|
Review: The Seven Basic Plots |
|---|
I started reading The Seven Basic Plots (hereafter referred to as “TSBP”) more than year ago, but the fact that it’s taken me so long to read the thing is in no way a reflection of its quality. This is one big book, in every sense of the word, and its sheer size makes carrying it on the train to work out of the question. That’s when I get most of my reading done, so I’ve been digesting TSCB roughly four pages at a time before I turn my light out at night. In the time it’s taken me to read it, I’ve also built up a reading list longer than the London Comedy Writers mailing list, but it has been well worth it. The title fails to fully do the book justice. As well as the seven plots themselves, the author details the archetypal characters that tend to recur in stories of each kind, and to detail the dark inversions of each basic plot. In total, the title notwithstanding, there are about sixteen basic plots in there.
In Section one of the book, the author details the seven plots - Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, The Quest and Rebirth - and explores their historic origins in folk tales, nursery rhymes and some of the earliest recorded stories such as Beowulf and Gilgamesh. The depth of his research is what makes this most appealing, as many of the stories contained in this section are familiar, but the details of their origins, and the way similar stories developed in different parts of the world simultaneously, lend such tales as Jack And The Beanstalk, Cinderella and Dick Whittington a new gravity. Each plot is broken down into stages, which seem to be applicable throughout - Anticipation, Dream, Frustration and Nightmare. What also stands out is just how brutal and grim (or even Grimm) popular fairy tales are in their purest form - notwithstanding any deeper sexual symbolism (which as we all know everything from folk tales to pop songs contain) the lightness with which they treat death (as essentially the deserved fate of the villain of each piece) contrasts sharply with the sanitised versions we our children today. The Big Bad Wolf, the Giant, the Ugly Sisters and the Wicked Witch all meet a similarly grisly fate, while the Hero invariably achieves a “Thrilling escape from death”.
The second part, and the largest section of the book, actually concerns not the basic plots themselves, although they do feature, but character archetypes that feature in stories from throughout the ages. The intricacy of the link between characters and plot if shown by the way a single character can change the whole nature of a plot, and the relationships of all the other characters in the story, such as the inversion of Mother, one of the most potent of characters, into Dark Mother, which can tip Comedy into Tragedy. The presence of the Dark Father, by contrast, is shown not necessarily to be a unique feature of Tragedy, but an essential presence in many Comedy plots, in which the Hero must turn him into a Light figure in order to marry his Anima, so achieving the ultimate Happy Ending in all storytelling, the union of man and woman. This section is also essential reading for those, like me, who like to think of themselves as well read without actually bothering to read much, providing as it does a vast resource of analysis covering stories to have emerged over the past three hundred years (many of them old enough to be labelled “Classics”). All those books I wish I’d read but will probably never get round to - Moby Dick, The Red and The Black, War and Peace, The Cherry Orchard, Dr Zhivago, Bleak House, Jane Eyre, Nicolas Nickleby and many of those Shakespeare plays I didn’t study at school - they’re all in there, providing the perfect reference guide for dinner party snobs.
What the book also does in this section is to introduce historical context, exploring the development of storytelling and linking the emergence of the various “Dark Inversions” to such traumas as the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the political upheaval of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Overlaying this is the development of human consciousness, and the emergence of the Ego as the principle driver, at the expense of the Self, which represents all that is pure and right. The hypothesis is that as the Ego took hold, coinciding ironically with the shrinking of the world in socio-political terms, so the seven basic plots became tainted, leading to the abuse of the archetypal characters that are essential to happy endings - the Anima, the Good Old Man, Mother - as well as the emergence of new plots such as Rebellion Against the One and Mystery, which have clear roots in historical events. Hamlet, which virtually has a chapter to itself, is shown to be the absolute exemplar of this transformation, as it is in fact a total dark inversion of a Norse tale about Prince Amleth, who not only avenges his father successfully but also marries his animas and makes her his queen.
The final section of the book is concerned with why we tell stories, the relation of stories to real life patterns of events, and what all of this tells us about ourselves. For me, this is the weakest section of the book. Analysing the development of mono-theistic religions is all very well, but trying to bolt on basic plots to such events as the Second World War seems to me trivial and slightly vein. Yes, you can see what he means about the rise and fall of Hitler broadly conforming to Tragedy, complete with Dream, Frustration and Nightmare stage, but he seems to think it proves something. What about the careers of other tyrants like Stalin, Pol Pot and Pinochet? He then seems to want to characterise the Cold War as an archetypal “Overcoming the Monster” plot with the West very much the Hero. “Strong” Western leaders throughout are garlanded with praise and cast as heroes - Churchill, Reagan and Thatcher are particular favourites, their actions in successfully imposing proper storytelling structure on an uncertain and unreliable world contrasted with the craven cowardice and pomposity of people like Chamberlain, Atlee (!), and even Clinton and Blair, who clearly have no respect for proper plot structures and disregard this vital element in International Relations to their cost. And of course, domestic policy counts for nothing. I tried not to let my personal politics get in the way, but I was left in no doubt that this guy votes Tory.
A sketchy grasp of International Relations, not to mention history, aside, this is a brilliant book, staggering in scope and ambition, and mightily impressive in the way he constructs his argument and, yes, his story. I think his conclusion is flawed, but it is opinion that makes the world go round, and certainly as a guide to how stories are constructed and developed, it is unlike anything else. As such, it is an incomparable resource for writers and storytellers of any ilk. Just don’t rely on it as a guide to running the world.
Seven Basic Plots can purchased here.
Copyright© 2008 Jeremy Davies
