The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [201]
We can see how these four types of dark figure correspond in a shadowy way to the four key roles in the most basic drama of human life. But once we grasp the significance of the `unrealised value', the role of the dark figures in representing that which needs to be turned into its light version for the story to come to a happy ending, we can see how the real purpose of each of these dark figures is to present the hero or heroine of a story with a specific challenge. Each poses a particular negative threat which the hero and heroine must surmount by showing themselves as its positive equivalent.
On the face of it, the simplest of these challenges to identify is that posed by the Dark Father or Tyrant, because he usually makes no pretence of his true nature. He is simply a full-grown man, full of strength and power but self-evidently brutal and oppressive. In other words, he represents the fully-developed masculine values, in terms of his power and the fact that he embodies the ruling or dominant order, but completely without the life-giving feminine balance: and whenever the hero of a story comes up against such a figure (or turns into one himself) it is a sign that his ultimate task, if he is to succeed, is to become a positive, light version of the same figure.
The same is true when the hero encounters a strongly masculine `Dark Rival'. In either case, he must show himself to be not just their match in masculine terms, but selfless where they are egocentric; good-hearted where they are heartless; able to see whole where their vision is limited. That is why the hero's ultimate prize from his struggle with the `dark masculine' is that he can release the life-giving feminine from its deadly grip, and can replace the Dark Father as a potential light father or `king.
But to reach the point where he is ready to do this, he must first have shown his true masculinity: which is why, when the hero comes up against the `dark feminine', the Dark Mother or the Temptress, his challenge has a different emphasis. Although, like the `dark masculine, the `dark feminine' is fundamentally egocentric and out for power, she works in a different way because she approaches the hero on his own softer, more feminine side. The `dark masculine' is obviously aggressive and combative. But the `dark feminine' works through a superficial show of feminine qualities, by appearing to feel and to care. She gets her way by guile, seduction, placation, deception. She disguises her true predatory intent beneath a pretence that she is serving the hero's best interests, like Circe or the Witch in Hansel and Gretel who offers the children gingerbread as a lure. It is only later that her real nature and purpose emerges, that she really wishes to imprison or devour her victims. The Dark Mother/Temptress promises the hero ease and self-gratification, that he does not have to make any effort or show firmness, that there is a short cut to becoming a man. She seeks to flatter his vanity or to gratify his physical appetites - for food, sex, comfort, relaxation. Always she appeals in some way to the hero's egocentric desires, as a way of furthering her own. And here, in order to resist her wiles, the hero's task is to show himself as fully masculine. He has to show strength, judgement, the ability to discriminate. He has to remain his own man. The purpose of the `dark feminine' is to unman him, to make him weak and dependent, to turn him into `the boy hero who cannot grow up. His way to resist her is certainly to hold onto true feeling and ability to `see whole: But even more directly it requires him to summon up all his masculine strength, will-power and self-reliance, as Odysseus does when he finally manages to break free from the enchantments of Calypso. That is why the great prize won by the hero from the battle with the `dark feminine' is his independent manliness.
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