The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [42]
This highly significant moment marks the beginning of the second half of the story. Just when all seems lost, Aladdin is rescued: but only on the crucial condition that, from now on, he must, in some entirely new way, learn to rely on himself and bring his own powers into play.
This new phase begins with Aladdin being carried to Africa, where he finds the Princess guarded day and night in the Palace by the dark powers of the Sorcerer. Disguising himself as a beggar (returning to the humble state in which he had begun), he enters the Palace and manages to reach the Princess, whom he supplies with a drug which she is to administer to the Sorcerer. When the Sorcerer has fallen into a state of unconsciousness, Aladdin breaks in and kills him. The monster is overcome. With the aid of the lamp, the hero then joyfully returns the Princess, himself and the palace back to China where they all belong.
Again this might seem to have all the makings of a happy ending (indeed it is here that many modern adaptations, such as pantomime versions, terminate the story). But in the full, original version, Aladdin now has to face a last testing ordeal, more nearly deadly than anything he has been through before, which provides the real climax to the story.
There arrives in the city the Sorcerer's brother, bent on revenge. The dark power represented by the Sorcerer has still not been finally overthrown. Originally we saw him, eager to obtain the lamp, in the role of Predator. We then saw him, defending his ill-gotten gains in Africa, as Holdfast. We now see him, transmuted as his `brother' but otherwise identical, as Avenger.
The new Sorcerer secretly kills a famous `Holy Woman' of the city and, putting on her disguise, inveigles himself into the Princess' confidence. Everyone is taken in, even Aladdin, who, at the false Holy Woman's suggestion, asks the genie of the lamp for the one thing necessary to make the palace perfect: the egg of the roc, a fabulous bird. The genie flies into a rage, saying that this is the one thing in the world it is not in his power to provide, because the roc is his mother. There is no way he can help Aladdin, apart from revealing to him that the Holy Woman is the Sorcerer in disguise. Aladdin realises the terrible danger they are all in, and that he is now completely on his own. Only by his own wits and courage can he overcome the dark power which has been arraigned against him since the beginning of the story. In a final climactic confrontation, he manages to outwit and kill the Sorcerer. Only when the dark power has thus been overthrown forever, does the awed and grateful Princess finally recognise his true worth ('I confess I have never done justice to our love'). They are at last truly and fully united, the king eventually dies, and Aladdin succeeds to the kingdom.
We can now see what the whole story was really about: the journey of a human being from unformed childhood to a final state of complete personal maturity. In the first half we see Aladdin, as he grows up from boyhood to adulthood, discovering that he has immense powers at his command, which bring him a dazzling marriage and glorious outward success on the stage of the world. But in no sense is he yet fully developed and mature; and this is symbolised in the way he has owed everything to the genies. He becomes forgetful of this and begins to behave hubristically, showing how immature he still is. Then the great crisis erupts and he loses everything, falling into total despair. We realise that, to become a true hero, he must cease to rely unthinkingly