The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [161]
It is of course this idea of a human life as a journey towards the ultimate goal of wholeness and self-realisation which provides the focus for the plot of the Quest. Our expectation in a Quest story is centred on the sense that somewhere in the world there is a distant, all -transcending prize, worth every effort to reach. As the tale opens, the hero becomes aware that he is in some `City of Destruction', where it will be fatal for him to remain. The only way to escape is to embark on the journey towards that far-off, mysterious goal. In the first part, we see the hero and his companions making their journey, facing a succession of battles with the dark power. Even when their destination at last comes in sight, the hero finds he now faces a new set of challenges, so testing that to meet them will take up the entire second half of the story. It has been one thing to bring the prize into view. The ultimate test lies in knowing how to secure it. Yet when the hero does so, of course, we see how remarkably similar it is to that final goal reached by the hero or heroine in the earlier types of story. When Odysseus secretly advances in his humble beggar's rags towards his final showdown with the monstrous suitors, he is like the hero of a Rags to Riches story and an Overcoming the Monster story rolled into one. At last he throws off his disguise to reveal himself in all his kingly majesty, as he seizes the bow to put the suitors to rout. Like Cinderella when she throws off her rags for her final glorious transformation, his true self is at last revealed. Just like Aladdin, Jane Eyre, Perseus and so many others, Odysseus liberates his `other half' from the shadows and succeeds to his kingdom. It turns out that the true goal of the Quest was precisely the same kind of ending we saw in the earlier plots.
Thus all the first three plots are really looking at a very similar basic story, except that each does so from its own distinctive angle. What we see symbolically represented, as was embryonically foreshadowed in those simple little versions we first hear in childhood, is the idealised pattern of how any human being can travel on the long, tortuous journey of inner growth, finally emerging to a state of complete self-realisation. The underlying impulse behind the three types of story is the same.
The enemy within
Up to this point in the sequence of plots there is never any real doubt that the hero or heroine of the story stands in opposition to this external dark power which is presented as the main obstacle to them reaching their goal. When Cinderella is contrasted with her stepmother and ugly sisters, Jane Eyre with St John Rivers, Perseus with Medusa, David with Goliath, James Bond with Dr No, we never question for a moment that they stand for a different set of qualities to those which characterise their antagonists.
What we do see in the Quest, however, more than in the earlier types of story, are occasions where the hero and his companions themselves display weaknesses, making foolish errors which threaten to prevent them reaching the goal. Indeed one reason why the hero of a Quest is more commonly than in other types of story given companions is precisely that this allows us to see them making fatal mistakes without the hero himself being killed. And these invariably arise from their own lack of awareness, their failure to recognise the full truth of their situation, with the result that they fall into the deadly clutches of the dark power.'
Odysseus and his original twelve shiploads of companions