The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [127]
In general we may speak of a split between the `light' and `dark' sides of all these characters: and it is, of course, their `dark' side, initially hidden from the world, which is worked up into a state of anticipatory obsession by the Temptation. But sooner or later they succumb. The `dark' energy finds its Focus. Macbeth screws up his determination to kill Duncan, Don Jose succumbs to the charms of Carmen, Anna Karenina succumbs to the charms of Vronsky, Humbert seduces the willing Lolita, Faustus seals his pact with Mephistopheles: they have passed the point of no return. And the first consequence is a flood of nervous excitement, marking their entry into a new stage. As Dr Jekyll puts it, when he first manages to effect the switch into his Hyde-self-
'I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill race in my fancy, a solution of the bounds of obligation...'
The bounds have been overstepped. Suddenly all seems possible. We are aware that our hero or heroine has left the comparative safety and security of the situation in which they began, like a boat launched out from the shore onto the unknown currents of a fast-flowing river. And to begin with it is fiercely exhilarating to be whirled along in this manner. But where is it going to lead them?
One of the most significant facts about stories, as we know, is their drive to work towards an ending: an ending which will give us the sense that everything set in train during the story has been resolved. In almost any story we see the hero or heroine leaving their initial state for a period of still greater uncertainty, when all seems more than ever unresolved. But where the story has a happy ending, we eventually see them arrive at a state where they can come to rest, on new and much more secure foundations. If a central part has been played in the story by some great threat or shadow, that shadow will have been lifted. If there is division between the characters, it will in some way or other have been resolved, usually in a general spirit of reconciliation. We have a profound sense that things are at least, in every way, complete. And symbolising that completion, at the heart of most happy endings, there is the spectacle of a hero and heroine united in love, with the future ahead of them.
The whole point of Tragedy, of course, is that it is not like that. It is somehow in the nature of the course the hero or heroine has embarked on that they are not going to reach that happy and secure point of rest. They may imagine that, if only they can reach such and such a place, they will be secure. Indeed a large part of their time is often spent striving towards just such a fondly imagined goal. But the trouble is that the ground keeps on giving way under their feet. From the moment they succumb to the Temptation and imagine that they are about to start enjoying their rewards, nothing turns out quite as they expected. Indeed, if we look closely at the unfolding of any of the tragedies we have been considering, we can see how the mood of the central figure is continually swinging between anticipation and frustration throughout the story. Nothing for the hero or heroine bent on a tragic course can even quite resolve. And for this there are two, closely related reasons.
The first is that, when they embark on their course, there is always something which they overlook.