The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [167]
`Three definitely is the dynamic principle itself; and "three" says Balzac, "is the formula of all creation".' R. Allendy, Le Symbolisme des Nombres (1948)
`One becomes two; two becomes three; and out of the third comes the fourth, the One.' The `Axiom of Maria, in alchemical literature
It is impossible to reach a proper understanding of the unconscious structures of storytelling without recognising the archetypal significance of certain numbers.
In the beginning, in almost any story, there is an all-important `one': the central figure of the story, the hero or heroine with whom we identify.
Then, sooner or later, there arises a sense of division, of a splitting into two, as in the opposition between the story's hero and its chief dark figure, or the opposition between `light' and `dark' generally: the conflict which creates most of the action of the story. But there is also that other very important `two, the hero and the heroine, the central figure and that `other half' who can make them whole.
The most obvious number we cannot help noticing in stories, however, because it occurs so insistently in the folk tales familiar from childhood, is `three'. Again and again we see how things appear in threes: how things have to happen three times; how the hero is given three wishes; how Cinderella goes to the ball three times; how the hero or the heroine is the third of three children.
Few childhood tales are built more conspicuously round the number three than Goldilocks and the Three Bears. When the little heroine arrives at the mysterious house in the forest, she sees three chairs round the table, and three bowls of porridge. When she tries each of the bowls in turn, one is too hot, one too cold, only the third is just right, and she eats it all up. When she tries the chairs, one is too hard, one too soft, only one just right, and when Goldilocks sits on it she breaks it. Lastly she goes upstairs and tries the three beds. It now seems quite natural that the first is wrong in one way, the second in another, only the third and smallest just right, and that it is here Goldilocks lies down and goes to sleep. Everything is now set for the alarming shadow to intrude, as the three bears return. At first they are still downstairs, comfortably distant, as we begin the threefold sequence all over again, with the three bears each discovering in turn that someone has been eating their porridge and sitting in their chairs. When Baby Bear finds his chair is broken, this builds up a sense of mounting apprehension. All the time the shadow is coming closer to the sleeping heroine, even more so when the bears come upstairs to examine the beds. For a third time we go through the sequence, Father Bear first, Mother Bear next, until finally Baby Bear looks at his bed and Goldilocks is still there! For the identifying child this is the fearful climax. And it is here, as we again reach the third in this cumulative sequence of threes, that the tension is at last released, as Goldilocks leaps through the window and scuttles off home.
A story rather more subtly built up around three is Little Red Riding Hood. When the heroine first encounters the wolf in the forest, he seems quite friendly. On his second appearance, we see him in his true dark colours, when he arrives at the house and eats the grandmother. In his third manifestation, when Red Riding Hood herself arrives at the house, he again initially seems benign, as he tries to pass himself off as the grandmother. But by another, more obvious process of three, the heroine expresses her mounting suspicion ('what big ears you've got', `what big eyes you've got', `what big teeth you've got') until, on the third exchange, the wolf jumps out of bed in his true black identity, attempting to eat her: and again of course, at this moment of climax, comes the `thrilling escape', when