The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [112]
Macbeth, the victorious and ambitious general, is told by the witches of all sorts of honours which will come to him, including the improbable promise that he will one day be king of Scotland. When their lesser prophecies begin to come true, Macbeth is drawn by the temptation to make them complete, by murdering the reigning king Duncan and so succeeding him. At first all seems to go well, and Macbeth becomes king; but he is not secure in his new state. First suspicion mounts around him, leading him to commit further crimes in a desperate effort to make his position safe. Then outright opposition gathers; until Macbeth is surrounded by his advancing enemies and killed.
Dr Jekyll, the outwardly respectable medical man with a dubious secret life, discovers a potion which will enable him to split into two personalities, one his normal `light' self, the other the dark and deformed Mr Hyde. At first it is exhilarating to be able to escape at night into his Hyde-self, indulging in all sorts of nameless wickedness, then to return safely to his Jekyll-self by day. But gradually the Hyde-personality begins to take over, committing a succession of crimes, culminating in a particularly horrible murder. Jekyll has already found he is increasingly unable to control the switches between his light and dark personalities. Now he finds himself trapped forever in his alter-ego state, and on the run from the police, his friends, everyone. In a state of total despair he kills himself.
Humbert Humbert, the outwardly respectable scholar, has long nurtured a secret passion for very young girls. One day, when he is looking for lodgings, his obsession finds its ultimate focus when he sees sprawled on a suburban lawn the `nymphet' of his dreams, Lolita. He takes a room in the house and marries Lolita's widowed mother, in order to be near the object of his `dark' desires. The mother then discovers the secret diaries to which he has confided his obsession: she runs out of the house, distracted with horror, and is killed by a passing car. Humbert thus becomes Lolita's guardian, and he and his compliant ward then embark on a wild, dreamlike journey around America, enjoying forbidden sexual pleasure in a succession of motel rooms. But gradually the two fall to quarrelling and, as they settle in a little town where Lolita returns to her schooling, a mood of terrible frustration sets in. Humbert becomes dimly aware of another man hovering around, a playwright called Quilty, who seems to threaten his possession of Lolita like a kind of shadowy alter-ego. To get away, Humbert takes Lolita off on a second journey across America, this time more like a nightmare than a dream, as it seems increasingly obvious that the mysterious Quilty is following them; until one day Lolita disappears, kidnapped by Quilty. After some years of lonely misery Humbert eventually discovers what happened to them both. Lolita, grown up and married to someone else, no longer bears any relation to the little girl of his illicit fantasies. In a state of horror and distraction, Humbert vengefully tracks down Quilty, the alter-ego who had robbed him of his dream, and murders him in cold-blood. He is arrested and, after learning that Lolita has died in childbirth, himself dies in prison on the verge of his execution.
Each of these stories shows a hero being tempted or impelled into a course of action which is in some way dark or forbidden. For a time, as the hero embarks on a course, he enjoys almost unbelievable, dreamlike success. But somehow it is in the nature of the course he is pursuing that he cannot achieve satisfaction. His mood is increasingly chequered by a sense of frustration. As