The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [67]
But first we must look rather more closely at what all these Voyage and Return stories have in common. For behind the extraordinary variety of their outward subject matter, they are all in a way describing the same shattering experience.
To see this plot in deeper perspective, we must consider three questions. First, how do the heroes or heroines of these stories get into this `other world' where their adventures take place? Second, what is the real nature of this `other world'? Thirdly, what is really happening to them as they pass through it? How does it affect them?
It is instructive to contrast the mood of the opening of a Voyage and Return story with that at the start of the other type of story based on a journey, the Quest. The Quest is altogether a more serious and purposeful affair. The hero of the Quest realises he has to go on his journey. He is drawn by an overwhelming sense of compulsion. He knows there is a specific goal he has to head for.
The heroes of the Voyage and Return story have no such sense of direction. It is true that in some instances, such as Rasselas, Candide, The Time Machine, The Lost World, the hero is consciously looking for something when he sets out, and we may call this a'Quest element' in such stories. But much more often the point is that the adventure these heroes and heroines stumble into is totally unexpected. In some instances quite literally they fall into it. It is something which just happens to them.
At the same time, however, they are very much in a state of mind which lays them open for such a thing to happen. They may be just be bored and drowsy, like Alice, who falls asleep and is carried away into her Wonderland by a dream. They maybe rather more actively craving some diversion, like Lucius in The Golden Ass, or Dorothy dreaming of `somewhere over the rainbow' in The Wizard of Oz, or Wendy and the Darling children in Peter Pan. They may have exposed themselves to the risk that something dramatic and untoward may befall them simply because of their naivety, the restricted nature of their lives and their awareness, like Candide, or Holley Martins, or Waugh's Pennyfeather. Wittingly or unwittingly, what they have in common is that they are psychologically wide open for some shattering new experience to invade their lives and take them over.
One of the fullest pictures of the state of mind which allows a Voyage and Return hero to get into his strange predicament is that given in the opening pages of Robinson Crusoe. These describe how the young Crusoe was brought up by his father on the advice that if he wanted to live a full and happy life, he should head neither for the upper classes nor the lower, but should aim for a secure `middle station' in life, between the opposites. He should settle down, have a sense of purpose: not become an aimless drifter, wandering about the world hoping that something would turn up. The realisation that he ignored this advice by going off to sea plays a large part in Crusoe's subsequent introspection, after his shipwreck. Even on his first voyage, he is nearly drowned in a terrible storm, and sees himself as the Prodigal Son, risking destruction by having recklessly ignored his father's kindly admonitions. Like all Voyage and Return heroes, he has laid himself open to the chance of falling into some extraordinary, unforeseen adventure: and eventually he does.
The first indication that something very unexpected is happening in a Voyage and Return story lies in the dramatic nature of the hero or heroine's entry into the `other world'. The event which precipitates them into the abnormal world is often shocking and violent. It may be a shipwreck, as in Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, The Tempest, The Admirable Crichton; or a plane crash, as in The Lord of the Flies. The heroines of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz both have the sensation of falling into their `other world' with a bump. Candide is literally propelled into his `other world' by a violent