The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [239]
The light hero is confronted by one or more of a series of dark figures, the `shadow family', whom he must resist or overcome in order to emerge fully and wholly into the light. He must escape the clutches of the Dark Mother, representing the `dark feminine'; he must overcome the Dark Father, representing the `dark masculine'; he may then have to overcome each of these challenges again, in the shape of the Dark Rival and the Dark Other Half - until finally, having confronted each test in the right way, he can reach the supreme goal. He can be fully united with his `light other half', the anima, and succeed to the kingdom.
In Tragedy we see a complete inversion of this scenario. When the tragic hero is confronted by the `dark feminine' (or by the Tempter, who represents the `dark feminine' in masculine guise), he does not resist: he succumbs, and falls fatally under its emasculating spell. If his masculine strength does emerge, it can only be in the inferior form of the `dark masculine', compelling him to the loveless pursuit of power and domination over others. And as we saw earlier, there is then a familiar set of light figures who are most likely to be the tragic hero's chief victims on his downward course:
(1) first there is the Good Old Man, whom we can now see as the `light Father' or `good King, representing mature and positive masculine authority: the very thing the hero should be realising in himself;
(2) then there is the `light Rival' or `light Alter-Ego, who corresponds to the hero in some way, as in terms of age, status or situation, but who is positive where the hero is negative, and thus his `light Opposite';
(3) above all there is the Innocent Young Girl, his `Good Angel' or `light Other Half', representing the supreme value of the `light feminine': except that in Tragedy she is not sufficiently powerful or well-developed to sway the hero and turn him back towards the light. She is the figure whom we shall see, where the hero himself is not fully developed, as the `inadequate' or 'infantile anima.
Nothing more tellingly reflects the course of the tragic hero's inward spiritual disintegration than the way, when he is confronted by any of these light figures, or each of them in turn, he either kills or brutally rejects them. Each time he does so, he is in effect killing or rejecting that aspect of himself. Thus does he remain locked into the basic situation of the weak, immature hero, bewitched by the dark feminine, who cannot grow up. He turns on one component of his psychic kingdom after another, extinguishing the light, until the darkness finally kills his soul and he plunges to destruction.
As we saw earlier, Comedy is in a sense the most comprehensive of the `light' plots because it can be used to encompass all or any of the various strands in the complex process whereby the archetypal family drama is brought to its proper light conclusion. Similarly Tragedy encompasses such a varied range of stories because it can reflect in so many different ways the same complex process in reverse, each individual story giving its own emphasis to different aspects of the same basic overall pattern. This is why Comedy and Tragedy have occupied such a special place in storytelling, because of all the plots they are the most all-encompassing in their ability to present the light and dark aspects of the archetypal drama.
The time has come to look again at some of the very different stories shaped by the plot of Tragedy we considered earlier, to see how these principles work in practice.
Macbeth: The strong man unmanned
Since, by definition, all tragic heroes suffer from a fatal weakness, there are not all that many tragedies which show us a hero who, at least outwardly, seems initially to be strong in masculine terms, a successful leader of men,