The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [411]
The stages of life
We all have in our minds a generalised outline of how a human life unfolds (even if in reality many individual lives vary from it). The pattern begins with the child being born into a family with a mother and a father. Initially living at home in an intimate relationship with its mother, the child then begins to venture into the outside world, embarking on its socialisation and education as part of a wider community. At the end of adolescence, it is ready to go out into the world in a quite different way, as it breaks away from dependence on its parents and begins to establish an independent life. As a young man or woman entering on adult life, they are not only discovering `what they want to be' but are ready to begin looking for their `other half' with whom to establish a new home, as the basis on which to start a new family. The preoccupations of this phase of life then become to establish a place in the outside world and to watch over the children as they grow up towards adulthood in turn.
Then, in this idealised picture, comes the moment when the tasks of `the first half of life' are completed, and now begins the `second half'. The man or the woman may be able to take on more responsible roles in their work or the wider community, for which they are now equipped by age and experience. They are ready to play their roles as grandparents, reassured at the confirmation this brings that the life for which they have been responsible is continuing into the future. At this point, if they have learned from their experience of life, they know themselves and the ways of the world. They have become fully mature, even wise. Eventually old age overtakes them, they withdraw from the world and prepare for death.
In the light of this outline, we can see how the most comprehensive of the basic plots is Rags to Riches, in that it comes nearest to providing a symbolic model for human life. More consistently than any other, this type of story begins by showing its central figure in childhood. This enables it to set out all the essential stages of human development, as the initially humble and disregarded little hero or heroine embark on the long road to the point where they will eventually be able to identify with that greater `Self' which has been potentially hidden in them all along.
When we first meet the hero or heroine of a Rags to Riches story, we see them in the situation in which we all begin our lives, overshadowed by the presence of parents and everyone around us. But the vital quality they must be shown as possessing, in contrast to the dark figures around them, is that they are essentially good-hearted, because this shows they are not egocentric. They are in tune with their deeper, selfless instincts, which is the vital precondition of their eventually being qualified to reach the ultimate goal.
The first step, the pattern shows, is for the hero or heroine in childhood to make some venture into the outside world. This symbolises the need for each of us in childhood to establish a secure sense of our own independent identity: the need to build up what the psychologists call our `ego-complex, that which enables us to relate confidently to the world around us. We all need a strong ego, because it is the centre of our awareness of the world. But the crucial question to be answered is whether that ego is acting only in its own interest, or whether it is acting in harmony with some deeper instinctive pattern which can connect it positively with reality and the world outside itself.
At this early stage of life, like all of us, the hero or heroine are still essentially dependent on the adults around them, which is why they are likely to be overshadowed by `Dark Father' or `Dark Mother' figures, representing negative versions of what they themselves