• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 5349 0

or multiples of three and four. Back into prehistory seven has taken on symbolic or magical significance as a combination of three and four, as in the mythical seven gateways to the underworld, the seven sages of the Greek world, the seven against Thebes, the seven ages of man, the seven deadly sins, the seven cardinal virtues. The Sumerians and later civilisations spoke of seven planets or `heavenly wanderers, including the sun and the moon. Nine is significant as three times three, as in the nine Muses. Twelve is significant as three times four, making up a totality, as in the twelve apostles or the twelve supreme Greek gods on Olympus. Dante's Divine Comedy, which as we shall see in Chapter 33 is structured round the rule of three as comprehensively as any story in the world, is divided into three books each of 33 cantos, apart from the first which acts as prologue to the whole work, to make a round 100 in all.

1. An exception to this usual pattern is the story of Joseph from the biblical book of Genesis. As a boy, isolated from his brothers by his gift for prophetic dreams, Joseph is in danger of having his ego inflated, as by the dreams which show his brothers bowing down to him. In this sense he is potentially a dark figure. When his brothers force him out into the world, by abandoning him to die in the wilderness, the fate from which he is rescued when he is sold as a slave into Egypt, his gift for interpreting the dreams of others eventually proves the key to his being raised to a position of immense power and wealth. As Phaoroah's chief minister he is already `ruler over the kingdom'. But for the equation to be complete he also has to show, as a counterpoise to his outward power, that he is not heartless and selfish. Above all, for the story to be resolved, he has to be reconciled with his brothers. They come to him as underdogs, in a reversal of the situation at the start of the story. Now it is he who is `above the line, they who are in the `inferior realm', in his shadow. But inspired by his love for his youngest brother, `little Benjamin, Joseph eventually treats them all with complete love and forgiveness, so that they are all joyfully at one. In this respect Joseph's story, although primarily shaped by the Rags to Riches plot, also contains a strong element of the Rebirth story: the strong man, inwardly frozen in an old grievance which hardened his heart, finally thawed out into a state of complete love and reconciliation.

2. The strong-minded heroine who, from within the monster's camp, secretly switches to become the hero's closest ally is seen many times in storytelling. Another familiar instance in Greek mythology was Medea, the daughter of Jason's chief enemy, the tyrant-king Aetes, who helped him to win the Golden Fleece (again by providing him with the means of outwitting the monster, the serpentguardian of the `prize, by making it `lose consciousness'). There are many instances in modern thrillers (e.g., The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers), and this was a frequent motif in the James Bond stories, e.g., From Russia with Love, where the Russian agent Tatiana Romanova changes sides to help Bond win the `treasure' he is after, the secret Soviet cipher-machine, before, like Ariadne or Medea, escaping with him for the journey home.

3. Whether or not Homer was conscious of the symbolism of the twelve axe-heads we cannot know. But certainly the first twelve books of the Odyssey, describing the hero's journey before finally arriving in Ithaca, show how the ordeals he had to survive after leaving Troy were twelve in number: the battle with the Cicones; the Land of the Lotus-Eaters; Polyphemus; the Laestrygonian giants; Circe; Hades; the Sirens; Scylla; the cattle of the Sun; Charybdis; Calypso; the final shipwreck on Alcinous's island. Since it was through these tests that he matured to the point where was ready for the final showdown with the suitors, it was thus symbolically appropriate that he should announce his presence to them by firing through the same number of axe-heads.

1. It is true that