The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [414]
At this point, however, compared with the Quest, the Voyage and Return story stops short. It describes that shift of perspective which is a necessary prelude to union with the Self; but, except in rare instances, such as The Golden Ass, it does not then continue to the full resounding conclusion we see in, say, the Odyssey or The Divine Comedy. Indeed a conspicuous feature of this plot is the number of stories it inspires which show their central figure, like the heroes of Evelyn Waugh's novels or Scarlett O'Hara, returning to where they started, from what should have been a life-renewing encounter with the world of the unconscious, but having learned nothing. This may above all be symbolised by the fact that their `other half', representing their capacity for selfless love and understanding, has been left behind. However entertaining they may be, such stories tell us much more about the particular psychological shortcomings of their authors, such as Waugh or Salinger or Lewis Carroll or J. M. Barrie, than they do about the deeper levels of human nature.
The distinction of Comedy is that the unconscious here particularly focuses on the contagious effect of egotism on a whole group or community of people. Because one dominant figure in particular, on the `upper level', is in the grip of egotism, this casts a distorting shadow over everyone around them. Everyone in the community is thrown into confusion by the fact that there is something which has not yet come to light, so that they are all stumbling round in a fog of misunderstanding and pretence. Everyone is thus set at odds, in one way or another dominated by the influence of that dark power operating `above the line, until the moment at the end of the story where everything which has been hidden is revealed, including, usually, the realisation by the central dark figure of how blindly and egocentrically he has been behaving. At this point the selfless power of the unconscious, so often personified in the story's heroine, can finally be released from `below the line, bringing the community joyfully together. Again the story provides a symbolic model of what can happen when consciousness and the unconscious are at last reintegrated.
Everyone can recall the extraordinary mood which can come over an audience as it leaves a theatre or cinema after seeing a Comedy which has worked its magic. It is no accident that few things in storytelling have greater power to move us. After all the frustrations and confusions which preceded it, the final twists of the plot leave us - and the entire audience - feeling strangely overjoyed and uplifted by the sight of how everything came out miraculously right after all.
The same model, although more specifically focused on what is happening within the psyche of one individual, is that which the unconscious presents to us in the plot of Rebirth. The central figure is shown frozen in ego-consciousness, trapped by limited vision, unable to develop, to the point where this is symbolised as a kind of living death. But eventually, inspired by the redeeming figure who symbolises the selfless power of the unconscious, the prison of ego-consciousness is broken open. Precisely because the hero or heroine have been put back in touch with the deeper level of the unconscious, their hearts and eyes are opened. Because their feeling and understanding have been awoken, they are liberated to become whole.
Balancing the opposites
Such are the patterns whereby the unconscious shows us how humanity can overcome that fatal separation which took place with the `Fall.