In her doctoral thesis Elfriede Koller analyzes the protagonists’ voyage in(to) the West as a voyage of initiation of eighteen cultural texts). The West with its quasi-mythical quality of Frontier philosophy and American identity-building constitutes a geographical space, a spatialization for the young protagonists’ inner development. The overall aim of this work is to show a specific theme (initiation) as an archetypal structure in a broad spectrum and in a big time span, a structure which shows universality regardless of age, ethnicity, religious and social background and gender. Apart from a novel and films whose common denominator is the Frontier experience and short stories belonging to the “Moderns”, the author offers extensive interpretations of two important novels by indigenous writers (N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko) considering the respective tribe’s myths and ceremonies, explaining the symbolic world of indigenous peoples and its influence of landscape on the protagonists’ identity building. Elfriede Koller discovers different nuances of novels and stories of initiation, which lead the protagonists to a deeper understanding of American history and identifies an ecological component in the genre of initiation. The Horse Whisperer does not only present a geographical platform for the protagonist’s initiation, but also links the protagonist’s individual experience with the theme of the failure of the American Dream. Similarly, Uncertain Pilgrims does not only offer a female protagonist’s journey into the West, but unites this personal journey with the frontier experiences of eleven frontier wives, whose experiences are divided into four categories. Different types of initiation can be determined, complete and incomplete, active and passive forms, but also rites of passage and ceremonies. The protagonists’ inner development is always accompanied by symbols (water, moon, animals, numbers, colors, names) as well as archetypes (regressus ad uterum, descensus ad inferos, the Divine Ascent, the night (sea) journey, Earth Diver myths and the Stricken Twins) and takes place during a journey, as a “journey of quest”, a “journey of revenge” or a “journey of escape”, but always during a “life journey in(to) the West”. So far, the link between the narrative of bildung or initiation and the geographical space of the West had not yet been treated in a monographic study. The combination of the motif of initiation and the journey into the West show new lines of reading and analyzing these texts.weiterlesen