The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [279]
The Day of the jackal features the obsessive quest of an English mercenary to assassinate the French President de Gaulle in 1963. As a revered ruler and father of his people, de Gaulle is also a kingly symbol of the Self. Most of the story is taken up with how the dark hero moves relentlessly through the shadows towards his goal, pursued by a French policeman, until he has the President in his sights and is ready to fire the fatal shot. In the nick of time, the light hero who has been tracking him bursts into the room and kills him.
The black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets opens with its hero Louis Mazzini in a condemned cell in Edwardian London, writing out the story of his life on the morning when he is due to be hanged. He describes how he grew up in genteel poverty in South London alone with his mother, a Duke's daughter, callously thrown out by her family for having eloped with an Italian singer, who had died of a heart attack at his son's birth. She brings him up to be aware that he is twelfth in line of succession to the current Duke of Chalfont, head of the D'Ascoyne family. As a young man Louis is turned down by `the captivating Sibylla', a little Temptress, in favour of a Mr Holland, whom she thinks socially superior. When his mother is killed in an accident, he is inspired to wreak vengeance on the family by embarking on a systematic plan to murder in turn each of the 12 remaining members of the D'Ascoyne family who stand between him and the dukedom, the goal of his Quest. As he ingeniously arranges one death after another, he meanwhile conducts an adulterous affair with Sibylla, although, as he nears his goal, he also proposes marriage to Edith, the high-minded widow of one of his victims. Sibylla's nowbankrupt husband then commits suicide, freeing Sibylla to marry the hero herself.
No sooner has Louis reached his goal by murdering the Duke, thus succeeding to a great castle, vast estates and almost kingly social position (all the outward trappings of attaining to the Self), than everything begins to fall apart. He is arrested on the charge of murdering Sibylla's husband, the one crime he has not committed. Thanks to her perjured evidence, his fellow-members of the House of Lords find him guilty and he is sentenced to death, although Edith marries him to proclaim her faith in his innocence. The night before his execution, Sibylla, who has guessed the truth of his crimes, gives him an ultimatum. She will show the authorities a note proving that her husband committed suicide, if Louis promises to murder Edith and marry her instead. `Poor Edith' he replies. Next morning, in the nick of time, he is reprieved. As he leaves the prison he sees the two women each waiting for him in a separate carriage. As he hesitates over which of them to go to, a reporter asks him whether he would consider publishing his memoirs. With a shock of horror he recalls that he has left behind in his cell the incriminating document in which he has set out precisely how he committed all his genuine murders. On this teasing note, the story remains in every way unresolved. Louis is a classic `boy hero who cannot grow up, trapped by the dark feminine, his anima split between two powerful women, both formerly married and thus evoking the `Dark Mother'.