In this post, we look at the definition of a literary quest. Certainly, there are many examples of quests throughout literature. Dorothy and her friends from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz venture on one as they track down the Wicked Witch of the West. Frodo and Sam take the One Ring on a quest to Mount Doom in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. And Ishmael and Ahab are on a quest to kill a legendary beast in Herman Melville’s novel about madness and whaling, Moby Dick. Quests are everywhere in literature, and so we will embark on our own quest by defining them and looking at more examples.