The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [412]
Then, at the end of adolescence, comes that second, even more significant act of stepping into the outside world, where we enter on the stage of adult life (which is where so many stories based on other plots begin). And here the story shows how these innate qualities may lead in due course to what seems outwardly like a happy ending, as when, like Aladdin, we may get married and enjoy great success in the outside world. But at this point in the story we come to that highly significant moment in the basic Rags to Riches story which we see as the `central crisis.
All that the hero or heroine have so far achieved seems to be snatched away from them, so that in a sense they have to begin the process of working towards their goal all over again. The purpose of this in the story's archetype is to emphasise that the outward fulfilment they have so far enjoyed is not the real goal that they must reach. To reach true maturity requires having to go through the most demanding process of all: to develop that real strength of character based on selfunderstanding which brings personal autonomy. This can only be achieved by someone who consciously achieves a complete balance of the masculine and feminine components in their personality: who has developed the inner strength which brings authority, combined with that wisdom of heart and soul which can only come from experience.
In this respect the Rags to Riches plot, particularly as set out in its more developed versions, such as Aladdin, Jane Eyre or David Copperfield, reflects the way in which the process of psychological development in a human life falls into two parts. The overriding task of `the first half of life' is for us to establish a secure sense of our individual identity while at the same time learning how to accommodate that to the demands of society around us. In youth we have abounding life, energy and dreams of the future, but we need to learn how to control that vitality to the point where we can become established in our adult role in society. In an outward sense, we discover `what we want to be in life'. We may be able to achieve all those outward goals which conform with the norms of society, such as earning a living, getting married, setting up a new home, establishing a family. But all these landmarks can be achieved without any great depth of self-knowledge. It is possible to achieve them while remaining inwardly immature.
Eventually, however, comes a point where, if we are going to continue on the road of personal development, we must embark on the tasks belonging to `the second half of life', which are quite different because they require us to look within. They require us to develop much greater Self-understanding. We must learn to see ourselves objectively, recognising not just our strengths but also our deficiencies, our `shadow, and to work to amend them. Only through such conscious Self-knowledge can anyone develop that inner strength based on emotional and spiritual understanding which is essential to true maturity.
For many people, of course, it is quite possible to go through the second half of life without really embarking on this process at all, so that they remain fundamentally immature and ego-centred, having not really moved forward from where their development stopped in the first half of life. Inwardly they are frozen in a kind of perpetual adolescence, hanging onto the values of youth, as we see in the puer aeternus, the `boy hero who cannot grow up, who often then slips over into that other form of immaturity we see in the archetype of the senex: that which characterises those unfulfilled older people who take out their disappointment in life in querulous moralising about the world