The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [38]
At this point in the story, Dick is at his lowest ebb. He had arrived in the great city from the countryside, hoping to find the streets `paved with gold'. He had initially met with terrible disillusionment and nearly died of hunger. But then his fortunes had begun to look up. A rich merchant, Alderman Fitzwarren, had taken pity on him and given Dick employment in his kitchens. He had even found at last a real friend and inseparable companion, his cat. It is only when he is forced to send his cat (as his only possession in the world) on one of his master's overseas trading ventures, and thus finds himself again, more than ever, alone and friendless, that Dick is finally overwhelmed by complete despair.
He decides to abandon London and all his dreams forever. It is, as we might put it, the worst crisis of Dick's life. But it is at precisely this moment, far away in the dark continent of Africa, that his fortunes are in fact being transformed. His cat has rid a kingdom of a terrible plague of rats and mice, and the king of that country has given an immense reward. Although Dick knows none of this, he is given by Bow bells a strange premonition of the almost unthinkable glories which life might still have in store for him. He returns to London to discover that he has become enormously rich. He marries his rich employer's beautiful daughter Alice (the person who had most obviously shown sympathy for him in his former lowly state) and becomes, as foretold by the bells, Lord Mayor of London, his equivalent of succeeding to a'kingdom.
Such a central moment of crisis and despair as Dick faced when he was separated from his cat is in fact so natural to the pattern of the Rags to Riches story that there are few examples where in some form or another it does not appear. Even in The Ugly Duckling there is no moment when the hero's spirits are at a lower ebb than after his first glimpse of the `kingly' swans: a prevision of the unthinkable glories life might hold. But then the swans disappear, leaving the duckling alone to face the hardships of a long, terrible winter. He has never been so cold, short of food or miserable. It is only when he has been through this last, greatest ordeal that at last spring arrives, bringing with it the miraculous moment of his transformation into a `kingly' swan himself, `the most beautiful of all'.
Similarly in Cinderella, there is no moment when everything seems more hopeless for the heroine than after her third visit to the ball. Three times she has left her rags and ashes to dance with the Prince, winning universal admiration and catching a glimpse of the unthinkable happiness life might hold for her. Now, as she returns to her miserable, imprisoned life as a maid-of-all-work, with no prospect of ever seeing the Prince again, all seems blacker than ever. But of course, in her headlong flight from the palace on the third visit, she has left behind her dainty slipper; and, quite unknown to her, the Prince has found it, and sent out far and wide across the kingdom to see whose foot the slipper will fit. As with Arthur and the sword in the stone, the trying on of the slipper is a version of that motif familiar from many of the world's myths, legends and folk tales, `the test which only the true hero, or heroine, can pass. Cinderalla comes through her ordeal triumphantly (finally discomfiting on the way her two `dark rivals', the Ugly Sisters). The Prince at once recognises her in her rags, and they proceed to the traditional happy ending.
In each of these examples we see the same essential structure to the story, as it falls into two distinct stages, separated in the middle by `the central crisis'. First there is the initial rise in the hero