The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [21]
War stories
A very different kind of tale shaped by the Overcoming the Monster theme is the war story, particularly those set at the time of the Second World War. In the past 60 years the immense drama of World War Two has inspired many more fictional stories than any other real-life episode in history. One reason for this was the way Hitler's Nazis, and to a lesser exent their Japanese allies, provided storytellers with such an extraordinarily rich store of `monster-imagery.
In countless films from the 1940s on, we saw Hitler's Germany cast as invading Predator, with all the diabolic paraphernalia of the blitzkrieg; as Holdfast, exercising ruthlessly tyrannical sway over Occupied Europe; or as Avenger, lashing out at resistance heroes, prison camp escapers or anyone else who dared challenge its murderous authority. The vast majority of such stories were based on the plot of Overcoming the Monster, with the underlying pattern of the story in almost every instance the same. At first there is a preparatory stage of anticipation, as of some great forthcoming ordeal. We see the seemingly insuperable power of the German war machine. There is then a gathering sense of danger, as battle is joined, and the heroes seem to have all the odds stacked against them. Then comes the climactic confrontation and, finally, the miraculous victory. The Nazi (sometimes Japanese) monster is overthrown. The dark armadas of the Luftwaffe (as in The Battle of Britain) are hurled back. The great Predator ship (as in The Sinking of the Bismarck) is destroyed. The invasion of Europe (as in The Longest Day) is successfully achieved. The Nazis' counter-offensive (as in The Battle of the Bulge) is fought off. The beautiful city of Paris (in Is Paris Burning?), like a rescued Princess, is at the last moment saved.
But never far from the surface of these apparently modern, and even 'historically accurate' accounts were the patterns and imagery of a story as old as the imagination of man. Alastair Maclean's The Guns of Navarone (1963), a typical fictional Second World War adventure story, tells how five heroes land on a closelyguarded Aegean island to destroy two huge German guns concealed in a clifftop cave, which Holdfast-like dominate a narrow strait. We are aware that this is the only way through which a large number of beleaguered Allied soldiers can be lifted to safety from a nearby island. Thousands of lives are at the mercy of these mighty engines of destruction. Painfully the heroes make their way across the island, narrowly escaping every kind of disaster, until at last they reach the cave and see, against the night sky:
`crouched massively above, like some nightmare monsters from another and ancient world, the evil, the sinister silhouettes of the two great guns of Navarone:
Evading detection as they catch the sentries on their `blind spot, the heroes fix their little explosive charges against the guns, like `magic weapons' against something so massive and overpowering. Finally, as the `tremendous detonation tore the heart out of the great fortress', it is at one level not just the guns of Navarone which are being destroyed, but Humbaba, the Minotaur, Dracula and every other monster who has ever been. After the mounting suspense of the long ordeal, penned in at every moment by the prospect of sudden death, liberation is here! Life has triumphed over death! Humanity can breathe again!
The Hollywood Western
So basic is the outline of the Overcoming the Monster plot that there is almost no limit to the variety of story-types it can give