Rites of Passage - Analyze Stand by Me

Rites of passage, the journeys that dot the edges of our ultimate quest through life. They are the universal changes that can be as insignificant as a first kiss but with everlasting effects on our perspective on life. Stand By Me is a movie that was first released in 1986 from the studios of Director Robert Reiner. It details the story of four pre-adolescent teens, Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern who embark upon a quest to find the dead body of Ray Brower, a kid also around their age that had been missing from the town for weeks. These friends trek many miles with less than adequate food and nothing but their friendships holding them together. It is during this quest that, after setting out to find the body, finding it and then being confronted by a rival gang lead by the notorious Ace, that they experience a testing rite of passage that effectively changes them for life. This film has incredibly close ties with such rites of passages and allows us to take a back seat and watch how a rite of passage is explored and the effects it has upon a person. These boys are somewhat inexperienced in their life and have never experienced the world and its mysteries, leaving them as a blank canvas for the rites of passages they experience during their journey to paint upon. However, it is to be noted that the rites of passages and the effects they have on the different boys are very different because of the way each individual and the characteristics of their personality choose to explore the rite of passage and the decisions they make there.

A rite of passage is a journey, test, or even an event that most people will pass through in their lives. This journey, test or event often changes the way we think about things on a whole. This is well shown in Stand By Me, specifically by the comments the narrator (an older Gordie) makes throughout the movie. To start, early in the movie the narrator makes the comment that “back then, that small town was the world to us,” however,