The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [224]
We have now completed this introduction to the principles which are involved in bringing a story to a complete happy ending. In the next chapter, to sum up, we look at a set of new examples: five well-known stories which illustrate how all these principles work in practice.
`When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away... for now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face.'
I Corinthians, 13
We end this survey of the principles necessary to guide a story to a completely happy ending by looking at five well-known stories which illustrate everything this second part of the book has been about. We have not examined any of these stories in detail before, because none is shaped exclusively by just one of the basic plots we looked at in the first part of the book. But between them they show how an understanding of the underlying principles which shape stories takes us onto a deeper level altogether - where the particular significance of the plot-form guiding the action dissolves into the essence of that central drama which lies at the heart of storytelling.
On the face of it, these five stories could scarcely seem more disparate: a Slav folk-tale, Prince Ivan and the Firebird; a mediaeval English legend, Robin Hood; a modern pseudo-epic adventure story, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings; Shakespeare's last and most mysterious play, The Tempest; and Mozart's last comic opera, The Magic Flute. But in the light of our theme in recent chapters, we can now see how each of these tales is shaped around the same essential drama. Each shows a kingdom or a world, having fallen under the shadow of the dark power, which is sick or in disarray. Each then shows an as-yet unfulfilled hero gradually moving through the shadows towards the point where, after a long and painful struggle, he can finally overthrow the dark power and step out into the light. As he does so, he redeems the kingdom. All these stories therefore culminate in that cosmic happy ending which shows a world divided and in shadow being brought to wholeness, round a hero who has reached the ultimate `centre' of complete maturity.
The only thing which varies as we move through this sequence of stories is the emphasis in the way this central drama is presented. In The Firebird the focus is on the hero's lonely struggle towards self-realisation. In the legend of Robin Hood the emphasis is more general, on the redeeming of the kingdom. In The Lord of the Rings it is on both: on the hero's long and painful journey, but also on the cosmic implications of his eventual success in completing his task (except that, as we shall see, in order to show this fully, something very significant happens to the `hero' as the story develops). In The Tempest we see the hero, as he redeems the kingdom, at last becoming a complete Wise Old Man. Finally, in The Magic Flute, we see a story which sums up everything which this part of the book has been about: a plot which, by a dazzlingly original trick of construction, manages to set out the inner workings of the archetypal family drama with an ingenuity which makes it unique in storytelling.
The Firebird
It would be impossible to categorise the folk tale of Prince Ivan and the Firebird under any one of our original seven basic plots because it combines elements of all of them.' But the overall story which results perfectly exemplifies that central underlying theme to storytelling which has been emerging in the past few chapters. It tells of how a young hero matures until he is ready to succeed his father.
A certain king had a very beautiful garden. At its centre was a very rare tree, which every day bore a single fruit, a perfect golden apple. But every night the apple mysteriously vanished and one day the king called his three sons and told them that whichever could catch the thief would be given half the kingdom. The two older sons each watched in turn, but each fell asleep and when asked to explain the disappearance of the apple the following