The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [110]
In the first three plots, Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches and the Quest, we saw an essentially light hero or heroine, overshadowed by dark figures, moving towards the moment when the darkness is overthrown and they can at last emerge completely into the light. In the most fully developed examples of the Voyage and Return story, we saw a hero who begins by displaying some of the characteristics of a dark figure himself, but who is eventually liberated from the dark forces closing round him in the `other world' by the fact that he has switched to become a light figure.
In Comedy we see both patterns at work. Sometimes, as in the earlier types of story, the hero and heroine are essentially light but overshadowed by some other dominant dark figure, who has to make the switch to light so that hero and heroine can be united. Sometimes, as in those Voyage and Return examples, the hero himself is dark and it is his switch to light which is necessary to pave the way to the happy ending. In either form, Comedy differs from the earlier types of story, where the dark figures opposed to the hero or heroine went through no change of heart but were simply cleared out of the way at the end by being discomfited or overthrown (although even in Comedy some vestige of this remains in those examples where the `unreconciled dark figure' is caught out and pushed off the stage). Only in Comedy is it the general tendency for all the characters to be brought to light and reconciled, to produce the story's closing image of a little world wholly united.
Even so, what all the types of story we have looked at so far have in common is that they show the power of darkness itself having to be vanquished as the precondition of the hero or heroine being able to enjoy a happy ending. What we are now about to consider for the first time is what happens in stories when the central figure becomes dark and does not go through a change of heart, but remains dark right to the end. This produces a kind of story which in some respects is quite unlike any of those we have previously looked at. Except that ultimately, as we shall see, the fundamental rules which govern its unfolding are entirely consistent with those which govern the structure of the other plots.
In surveying the earlier plots we ended by looking briefly at the `dark' versions of each type of story: examples where the underlying patterns fails to work out to its proper, happy conclusion. In the case of Comedy it might seem a contradiction in terms that there could be a `dark' version, in that if `recognition' and a change of heart fail to take place as the precondition of a happy ending, the story can scarcely be regarded as a Comedy. How then would we describe such a tale?
Let us consider a familiar example. We see a hero who falls in love with a beautiful heroine. She loves him and despite strong initial opposition from her father, who regards him as `inferior, they get married. But the hero unwittingly gives offence to a jealous, embittered third party, who becomes the chief dark figure of the story. The dark figure determines to get his revenge, and begins to drop hints to the hero that his young wife is being unfaithful to him. The villain hatches a dark plot, involving a lost handkerchief, supposedly given by the heroine to her lover. The hero is taken in and becomes deranged with rage. If this were a Comedy, when confusion and misunderstanding have reached their height, this is where the process of `recognition' would begin to clear things up. The true explanation of the lost handkerchief would come to light. The dark figure would be exposed for the villain he is. The hero would recognise he had dreadfully wronged his wife, and would be filled with contrition. Finally hero and heroine would be reconciled, and all would end happily. As we all know, however, the story does not end like that, precisely because there is