Plot
In this coming-of-age story, Louden Swain (Matthew Modine) is a high school wrestler who has just turned eighteen and decided that he needs to do something truly meaningful in his life. Against the wishes of those around him, he embarks on a mission to drop two weight classes in order to challenge the toughest opponent, Brian Shute (Frank Jasper), a menacing 3-time state champion from nearby rival Hoover High School, who has never been defeated in his high school career. In his zeal to drop from 190 pounds to 168 pounds, against the wishes of his coach (Charles Hallahan) and teammates, he disrupts the team around him and creates health problems of his own.
Meanwhile, his father (Ronny Cox) has taken on a boarder named Carla (Linda Fiorentino) from Trenton, New Jersey, passing through on her way to San Francisco. Though she is older, Louden begins to fall in love with her and begins to lose sight of his goals as a wrestler. Worse, his drastic weight loss culminates in an unhealthy situation in which he gets frequent nosebleeds due, Louden claims, to a lack of iron in his diet (which costs him a match that he should have won). He and Carla finally admit their love for one another, but she realizes this is distracting him from his goals. She decides to move out and continue on to San Francisco, but not before seeing Louden's big match in which he defeats Shute in the final seconds with an over-under hip toss.
Read more about this topic: Vision Quest
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“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)