''Music/PetShopBoys''

* ''Music/TheVillagePeople'' have a song, "Go West", where the "west" in the song is a paradise the singer is inviting people to join him in going to. It was later covered by the ''Music/PetShopBoys''.
* ''Music/TomWaits'' has a song, "Goin' Out West", where the singer is trying to escape his current life and start a new one "out west", where people will "appreciate him".

* In ''Film/TheGodfather'' saga, Michael Corleone decides to leave New York and its old organized crime ventures and moves to Las Vegas to build a legitimate business empire. He's successful at that, but loses his family in the process, prompting him to eventually go back to New York. His rival Hyman Roth explains that the founding of Las Vegas was a genius idea, a city built out of a desert stop-over for GI's on the way to the West Coast.