When they reach Elena’s hometown, the small fishing village of Bahia del Muerto, Beck learns from Elena’s sister, Rosa, that Elena is missing. In fact, she has been gone several months and no one – from Elena’s friends and family – knows where she is. From then on, Beck is determined to find her. This determination becomes his quest, his reason for being. He believes that finding her will not only solve the many questions he has about their failed relationship, but also, perhaps quixotically, help him answer the myriad other philosophical questions that have been plaguing him. This predictably doesn’t sit well with Parry, who simply wants to surf, to chase the big south swell, and not concern himself with life’s larger questions. But the specter of change – like a large cumulus cloud building over the desert – hangs over them both, tangible and inevitable. Ginger’s deterioration on the rough Baja roads acts as a metaphor for the duos’ decaying friendship. Seemingly with each mile passed, and each rattling gasp of the truck’s transmission, the friendship unravels.
Beck’s increasing obsession with finding Elena eventually lands the boys – after numerous detours and misadventures – on the opposite side of the peninsula, first in the city of La Paz and later in Los Cabos. By this time, they have undergone several travails (or as Campbell puts it “road of trials’), the most desperate of which concerns the inside of a prison cell. This occurs when two cops pull the boys over and attempt to frame them with a bag of marijuana. The boys, with no money to pay the bribe, are at the mercy of the cops. Parry characteristically resists, taking several ill-advised swings at his captors while Beck, also predictably, looks on, paralyzed with fear and indecision. But Parry’s rash decision, like so many of his decisions, ends badly; he is beaten and both boys hauled off to a prison cell.
It is here, in the cell, that Beck experiences what Campbell has termed the “belly of the whale,” an allusion, of course, to the Biblical tale of Jonah and the whale. According to Campbell, this comes when the hero, having embarked on his journey, is separated, sometimes forcibly, from his known world and everything that is familiar and comfortable to him. It is an experience that is “dark, unknown, and frightening,” and often represents the hero’s “lowest point.” But it is not all negative. During this time, the hero undergoes a metamorphosis, even a form of self-annihilation, which has the potential of transforming him into an altogether different person, a person willing and ready to continue the journey. It is symbolic, of course, with journeying inward, of confronting the turmoil of one’s own mind, and attempting to tame the dark forces that therein lurk.
The prison cell in which Beck finds himself is dark and terrifying, a place that has the potential to break one in body and mind. It is, in his own description, a place of “misery and death.” Yet like the hero of the monomyth, Beck is not broken by the experience; in fact, he undergoes a significant change. While languishing in his cell, isolated literally and metaphorically from the outside world, Beck reflects inward. He begins to question an assumption he has long been laboring under, an assumption, indeed, that has informed a good part of his life. This is the idea that while “times change, people don’t.” He and Parry have long held this view, the latter in fact almost with a religious fervor. But as he teeters on the brink of despair, Beck realizes that, contrary to his long held opinion, this assumption may, in fact, be wrong; people can change. Viewed from the perspective of the monomyth, this revelation is a sort of self-annihilation, in which Beck changes from vacillating, fearful, and indecisive to a more determined and forceful personality.
Beck and Parry are eventually released to continue their journey. But by this time their relationship has become so toxic that they are barely speaking. They have, as Beck muses at one point, proceeded down “divergent and irrevocable paths.” The path Beck has taken has led him to the realization that life must have a higher purpose, that youth must fade into adulthood, and that one must accept change. This last insight is particularly important to him. He realizes that life necessarily implies change, that it is ultimately the only constant in the universe, and that trying to deny change only leads to stagnation and discontent. Parry recognizes this transformation in Beck, though in typical fashion, he isn’t able to fully comprehend its ramifications.
Parry shrugged. “I guess I’m still wondering what happened to you over the past few months.”
“Nothing happened.”
“You changed. Maybe you can’t see it, but I can.”
“We both changed.”
“True, but not all change is good.”
“It’s inevitable. That’s the thing we’ve never accepted.”
Beck must undergo a final insight before the journey – and the novel – is concluded. This occurs in Los Cabos, where several forces – including the big south swell – converge. Without revealing details, Beck learns to accept change not only in theory but in reality as well. Beck learns that change necessarily implies “letting go” – of preconceived notions and of behavior patterns that, while having aided one in the past, have with the passage of time become hindrances to living in the now. Importantly, he is finally able to jettison the notion that “while times change, people don’t.” Parry tries to convince him otherwise, but Beck has learned his lesson, and there is no going back. “Everything changes,” he says forcefully, “everybody changes. That’s the only way to get by.” His acceptance of change has also had the effect of banishing his fear. As he tells Parry, “I’m not afraid of the future anymore.”
Like the heroes described by Campbell, Beck has undergone a journey of change – one that has taken him from youth to maturity, from fecklessness to responsibility, from fear to confidence, and from little understanding of himself to deep insight and self-awareness. Although the journey is physical – through the desert of Baja, California, – it is ultimately an inner journey, with the former simply providing context for the latter.
Fittingly, the last scene of Pacific Offering is reminiscent of the famous Zen Buddhist story of the monk who experiences satori – a great insight – and wakes to hear a gaggle of migratory geese passing overhead. He looks up and smiles, privy to things beyond normal human understanding. Similarly, at the conclusion of the novel, after Beck has gained insights that will propel him toward a new chapter in his life, he observes a turkey vulture.
In the distance a turkey vulture circled, that slow glide that had so disturbed Beck further north. But as he watched it he felt nothing sinister, felt nothing at all. It was just a bird, a beautiful bird.
