The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [207]
The story begins by describing how two of the little creatures of the veldt, a lizard and a black beetle, have a daughter. They keep her prisoner and force her to perform menial tasks, in such a cruel fashion that all the other creatures around are horrified. Eventually the other animals come together and resolve to liberate the little prisoner. First to attempt this heroic deed is a long-nosed mouse, but the lizard and the black beetle have no difficulty in killing him. A whole succession of other long-nosed mice try to succeed in his place, but all are killed. At last the mysterious Mantis, an insect which plays a central part in bushman mythology as a wise, far-seeing visionary, has a dream: with the result that a different creature, a striped mouse, sets out to free the unhappy young `beetle woman'. He goes into battle and by a combination of courage and ingenuity he succeeds finally in slaying both the lizard and the black beetle, exclaiming as he does so `I am, by myself, killing to save friends. Not only is the young heroine liberated from her imprisonment, but all the slain mice come back to life as well. They march home in a triumphant column, at its head the victorious hero and by his side the young beetle woman: `for he felt that he was the husband of the girl and that she was utterly his woman'.
Although this tale comes from what might be regarded as one of the most primitive cultures in the world, nothing about its structure is unfamiliar to us. We recognise the initially dominant dark power, keeping the `light feminine' imprisoned in its shadow, so cruelly that the shadow of its tyranny falls over the whole surrounding community. We recognise the way the storyteller describes the first inadequate attempts from within the `shadow realm' to free her, which only helps to build up our sense of what a colossal task it is going to be. We recognise the intervention of the mysterious seer, whose wider vision leads to the emergence of the true redeeming hero (like Merlin arranging for the emergence of King Arthur); and, again, the careful emphasis placed on the point that the hero is only `killing to save friends' (he is not doing it for selfish reasons but for the general good). Finally we recognise the familiar climax of that selfless act of liberation, which leads to the hero both winning the supreme prize of his own perfect union with the heroine and at the same time liberating the wider community of all those who had fallen under the dark power's shadow.
What we may particularly note, however, is the way the story begins with the two overshadowing figures of a Dark Father and a Dark Mother and, after a long process of struggle, ends on the image of a fully-realised hero and heroine emerging together into the light. The essence of what has happened in the story is that the original dark and negative image we began with has been redeemed by the end into its light, positive opposite. The initial threatening presence of the Dark Father and Mother has been replaced by the young hero and heroine, who have emerged from the darkness to the point where they are themselves ready to become a Light Father and Mother. As in so many other stories, we see the older generation, characterised as being dark and life-denying, being succeeded by the new generation who are on the side of life. The very way in which the older generation are presented as dark provides a direct signal of the light values which the younger generation must embody, in order to show themselves as worthy to succeed.
But it is by no means only in the more overtly symbolic types of story, such as myths and folk tales, that we find the `unrealised value' presented in this way. As we shall see in the rest of the book, it is absolutely