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“The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape."
This quote is located at the very start of the text. Here, the narrator admits, in the same breath, that he is not brave or heroic like an adventure hero and that he uses adventure fiction as escapism. As a result, readers can determine that the narrator lives vicariously through Wild West and American detective fiction so that he can distance himself from his timid personality and his boring daily routine.
“But when the restraining influence of the school was at a distance 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 me as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.”
This passage occurs shortly after Father Butler catches Leo Dillon with The Halfpenny Marvel. The narrator initially distanced himself from Wild West fiction out of fear of getting into trouble but he soon longs for the “chronicles of disorder” that he uses to disrupt and escape from his dull existence. However, the narrator soon finds make-believe to be its own sort of routine and he longs to set out on a real adventure. This realization is a catalyst in the story, inspiring the narrator to go on his adventure which generates much of the text’s plot.
