The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [510]
The Lord of the Rings trilogy could not have been created without the tricks of the latest computer technology, from its breathtaking battle scenes featuring thousands of participants to the haunting visualisation of the deformed little creature Gollum. Yet, even more than in the Harry Potter films, the actual contents of the story could not have been more timelessly archetypal.
For those who fell under the spell of The Lord of the Rings (and of course there were those who did not), Jackson's film version only reinforced the sense that this story, with all the epic grandeur of its theme set in a vast mythic landscape, was cast on a scale which somehow set it apart from any other. But the real reason for the power of its appeal was that it drew so deeply on the wellsprings of all that storytelling has been about ever since stories were first told.
As we saw in Chapter 19, The Lord of the Rings is one of those rare stories big enough to incorporate all the seven basic plots of storytelling at once. It presents the central battle between darkness and light in the most cosmic way imaginable. Frodo's quest is a symbolic struggle to get rid of the beguiling power of the ego. At the heart of the story we see a perfect golden ring, seemingly so small, so attractive, so harmless. Yet through it can be summoned up all the immense, shadowy power of Sauron, the ultimate representative of all that is evil in the world: the bringer of darkness, destruction and death. We see Sauron only as one enormous, burning eye, at the top of his proud tower, symbolising the single-eyed tunnel-vision of the human ego. Under his sway, vast regimented legions of deformed human monsters can be launched against the frail forces of decent, honourable, loving humanity, destroying the ordered peace of their homes and communities, putting innocents to the sword, just as the world has seen so often through history, and never more than in the twentieth century.
In the earlier stages of his journey, Frodo has loyal companions and the guidance of the Wise Old Man Gandalf and the Anima Galadriel, between them representing that power of spiritual human maturity which must inspire him on his way. In its closing stages, accompanied only by the faithful Sam, but now dogged also by Gollum, representing the obsessive inner state of someone who has fallen irreparably into the grip of the ego, Frodo personifies all the loneliness of humanity's struggle to be free of egocentricity. Yet it is the very fact that he and Sam are so selfless in serving their cosmic, ego-transcending cause which enables them in the end to reach their goal.
The nearer Frodo gets to the end of his Quest, the more his story is paralleled by the equally timeless story of a man who, after long exile from his home, is at last ready to claim his kingdom. Like Odysseus, Aragorn is returning from long wanderings through the world, to seize back his kingdom from the impostors who have usurped it. Only when he has proved himself ready and worthy will he emerge in all his kingly majesty, to be brought together with the feminine `other half' who will make him whole. Aragorn's story is that of every man who, after years when he has been lost because the inner kingdom of his soul has been under inadequate rule, is finally ready, in The Return of the King, to reach that state of maturity which means that he knows who he is.
In this final episode the two dramas coincide. Only when Frodo has succeeded in the inner drama of destroying the ego, is the darkness