The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [131]
In other words, we see here how these two plots - Tragedy and Overcoming the Monster - may often be looking at the same basic pattern of events from two quite different points of view. If we were to look at the story of David and Goliath from Goliath's point of view, it would seem like the end of a Tragedy. Conversely, what we are seeing in a certain kind of Tragedy is the process whereby a human being may be transformed into a'monster'. We are being shown how a 'monster' comes into being in the first place. The story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the story of how a seemingly respectable doctor is transformed, step by step, into a hideous, deformed monster, Hyde. The story of Macbeth shows how a successful soldier, admired by everyone, is gradually transformed into the monster of the later stages of the play, with Macduff cast in the role of monster-slayer - even down to Macduff's last words to Macbeth, as they exit fighting:
Humbert Humbert, as he discloses his perverse love for little girls and the amoral heartlessness of his behaviour towards Lolita's mother, gradually reveals himself as the monster who can end up by committing the appalling coldblooded murder of Quilty. The portrait in The Picture of Dorian Gray pitilessly reflects the gradual corruption of a beautiful young man into a monster `hideous, wrinkled and loathsome' to behold. And if we recall the three chief modes of behaviour which, in an earlier chapter, we saw as typical of the `Monster' in storytelling - the Monster as Predator, as Holdfast and as Avenger - we can see how closely this may correspond to the behaviour of the tragic hero, as he goes through the stages of his rise and fall. When we first meet Macbeth or Humbert Humbert, we see them turning into Predators, determined to get hold of some prize: the kingship, Lolita. We then see them, having won the object of their desire, determined Holdfast-like to hang on to it. Finally we see their possession challenged, when they lash out blindly in the role of Avenger: Macbeth ordering the killing of Macduff's household, Humbert killing Quilty.
But at this point we must recognise, of course, that by no means all the heroes and heroines of Tragedy are such complete `monsters. It is hard to see Icarus, for instance, as anything more than a foolish boy, who harms no one but himself. Brutus, who killed Caesar not to gratify his own ambition but because he finally accepted that Caesar's ambition had become a threat to the public good, would hardly have been given by his opponents the epitaph `the noblest Roman of them all' if they had seen him as a monster. Even Antony himself scarcely became a monster, although his actions must have led to the deaths of thousands. He was brought to his destruction as a `divided self' by weakness and by a foolish love, rather than by that excess of ruthlessness inseparable from a true monster.
In fact we can now begin to look at Tragedy from a rather different perspective. So far we have been looking at it essentially in terms of the outlines of the plot. Now we must take into account the gradations which exist within the framework of that plot, according to the extent to which the hero or heroine is primarily the malevolent author of other people's sufferings, or is just a victim of his or her own folly. In an earlier chapter, and a different context,