The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [210]
Everything that Comedy develops into from these foundations is an extension of these basic themes. For human life to flourish, runs its essential message, each generation has to make the proper transition to the next. The representatives of the older generation must play their part by not being negative and overbearing, clinging onto dominance and thus stifling the onward flow of life. The representatives of the younger generation must develop sufficient maturity for them to succeed. A proper balance must be achieved in all directions. And this means ultimately that the four roles involved in the archetypal process - father, mother, hero and heroine - must all be acted out positively. We thus arrive at a complete model of that drama which lies at the heart of storytelling.
The archetypal family drama: Summing up
Nothing is more remarkable about the way stories naturally form in the human imagination than the way, beneath the surface, they unconsciously centre round this most fundamental of all dramas in human life, involving just four basic figures. In the dark versions of each of these figures we see a different negative aspect of that which has to be redeemed and made positive if the central figure of the story is ultimately to succeed.
This is why, initially standing over everything, are the grim figures of the Dark Father and/or the Dark Mother. They are not only the negative shadows of what the hero or heroine must eventually become. In the most cosmic sense they represent power, authority and the prevailing order of the human world when it has become most obviously oppressive and opposed to the flow of life. They symbolise the remorseless strength of the human ego when it is without love, or any connection to the world outside itself, and it is this which must be eliminated for life to be renewed.
Most obviously in their shadow languishes the young heroine, the light feminine. She embodies both the life-giving value which they lack and the supreme prize which must be redeemed to restore the world to wholeness. By definition, the selfless light feminine stands at the opposite pole to the blind power of the ego. This is why, while its power remains unchallenged, we see her so often presented in stories as a helpless prisoner or victim, either of a Dark Father or of a Dark Mother. More directly she may explicitly be shown as a daughter to one or other of them: as in all those familiar images of the strong, unloving Tyrant and his imprisoned daughter (Minos and Ariadne, Acrisius and Danae, Aetes and Medea, Shylock and Jessica, Prince Bolkonsky and Maria); or those equally familiar images of a daughter under the spell of an overbearing Dark Mother (Cinderella, Snow White).
The central challenge of stories is to see the heroine liberated from this imprisonment; and this implies she has found the right hero, both strong and loving enough to free her. It is this combination of qualities which enables him both to redeem the heroine and to succeed as ruler over the `kingdom. This is why we usually see the final stage of the drama as a confrontation between the hero and the one-sided dark masculine, either by a direct challenge to the Dark Father himself, or through a battle with a Dark Rival who represents the hero's own shadow in competing for the ultimate goal.
To make the challenge successfully, however, the hero must already have successfully developed both outward masculinity and inner femininity. His good relationship to the feminine may initially have been developed through a positive relationship to a `light Mother'. But to become fully a man he must eventually escape from this dependence, or it will turn into the emasculating grip of the dark feminine. So long as the hero remains in any way under the spell of Mother, the older woman, the Temptress, he remains the weak `boy hero who cannot grow up. He cannot develop the masculine strength or firmness of character to rise to the challenge of contending