The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [39]
We can already see this pattern at work in by far the earliest example of a Rags to Riches story of which we have record, the story of Joseph from the biblical book of Genesis. When young Joseph's jealous brothers, after first planning to leave him to die in the desert, then sell him into slavery in Egypt, he eventually rises to rule as an overseer over the household of Potiphar, the captain of the king's guard. This is an important position, and considering Joseph's earlier plight, when he faced death in the desert, it might seem like a miraculous happy ending to the story. But just then Joseph is falsely accused by Potiphar's temptress wife of attempting to seduce her. He is thrown into prison and his life seems irrevocably in ruins. Only after a long time of utter despair is Joseph's talent for interpreting dreams (the very thing for which he had nearly been murdered by his brothers) quite unexpectedly brought to the attention of Phaoroah himself. Through this he is eventually raised up to infinitely greater heights as chief minister, the second most powerful man in the kingdom. But even then, as Joseph enjoys his position of immense wealth and splendour, there is a crucial piece of unfinished business remaining before the story can come to a completely happy conclusion: Joseph's rift with his brothers. As famine stalks the land of Israel, they come to Egypt, pleading with this mighty, powerful figure to be given enough corn to survive. At first Joseph rejects them, until he is so moved by the sight of his youngest brother, `little Benjamin, who had not been party to his earlier persecution, and by the thought of his aged father Jacob starving back in Israel, that he relents. He gives them the food they need. Only when he has passed this final test, and been reunited with his family in a state of love and forgiveness, can the story end on an image of complete resolution.
Equally it is by no means just in the older and more traditional forms of the Rags to Riches tale that we see this pattern of the story's division into two `halves' interrupted by a `central crisis. We are just as likely to find it in versions as far removed from the world of the traditional folk tale or biblical legend as could be imagined.
An early instance of the fondness of Hollywood for the Rags to Riches theme was Charlie Chaplin's silent classic The Gold Rush (1921). The first half of the story shows Chaplin, in his familiar `tramp' role, as an unsuccessful little Alaskan gold prospector, whose dreams of happiness centre on Georgia, a dance hall hostess he has met in a nearby town, and with whom he has fallen in love. He invites her to a New Year's Eve dinner in his shack, and all might seem set fair for a happy ending to his years of loneliness. But she had only accepted the invitation as a joke and fails to turn up. The central crisis has arrived. He has not discovered any gold; he has lost the girl who had become the dearest thing to him in the world; his life is in ruins. But then comes the second half of the story, when he helps his friend Big Jim to discover a lost gold mine and is rewarded with a share which makes him fabulously rich. We see him embarking on a ship back to San Francisco as a multi-millionaire, posing on the deck for photographers in his tramp's clothes. He slips and falls down onto a lower deck, where who should be first to see him but Georgia, travelling steerage on the same boat. From his clothes she imagines he must be a stowaway and offers to pay his fare. But, revealing his good fortune, he invites her to join him in first-class and the film ends with the couple in joyful