The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [413]
For those who do continue to grow inwardly,the ultimate prize is to be brought into a conscious relationship with that archetype which is at the centre of them all, ,the Self': that which is both most completely ourselves, yet not ourselves, because it represents the ultimate state of reintegration between the conscious ego and the selfless objectivity of the unconscious.7
Such is the goal which is symbolised at the end of stories by the hero and heroine's final coming together in perfect love and succeeding to rule over a'kingdom. Superficially this might be taken to stand for no more than a reflection of that natural, near-universal process whereby the vast majority of the human race eventually leave their parents to pair off in marriage, and to set up their own `kingdom' in a new home. But from the way the unconscious presents all this to us in stories it is clearly meant to represent something much deeper and more significant; and this is particularly underlined by the archetype of the Quest, the plot which more explicitly than any other presents human life as a journey towards the distant goal of Self-realisation.
Not the least interesting feature of the Quest archetype is that it appears not to be directly concerned with the patterns of psychological development in childhood and early life at all. It is preoccupied with that process of final Selfrealisation which really belongs to `the second half of life. It is significant that the heroes of Quest stories are often full-grown men, who may well be already married.8 The problem with which they are confronted is that described by Dante in the opening lines of The Divine Comedy, when he recalls how `midway on the journey of this life, I came to a dark wood where the way was lost'. Their starting point is that they have arrived at that stage in adult life where living unthinkingly in the state of ego-consciousness may suddenly become intolerably constricting. Life in this `City of Destruction, trapped in a mortal body doomed to die, suddenly seems shallow and oppressive. Is there no escape from this prison? Like the Jumping Mouse, they then have the sense that, far off, there is another, quite different centre to existence, and that to reach it has become the most important thing in their lives.
The archetypal pattern of the Quest shows that the journey they now face is indeed long and arduous, and that it is hard enough simply to get near enough to see the nature of this mysterious ego-transcending goal, the Self. But even when this has at last been brought clearly in view, the hardest struggle of all begins. This is the battle with all the temptations and challenges which the ego throws up in a last-ditch bid to defend itself, until the moment when its resistance is finally overcome and it merges with the Self. Such is the moment vividly symbolised in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings when Frodo finally sees Sauron's ring, the ring of the ego, slipping away into the Cracks of Doom. Once again the ego becomes one with that `ground of being' from which it long ago emerged, leaving the hero with a sense of cosmic liberation he could never have imagined possible.
The Voyage and Return plot is much less ambitious. Here we come back to the type of story where the hero or heroine is usually shown as a young person just setting out on adult life. It is precisely because they are young and as yet without any real Self-understanding that they are shown living fecklessly in a state of egoconsciousness. They think they know who they are, as we all do at the start of adult life. But suddenly the bottom falls out of their world. All the assumptions on which they have based their idea of their own identity are blown apart by their abrupt arrival in a totally unfamiliar world, where they can no longer be sure of anything. The purpose of the Voyage and Return plot is to provide a model for that shocking confrontation between the limited vision of ego-consciousness and the mysterious world of the unconscious. The encounter