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By Root 5264 0

has his glittering Hollywood wedding taken place, and the fashionable throng of celebrities returned to his mansion for the celebratory party, than the hero discovers his `Princess' upstairs, making love to one of the studio's handsome young stars. She is as heartless and self-seeking as Glick himself, and has only married him to serve her own ambitions. He may outwardly have married the `Princess' and `succeeded to the kingdom'. But in no way has he reached that state of glorious completion and inner fulfilment which is the proper goal of the Rags to Riches story. The novel's whole point is to show its heartless little hero acting out the archetypal climb from Rags to Riches, yet in a way which leaves him at the end staring at a black hole of total emptiness; precisely because he has done it in a fashion which can lead to no other outcome.

We shall later see that the Rags to Riches plot is by no means the only type of story which can give rise to `dark' versions like this. Yet what is significant is how these unfold to their self-destructive endings by precisely the same rules which govern the way in which the `light' versions proceed to their happy endings. In coming to understand just how subtly and consistently this principle operates all through storytelling we shall uncover one of the most important secrets stories have to offer.

`I have a journey, sir, shortly to go; My master calls me, I must not say no.'

Kent in King Lear, v.iii

In the distant land of Mordor, says Gandalf, the old wizard, there is a mighty volcanic mountain. Your task, he tells Frodo, the young hero, is to journey to that far-off place, carrying a priceless ring, and cast it into the Cracks of Doom. When Squire Trelawney and Dr Livesey look at the parchment map the young hero Jim Hawkins has found in a dead man's chest, they see that it reveals the place on a far-off desert island where a fabulous pirate treasure is buried. They at once agree that they must sail in search of it. When Odysseus embarks with his men after the sack of Troy, his only desire is to return home to his far-off island kingdom of Ithaca and his beloved wife Penelope.

No type of story is more instantly recognisable to us than a Quest. Far away, we learn, there is some priceless goal, worth any effort to achieve: a treasure; a promised land; something of infinite value. From the moment the hero learns of this prize, the need to set out on the long hazardous journey to reach it becomes the most important thing to him in the world. Whatever perils and diversions lie in wait on the way, the story is shaped by that one overriding imperative; and the story remains unresolved until the objective has been finally, triumphantly secured.

Some of the most celebrated stories in the world are quests: Homer's Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The theme has inspired myths, legends, fairy tales and stories of all kinds, right up to such popular modern examples as Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Richard Adams's Watership Down or Steven Spielberg's Raiders of The Lost Ark.

On the face of it, stories based on the plot of the Quest could hardly seem more disparate. Consider, for instance, the variety of the goals the hero is seeking. It may be some fabulous buried treasure, as in Stevenson's Treasure Island or Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines. It may be some other, rather more mysterious priceless object, such as the Golden Fleece or the Holy Grail sought by King Arthur's knights, or the Golden Firebird, sought by the hero of one of the most famous of Slav folk tales, or the most sacred treasure in Jewish tradition, the 'Ark of the Covenant' in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It may be `home, as in Odysseus's wanderings after the Trojan War. It may be some new home, as was sought by Aeneas, or by the Jews in their exodus from Egypt towards the `promised land, or by the fleeing rabbits in Watership Down. It may be the secret of immortality, as was sought by Gilgamesh in his journey to the end of the world - or simply the distant `freedom' dreamed-of