The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [223]
The Trickster
A last archetypal figure must be added to complete the list. In some ways, as we saw, the darkest figure of all in stories is the Tempter - Mephistopheles or lago - who appears as a personification of the hero's dark ego-self or fantasy-self in its most `inferior' form of all. The Tempter is `inferior' in every respect, ruthlessly using his power in the treacherous manner of the `dark feminine' by pretending to act in the hero's highest interests while in fact seeking to destroy him. The real purpose of the Tempter is always to blind the hero, to restrict his consciousness without him being aware of it.
However, we also occasionally see a light version of this figure, the Trickster, who is an aspect of the Self. Like the Tempter, his aim is to trick people into a different state of consciousness: but this time the other way round, to broaden and heighten their vision, to bring them into contact with the Self. Although the Trickster is widely found in certain traditions of folklore, two of the most familiar instances to us are seen in Shakespeare. The purpose of Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream is to use his magic to trick the lovers out of the original confused and limited state of consciousness in which they begin and into that wider consciousness which enables them all to recognise their true `other half', thus bringing the story to a triumphantly happy resolution. Similarly in The Tempest, as we shall see in the next chapter, the role of Ariel, as the `tricksy spirit' of the Wise Old Man Prospero, is to use his magic to trick the two main dark figures of the play into the higher state of consciousness which can bring them back to their `proper selves'.
As with the `helpful animal', the Trickster is only one expression of a much more general principle of storytelling, which we have already seen again and again in this book: namely the vital part played in any character's switch from dark to light by that fundamental shift in consciousness from ego to Self. The Trickster is a personification of the power in the psyche which brings about that shift, by shaking the character out of one level of consciousness onto the other. In this sense, the three `Christmas spirits' who visit Scrooge, like messengers from his unconscious, dragging him round into an entirely new perspective on the world, are examples of the Trickster archetype at work. So is the mysterious figure of the Button Moulder who plays such a crucial part in forcing Peer Gynt out of the prison of ego-consciousness into seeing himself and the world whole. So is the guardian angel in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, who uses his magic to tease the suicidal hero into recognising just how much good he has done in the world: thus bringing him to the rebirth which joyfully reunites him under the Christmas tree with his family and all the good people of the town.
In fact Hollywood has produced few more memorable examples of a Tricksterfigure than that played in Singin' in the Rain by the hero's friend Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor). It is he who is the mastermind behind the key moves which lead eventually to the heroine Kathy being lifted out of the shadows and united with the hero, as a star in her own right. It is Cosmo who has the flash of inspiration that the studio should use Kathy's voice instead of Lina Lamont's. It is he who, like some latter-day Puck or Ariel, plays the magical trick at the end which exposes Lina for the fraud she is: by first placing Kathy behind the curtain to dub Lina's singing voice in front of a packed audience, then pulling it away to reveal her as the real star. Yet Cosmo is not a central figure in the story in his own right. He is there only as a kind of alter-ego to the hero, to set up that process of transformation which ensures that love is triumphant