The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [32]
2. Dream Stage: As the hero makes his preparations for the battle to come (e.g., as he travels towards the monster or as the monster approaches), all for a while may seem to be going reasonably well. Our feelings are still of a comfortable remoteness from and immunity to danger.
3. Frustration Stage: At last we come face to face with the monster in all its awesome power. The hero seems tiny and very much alone against such a supernaturally strong opponent. Indeed it seems that he is slipping into the monster's power (he may even fall helplessly into the monster's clutches), and that the struggle can only have one outcome.
4. Nightmare Stage: The final ordeal begins, a nightmare battle in which all the odds seem loaded on the monster's side. But at the climax of the story, just when all seems lost, comes the `reversal'.
5. The Thrilling Escape from Death, and Death of the Monster: In the nick of time, the monster is miraculously dealt a fatal blow. Its dark power is overthrown. The community which had fallen under its shadow is liberated. And the hero emerges in his full stature to enjoy the prize he has won from the monster's grasp: a great treasure; union with the `Princess'; succession to some kind of `kingdom.
Constriction and release
So powerful is the effect on us of one element in this plot - the growing sense of nightmare as the hero seems to be slipping into the monster's power, followed by the surge of relief at his thrilling escape from death - that a whole sub-group of tales has grown up which use just this element in the story to make a plot in itself. And this serves to introduce another very important general aspect of the way stories are constructed, and the way in which we all experience them.
At the most basic level, whenever we identify with the fate of a hero or heroine, we share their experience as the story unfolds in a particular sense. As they face ordeals, or come under threat, so we feel tense and apprehensive; even in extreme cases so terrified that we can scarcely bear to watch or listen. As the threat is lifted, we can relax. Our own spirits are enlarged. In other words, along with the story's central figure, we feel a sense either of constriction, or of liberation; either of being shut in and oppressed, or of being opened out. And in a story which is well-constructed, these phases of constriction and release alternate, in a kind of systole-diastole rhythm which provides one of the greatest pleasures we get from stories.
But of course these alternations are not evenly pitched throughout the story. As it unfolds, the swings from one pole to the other may become more extreme until usually the most violent of all comes just before the end, with the story's climax. This is the point where the pressure of the dark power is at its greatest and most threatening, followed by the miraculous reversal and release of the ending.
If again we take Jack and the Beanstalk as a simple example, we initially feel, as Jack and his mother become poorer and poorer, a vague sense of constriction. How are they going to escape from their plight? As we then follow Jack up the beanstalk and his exhilarated discovery of a whole new mysterious world at the top, our spirits expand. As Jack enters the castle, and begins to pass under the menacing shadow of the giant, we feel a more violent constriction setting in. Three times this happens, punctuated by Jack's escapes with the golden treasures (each more valuable than the last). But on the third occasion the giant is roused to angry pursuit; and, as Jack runs back to scramble down the beanstalk in a nightmare chase, it seems he is about to be caught by the giant thundering ever closer behind him. This is the climax of the story, when constriction is at its most acute, until in the nick of time Jack manages to bring beanstalk and giant crashing to destruction. The shadow is at last lifted. We feel a surge