Analysis Of Pilgrimage In Victor Turner's Film '

What made Tom become different after the pilgrimage? Victor Turner’s theory of pilgrimage can explain this with ideas of “the liminal state”, “communitas”, and “antistructure”. However, his theory of communitas confronts some challenges in explaining the case of Tom.

In this film, almost every character experienced the liminal state. According to Turner, the liminal state is a marginal phase when people have left one group yet haven’t joined to a new one. Tom is a typical example of it. He lost his son Daniel; in other words, he left the group of fathers but didn’t found a new identity for himself. He also didn’t know how to face the death of Daniel, so he sometimes had an illusion that Daniel was still alive, which showed that his emotion was not stable during that period. This applies to the young woman Sarah, the Irishman, and the writer as well. Sarah got divorced
with her abusive husband, so she was in the liminal state of love relationship. The Irishman was rejected by his wife for overweight, so he was in the liminal state of family relationship. In short, Turner’s idea of the liminal state is able to explain the psychologies of the characters through close depictions of their behaviors.

Second, Turner’s idea of communitas is illustrated through the change of the relationship between Tom and the other three characters in this film.
Turner thinks that after experiencing the liminal state, people will have a strong feeling of connectedness. In this film, the four characters didn’t know each other at first, and the only thing they shared in common was that they all undertook the pilgrimage to Camino de Santiago. The young woman did it out of the religious reason, but the other three travelers didn’t hold the same beliefs. Tom was to continue Daniel’s wish; the Irishman was to lose weight, and the writer was to find something for writing. However, their communitas was developed in the process of the pilgrimage. They walked together, ate together, drank together, and supported each other. Another touching moment was that when Tom’s bag was robbed by a little boy, the other three all helped Tom to chase after the boy. In spite of different social identities, Tom finally became friends with them and his feeling of communitas was deepened in the process of incorporating into this new
group.
What’s more, this film can be analyzed in terms of Turner’s idea of antistructure. It refers to the removal of social and economic hierarchies. In this film, the pilgrims had different social identities. For instance, Tom was an American dentist, who lived a comfortable middle-class life, while the Irishman was a Dutch drug dealer whose life wasn’t decent enough. The pilgrims who met Tom on the road also included an American priest. In spite of their difference of social and economic hierarchies, educational backgrounds, genders and occupations, the pilgrims shared communitas with each other on the road of the pilgrimage.

However, Turner’s idea of communitas cannot be confidently used to explain Tom’s psychology when he was in the liminal state. Tom was suffering the loss of his beloved son, but he didn’t want to expose his fragility to others, nor did he want to seek for communitas. Instead, he was even a little bit isolated from others; for example, he didn’t talk too much with the Irishman and other strange pilgrims at first. Through his conservative behaviors and expressions, it’s clear that he paid no attention to the outside world other than his son’s wish. Therefore, in this case, Tom would rather endure his anguish by himself than seeking for the connectedness from the outside people.

To conclude, Tom became different after he finished the pilgrimage, because in terms of Turner’s theory of the liminal state, communitas and antistructure, he gradually found a new self and learned how to cope with the death of Daniel, and how to begin a new life.