The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [51]
(1) the beautiful but deadly Sirens who, like the Lorelei of German legend, lure sailors to their doom by their bewitching songs. Their only aim is to kill.
(2) the beautiful enchantress Circe, who imprisons all visitors to her island by turning them magically into animals (symbolising the way they have surrendered to their `animal' appetites). But she does not kill them.
(3) Calypso, another beautiful enchantress, who falls in love with Odysseus and so captivates him that he stays seven years in her cave. But, although restive, he stays voluntarily.
(4) the simple, enervating captivation of the Land of the Lotus Eaters, which saps all will in an atmosphere of relaxed self-indulgence. This traps many of Odysseus's men until they are forcibly dragged back to their ships.
For Aeneas, the chief temptation is of the Calypso type: his love affair with Dido, the widowed queen of Carthage, which is brought to an abrupt end when the messenger of the gods, Mercury, is sent by Jupiter to ask the hero `what can you possibly gain by living at wasteful leisure in African lands?', and to order him peremptorily back on his quest. Much the same temptation ensnares the Jews when they are lured into committing `whoredom with the daughters of Moab', and the Argonauts when they arrive on the island of Lemnos to find that the women have killed all their menfolk and are avid for new lovers. It is Heracles who on this occasion strides angrily round the island with his club, sternly recalling Jason's men to their duty.
For the rabbits of Watership Down, the chief temptation turns out to be a cross between the Land of the Lotus Eaters and the deadly Sirens (the four aspects, or gradations of the Temptation are in fact more closely linked than might at first appear). They are made welcome at a strange warren which at first sight seems an ideal place for them to stay, with plenty of food, ample room and no apparent danger. But gradually (through the intuitive Fiver) they sense that there is something eerie and sinister about the life of ease lived by the sleek, well-fed but cowed rabbits in the new warren. They discover, to their horror, that it is in fact a kind of luxurious slave-camp, kept by the local farmer as a source of food: and that if they stay there they are sure to die. For Christian and Faithful, the town of Vanity Fair, offering `all the delights of this world', proves to be much the same kind of deadly snare, in which Faithful loses his life, and from which Christian only narrowly escapes to continue the journey alone.
For the knights of the Grail, sworn to chastity, temptation is firmly of the Sirentype. When Sir Percival loses his horse, he meets `a timid maiden' in the forest, who offers him another `huge and black', which carries him off uncontrollably for `three days or more'. Coming to a black river, burning with fire, Percival crosses himself, whereupon the horse throws him: and he wakes up trapped, foodless, on a precipitous island in the middle of the sea. In the heat of the day a handsome ship approaches, and sitting in it, under an awning, is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. She erects a shady tent on the shore and invites Percival to an exquisite meal, with the most potent wine he has ever drunk: and then implores him to make love to her, saying `you have not hungered to possess me half as much as I have wanted you, for you are one of the knights I was most passionately set on having' (as