[3] The novel retains the broad outline of Xuanzang's own account, Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, but embellishes it with fantasy elements from folk tales and the author's invention.

In the story, the Buddha tasks the monk Tang Sanzang (or "Tripitaka"), with journeying to India and provides him with three protectors who agree to help him in order to atone for their sins: Sun Wukong (the "Monkey King"), Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing.

Enduringly popular,[4] the novel is at once a comic adventure story, a humorous satire of Chinese bureaucracy, a source of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory.

[6][7] The authorship of Journey to the West is traditionally ascribed to Wu Cheng'en, but the question is complicated by the fact that much of the novel's material originated from folk tales.

[8][9] Anthony C. Yu, writing in 2012, warned that "this vexing dispute over the novel's authorship, similar to that on the priority of its textual versions, see-sawed back and forth for nearly a century without resolution.

"[10] Hu Shih, literary scholar, former Chancellor of Peking University, and then Ambassador to the United States, wrote in 1942 that the novel was thought to have been written and published anonymously by Wu Cheng'en.

[13]: 159  The narrative threads from this earlier text which survive are the wager between the Dragon King of the Jing River and fortune teller Yuan Shoucheng and the contest between the pilgrims and the three Taoist demons in Cart Slow Kingdom.

Xuanzang traveled throughout India for the next thirteen years, visiting important Buddhist pilgrimage sites, studying at the ancient university at Nalanda, and debating the rivals of Buddhism.

With the support of the emperor, he established an institute at Yuhua Gong (Palace of the Luster of Jade) monastery dedicated to translating the scriptures he had brought back.

His powers grow to match the forces of all of the Eastern (Taoist) deities, and the prologue culminates in Sun's rebellion against Heaven, during a time when he garnered a post in the celestial bureaucracy.

Part of this section also relates to how Tang Sanzang becomes a monk (as well as revealing his past life as a disciple of the Buddha named "Golden Cicada" (金蟬子 Jīn Chánzi) and comes about being sent on this pilgrimage by Emperor Taizong, who previously escaped death with the help of an official in the Underworld.

The third and longest section of the work is chapters 13–99, an episodic adventure story in which Tang Sanzang sets out to bring back Buddhist scriptures from Leiyin Temple on Vulture Peak in India, but encounters various evils along the way.

The geography described in the book is, however, almost entirely fantasy; once Tang Sanzang departs Chang'an, the Tang capital, and crosses the frontier (somewhere in Gansu province), he finds himself in a wilderness of deep gorges and tall mountains, inhabited by demons and animal spirits who regard him as a potential meal (since his flesh was believed to give immortality to whoever ate it), with the occasional hidden monastery or royal city-state amidst the harsh setting.

Episodes consist of 1–4 chapters and usually involve Tang Sanzang being captured and having his life threatened while his disciples try to find an ingenious (and often violent) way of liberating him.

Chapters 13–22 do not follow this structure precisely, as they introduce Tang Sanzang's disciples, who, inspired or goaded by Guanyin, meet and agree to serve him along the way in order to atone for their sins in their past lives.

It is strongly suggested that most of these calamities are engineered by fate and/or the Buddha, as, while the monsters who attack are vast in power and many in number, no real harm ever comes to the four travelers.

Towards the end of the book, there is a scene where the Buddha commands the fulfillment of the last disaster, because Tang Sanzang is one short of the 81 tribulations required before attaining Buddhahood.

Sun Wukong (孫悟空) (pinyin: sūnwùkōng) is the name given to this character by his teacher, Subhuti, the latter part of which means "Awakened to Emptiness" (in the Waley translation, Aware-of-Vacuity); he is often called the "Monkey King".

He eventually found the "Grand Master of Bodhi (菩提祖師, pútí zǔshī)," who taught him the 72 heavenly methods of transformation and a "somersault cloud" which allows him to travel 108,000 li almost instantaneously.

After angering several gods and coming to the attention of the Jade Emperor, he is given a minor position in heaven as the Keeper of Horses (弼馬溫, bìmǎwēn) so they can keep an eye on him.

These gifts, combined with his devouring of the peaches of immortality, erasing his name from the Book of the Dead, drinking heavenly wine from the Peach Festival, eating Laozi's pills of immortality, and being tempered in Laozi's Eight-Trigram Furnace (after which he gained a steel-hard body and fiery golden eyes that could see far into the distance and through any disguise), makes Sun Wukong by far the strongest member of the pilgrimage.

After completion of the journey, Sun is granted the title of Victorious Fighting Buddha (斗战胜佛; 鬥戰勝佛; dòu zhànshèng fó) and ascends to Buddhahood.

Once an immortal who was the Marshal of the Heavenly Canopy commanding 100,000 naval soldiers of the Milky Way, he drank too much during a celebration of the gods and attempted to harass the moon goddess Chang'e, resulting in his banishment to the mortal world.

He was supposed to be reborn as a human but ended up in the womb of a sow due to an error on the Reincarnation Wheel, which turned him into a half-man, half-pig humanoid-pig monster.

However, Zhu Bajie's lust for women led him to the Gao Family Village, where he posed as a handsome young man and helped defeat a group of robbers who tried to abduct a maiden.

He was exiled to the mortal world and made to look like a sandman, orc, ogre, troll, oni, demon, monster, or hulk because he accidentally smashed a crystal goblet belonging to the Queen Mother of the West during a Peach Banquet.

He eventually becomes an arhat at the end of the journey, giving him a higher level of exaltation than Zhu Bajie, who is relegated to cleaning altars, but lower spiritually than Sun Wukong and Tang Sanzang, who are granted Buddhahood.

[15] The author, Dong Yue (董說), wrote the book because he wanted to create an opponent—in this case desire—that Sun could not defeat with his great strength and martial skill.

[citation needed] A video game adaptation titled Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was released in October 2010 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows.

On 20 April 2017, Australia's ABC, TVNZ, and Netflix announced production was underway in New Zealand on a new live-action television series, The New Legends of Monkey, to premiere globally in 2018.