The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [116]
Plunging recklessly into the Dream Stage, Jose allows Carmen to escape and tollows her to a tavern, where they ecstatically declare their love for one another. Jose gets involved in a fight over Carmen with one of his officers, and to avoid punishment for insubordination he deserts the army and flees to join Carmen and a gang of bandits in the mountains. No sooner has this dark act committed Jose irrevocably to his course than frustration sets in. The fickle Carmen begins to lose interest in Jose and transfers her admiration to the handsome bullfighter Escamillo. The unhappy Jose feels increasingly trapped. He cannot now return to his former life, despite a pitiful attempt by young Micaela to win him back. He is still infatuated with Carmen, although it is becoming obvious to everyone except himself that he has lost her.
The nightmarish nature of his plight is now brought home to him when Jose meets Escamillo coming up the mountainside. Not recognising him, the bullfighter recounts how Carmen used to love a soldier but that it is all over. Jose lashes out at his rival and the two have to be pulled apart by the bandits. The triumphant Escamillo invites them all to a bullfight, in which he will be the hero of the hour.
All that is left to unfold is the final stage. The `pale and haggard' Jose, his eyes `hollow' and `glowing with a dangerous light, arrives at the bullfight to confront Carmen, who scornfully rejects him and tells him she now loves Escamillo. In the last paroxysm of desperation, Jose stabs her to death - thus ensuring his own immediate arrest and, presumably, execution.
Bonnie and Clyde
Our third example is the film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), based like many fictional tragedies on an episode from `real life': in this instance the story of two notorious young American `gangsters' of the 1930's.
1. Anticipation Stage: the young hero Clyde arrives at a house in a little Texan town to make an amateurish attempt to steal a car. Through a window of the house he sees the heroine Bonnie, naked. She sees him, apparently doing something wild and daring, and their curiosity mutually aroused, they get together at a nearby drugstore where Bonnie dares Clyde to commit a real, grown-up robbery. This is the moment of Temptation and Focus.
2. Dream Stage: Clyde successfully holds up a grocery store, Bonnie is impressed and they drive off together. They begin to rob banks with seemingly dreamlike impunity; they recruit a third member to their gang, C. W. Moss, and the exhilarating series of robberies continues. But then they shoot a policeman dead after a bank hold-up, a 'dark act' which places them, as murderers, in a new, more serious league.
3. Frustration Stage: a series of incidents creates a mood of deepening frustration. They capture a policeman who has been trailing them, insult him and let him go, in such a way that he is left swearing revenge. It transpires that Clyde is physically unable to make love to Bonnie: he works out his frustration through his obsession with guns. They hi-jack a couple's car, ask the man casually what he does for a living and he replies that he is an undertaker. Bonnie reacts hysterically, taking this as a terrible omen. The mood is becoming steadily darker and more threatening.
4. Nightmare Stage: there is a brief unreal interlude when the doomed couple fantasise in familiar fashion (cf. Dorian Gray) of escaping back to the days of innocence before all their troubles began. They take Bonnie's mother for a picnic and Clyde talks about their settling down near her, to live a quiet life. But they remember they are now the most wanted criminals in the state, and have no alternative but to keep running. The nightmare deepens as they are spotted by the