The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [203]
This essential pattern is programmed into our unconscious around a set of archetypes; which is why so many stories centre round the same little group of archetypal figures: father, mother, hero and heroine (whose symbolic roles are often enhanced, particularly in myths and folk tales, by giving them royal status as a King, a Queen, a Prince and a Princess). If a story manages to reach the complete happy ending, what it shows us is its hero and heroine finally coming together to become a potential new Father/King and Mother/Queen, reflecting that process central to human life whereby each new generation grows up to succeed to the one before it.
But stories are not concerned with this succession in its biological sense. Their concern is with its psychology. What they are showing us is those psychological qualities which are essential for the succession to take place in the right way. This is why the role of the dark figures in a story is to exemplify those negative qualities which the central figure must overcome in order to achieve the proper happy ending. In this respect, however many characters may appear in a story, its real concern is with just one: its hero or its heroine. It is he or she with whose fate we identify, as we see them gradually developing towards that state of self-realisation which marks the end of the story. Ultimately it is in relation to this central figure that all the other characters in a story take on their significance. What each of the other characters represents is really only some aspect of the inner state of the hero or heroine themselves.
This is why in so many stories we see a central figure who begins young, immature and single then falling in some way under the shadow of the dark power. For a long time the state of incompleteness which the dark power itself symbolises continues to hold sway, because this corresponds to the stage of development reached by the hero or heroine themselves. Only when they are finally ready to emerge to maturity can the dark power in the story be overthrown or fade away. We thus see the central figure developing through the story towards that moment of final emergence into the light, much as a butterfly evolves through all the incomplete stages of its development, first as a caterpillar, then as a chrysalis and only lastly in its complete state as a butterfly: imago, as it is called, the final perfect image of what it has been striving towards. Through all those phases of the story when hero or heroine are still psychologically incomplete, we see the dark figures looming over them, as negative symbols of the values they must still make positive in themselves before the story can reach its final resolution.
So central is this to understanding how stories take shape in the human imagination that it is time to look at how it works in practice. We begin with two of the most famous stories of the ancient world, each describing how its hero matures from immature boyhood to a final state of kingly manhood. We then see how a modern Hollywood version presents the same theme.
From boy to king (Perseus)
The story of the great mythical hero Perseus begins even before he is born. It opens with a king, Acrisius, who has a daughter Danae. We thus begin with the image of a King/Father with a beautiful young woman by his side. He is then told by the oracle that one day in the distant future he will be killed by his grandson. In other words, he learns that he will one day have to die and that a new generation will succeed. Faced with this threat Acrisius turns dark and shuts up Danae in a tower, so that no man may reach her. It is a classic image of the dark power of the Tyrant imprisoning the