The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [427]
An even more vivid example was the response of the Western allies to Saddam Hussein's seizure of Kuwait in 1990. The Iraqui leader, with his vast armies, missiles and poison gas, was built up in Western eyes as an archetypal monster; and the frustration felt by so many when the allied forces halted their advance in southern Iraq instead of driving on to take Baghdad derived precisely from their intuitive sense that the story had not been carried forward to its proper archetypal conclusion. How could this be a happy ending when the monster was left still brooding balefully in his lair? 7
In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, we saw Western consciousness building up Osama bin Laden, with his worldwide terrorist organisation, into another archetypal monster, even to the point where he was imagined directing his murderous operations from that classic monster's lair, a cave. But what we also saw was how, across the Moslem world and elsewhere, the same archetype was evoked to build up President Bush's America into an equally classic monster, heartless and blind, using its colossal power to dominate the rest of mankind. And in that sense the stand-off between the two camps presented a perfect example of mutual projection, with each side projecting all the darkness in the world onto the other.
Another archetype which in its projected form exercises particularly powerful sway over our imagination is that of Rags to Riches. Few things have more consistently appealed to the fantasies of mankind than the dream of emerging from obscurity to fame and fortune. We see it in people's perennial dream of having their humdrum lives miraculously transformed by a lottery win, or conceiving some idea which will bring them fabulous riches, or simply being plucked out from the anonymous crowd to become the focus of attention as a celebrity.
In our modern world we see this Rags to Riches pattern acted out incessantly, as young men and women emerge from humble anonymity to receive obsessive adulation as film stars, pop singers, supermodels, sporting heroes. But the real reason why this archetype exercises such a hold over our imagination is that, as in a fairy tale, it shows the pattern of an individual being inwardly transformed, to the point where he or she can finally be revealed in glory as their fully-realised Self. That final outward transformation we see when Cinderella or Dick Whittington appear centre-stage in their fine clothes, to mark their winning of great position and wealth, is only an outward symbol of how they have realised their full inner potential. When the archetype comes to be projected outwardly, however, as no more than a vehicle for the ego, the external transformation is all that is left. The inner transformation has been lost sight of. This is why our newspapers delight in telling us what happens to so many of the real-life Rags to Riches heroes and heroines of our time when, having apparently attained all the prizes the outward world can offer, they end up with all the problems of drink, drugs, failed relationships and general disillusionment which result from having been led on by the ego into chasing such an unreal and hollow dream.
The plot least obviously open to outward projection is Voyage and Return, because of all the archetypal patterns this is the one which has least of a purposive drive. The whole point of Voyage and Return stories is that their central figures' sudden, disconcerting plunge into a strange, unfamiliar world happens to them without their wishing it. This has little to appeal to the ego and it therefore lacks the compelling unconscious power of the other patterns to take over our lives, although something of the archetype remains in our desire to plunge into the adventure of an unfamiliar world when we go on holiday.
The archetype of Rebirth, however, is certainly one which can exercise an enormously compelling hold over the ego, as we see whenever people imagine that they can escape in an outward