The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [175]
What all these stories in fact show is that, in order to reach their goal, the central figure eventually has to demonstrate a particular balance of qualities. Initially these heroes and heroines are shown as open to the path which is to lead to their eventual self-realisation because they are good-natured. They are not blinded and isolated from the world by egocentricity. They are not, like the antagonistic figures around them, dark. But although this may win them the invaluable help of their light allies, it is not enough in itself to bring them to their final goal. Ultimately, as the other half of the equation, they have to prove themselves in two other respects. They have to learn to stand on their own feet, to demonstrate inner strength and will power, to become self-reliant. Secondly they have to develop understanding. They have to see clearly and precisely what it is they have to do. It is this combination of qualities, that they are selflessly loving, strong and have a clear vision of what they must do, which finally wins them complete union with their `other half'. And it is because they have become master or mistress of themselves, that we finally have the confidence when they succeed to rule over some kind of `kingdom' that they will do it wisely, unselfishly and for the good of all.'
Overcoming the Monster
In the Rags to Riches story, the dark figures are seen as relating to the hero or heroine in a very personal way, in the context of private and family life. In keeping with the more mythical resonances of the Overcoming the Monster plot, the figures who here personify the dark power tend to assume much grander and more terrifying proportions altogether.
Nevertheless, a good many dark figures in such stories still appear in familiar guise:
1. The Dark Father-figure, or Tyrant: this may again be the older man who has in some way replaced the hero's lost father: e.g., the Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, who killed Jack's father and usurped his inheritance; or Sir Ralph Nickleby, brother of the hero's dead father in Nicholas Nickleby. On the other hand, because of the wider ramifications of this type of story, this figure may represent paternal or masculine authority in some more general way, as a tyrannical king (e.g., Minos) or some other kind of `dark ruler' (e.g., Squeers, the tyrannical headmaster; Gessler, the tyrannical Austrian governor in the legend of William Tell; the Sheriff of Nottingham in the story of Robin Hood).
2. The Dark Mother-figure, or Witch: this is the treacherous, ruthless older woman who no longer just wants to repress the hero or heroine, as in Rags to Riches stories, but to kill them: e.g., the wicked stepmother who is transmuted into the witch in Hansel and Gretel. But again this category now runs wider to include all those powerful and deadly older women who feature in stories as `the female monster': e.g., the Gorgon Medusa; Oedipus's Sphinx (literally `the strangler'), the witch who casts her murderous shadow over the kingdom of Thebes; Lady de Winter, `the most powerful woman in France', who is D'Artagnan's chief antagonist in The Three Musketeers; Rosa Klebb, the sadistic head of SMERSH in the James Bond story From Russia with Love.
3. The Dark Rivals: e.g., Moriarty, the `Napoleon of Crime, who, as Sherlock Holmes's only intellectual equal, is his Dark Alter-Ego; the outlaw gang who are rivals to Sheriff Kane's authority over the town in High Noon.
But so potentially cosmic is the nature of the `monster' in stories based on this plot - when we think of such examples as the Minotaur, Humbaba, Grendel, Dracula, the super-villains of Bond stories, with their ambitions to hold the entire world to ransom - that he often appears simply as a kind of huge, inflated `dark opposite' to the hero,