The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [154]
The long, tortuous story of Peer Gynt's eventual Rebirth from his lesser, egocentric troll-self into a deeper `true Self', centred in the love of his faithful Solveig, is an apt point at which to end this introductory exploration of the main patterns underlying storytelling, because in a way it brings our journey full circle.
There are clear parallels between Peer Gynt and all the other types of story we have looked at. In that it centres on the hero's prolonged struggle with a monstrous figure who is the personification of egotism, it is like an Overcoming the Monster story, except for the obvious point that the only monster Peer has to overcome lies in himself.
Like a Rags to Riches story, it is based on a prolonged process of personal transformation. Like Peer Gynt, a Rags to Riches hero begins by seeming nothing very remarkable: indeed he often seems to the world contemptible. He then glimpses some glorious and elevated condition which he longs to attain more than anything in the world and which even seems to come within his grasp: as when Peer Gynt settles down in the forest with his `princess'. But suddenly this vision of possibility is snatched away, just as Gynt sees his `royal palace' crashing to the ground when he loses his `purest treasure' Solveig. After this `central crisis' the hero of the Rags to Riches story then has to undergo a further long period of testing, before he is finally ready to achieve the sense of self-fulfilment he has longed for. After a last great ordeal he finally discovers the deeper self that has lain buried within him; and this is marked by his being brought together in lasting union with the `other half' who makes him complete.
Again we see how Peer's adventures are shaped by the pattern of a Quest. From the moment of his encounter with the Great Boyg, we see him embarking on a long search for that elusive prize of his `true self'. Like the Quest hero he has to go through the worst series of ordeals on the edge of his goal. And his final reunion with Solveig may remind us of the moment when the most famous of all Quest heroes, Odysseus, is at last reunited with the loving woman who for so long has waited in obscurity for his return, the faithful Penelope. Like Odysseus, Peer has `come home'.
But still there is missing that centrally important element which we did not come across fully in stories until we reached the plot of Voyage and Return. It was here we first began to see that fundamental shift in the emphasis of the plot which makes the hero himself the chief dark figure of the story. It was in the profounder versions of the Voyage and Return story such as the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Golden Ass that we first saw a hero, essentially self-centred and limited in his awareness, being recklessly drawn into a series of adventures which ultimately threaten him with destruction. Only as death stares him in the face does he go through that change of heart which liberates him from his limited, egocentric state of awareness and from the strange threatening world in which it has trapped him.
Peer Gynt certainly provides us with more than just echoes of such a Voyage and Return story. The hero begins in a state of limited self-awareness, which leads him to be plunged recklessly into the `abnormal world' of the trolls. From here he makes a 'thrilling escape, in the nick of time, as he thinks, from being turned into a troll himself. In fact, as he only learns later, the trolls' dark magic has already done its work; with