The Seven Basic Plots Why We Tell Stories
Livre sur les formes que prennent les histoires
Highlights
The Seven Basic Plots Why We Tell Stories Christopher Booker
looking for an explanation of why certain images, symbols and shaping forms recur in stories to an extent far greater than can be accounted for just by cultural transmission, we must look first to those deeper levels of the uncon scious which we all have in common, as part of our basic genetic inheritance. These work around what Jung called ‘archetypes’: ‘the ancient river beds along which our psychic current naturally flows’; and it is only on this level o f the arche typal structures that the basic meaning and purpose of the patterns underlying storytelling can be found.
The Seven Basic Plots Why We Tell Stories Christopher Booker
all kinds of story, however profound or how ever trivial, ultimately spring from the same source, are shaped around the same basic patterns and are governed by the same hidden, universal rules.
Prologue to Part One
there are certain things we can be pretty sure we know about our story even before it begins. For a start, it is likely that the story will have a hero, or a heroine, or both: a central figure, or figures, on whose fate our interest in the story ultimately rests; someone with whom, as we say, we can identify. We are introduced to our hero or heroine in an imaginary world. Briefly or at length, the general scene is set. The purpose of the formula ‘Once upon a time …’, whether the storyteller uses it explicitly or not, is to take us out of our present place and time into that imaginary realm where the story is to unfold, and to introduce us to the central figure with whom we are to identify.
Prologue to Part One
Then something happens: some event or encounter which precipitates the story’s action, giving it a focus. In fact the opening of the story is governed by a kind of double formula: ‘once upon a time there was such and such a person, living in such and such place … then, one day, something happened’.
Prologue to Part One
We are introduced to a little boy called Aladdin, who lives in a city in China… then one day a Sorcerer arrives, and leads him out of the city to a mysterious underground cave. We meet a Scottish general, Macbeth, who has just won a great victory over his country’s enemies … then, on his way home, he encounters the mysterious witches. We meet a girl called Alice, wondering how to amuse herself in the summer heat… then suddenly she sees a White Rabbit running past, and vanishing down a mysterious hole. We see the great detective Sherlock Holmes sitting in his Baker Street lodgings… then there is a knock at the door, and a visitor enters to present him with his next case. This event or summons provides the ‘Call’ which will lead the hero or heroine out of their initial state into a series of adventures or experiences which, to a greater or lesser extent, will transform their lives.
Prologue to Part One
The next thing of which we can be sure is that the action which the hero or heroine are being drawn into will involve conflict and uncertainty, because with out some measure of both there cannot be a story
Prologue to Part One
Where there is a hero there may also be a villain (on some occasions, indeed, the hero himself may be the vil lain). But even if the characters in the story are not necessarily contrasted in such black-and-white terms as goodies’ and ‘baddies’, it is likely that some will be on the side of the hero or heroine, as friends and allies, while others will be out to oppose them.
Prologue to Part One
Finally we shall sense that the impetus of the story is carrying it towards some kind of resolution. Every story which is complete, and not just a fragmentary string of episodes and impressions, must work up to a climax, where conflict and uncertainty are usually at their most extreme. This then leads to a resolution of all that has gone before, bringing the story to its ending. And here we see how every story, however mildly or emphatically, has in fact been leading its central figure or figures in one of two directions. Either they end, as we say, happily, with a sense of liberation, fulfilment and completion. Or they end unhappily, in some form of discomfiture, frustration or death
Prologue to Part One
One of the few general texts ever to have been written on stories was Aristotle’s Poetics, left unfinished well over 2000 years ago, It was Aristotle who first observed that a satisfactory story - a story which, as he put it, is a ‘whole’ - must have ‘a beginning, a middle and an end’. And it was Aristotle who, in the context of the two main types of stage play, first explicitly drew attention to the two kinds of ending a story may lead up to.
The Seven Basic Plots Why We Tell Stories Christopher Booker
The essence o f the ‘Overcoming the Monster’ story is simple. Both we and the hero are made aware of the existence o f some superhuman embodiment of evil power. This monster may take human form (e.g., a giant or a witch); the form of an animal (a wolf, a dragon, a shark); or a combination of bot h (the Minotaur, the Sphinx). It is always deadly, threatening destruction to those who cross its path or fall into its clutches. Often it is threatening an entire community or kingdom, even mankind and the world in general. But the monster often also has in its clutches some great prize, a priceless treasure or a beautiful ‘Princess’. So powerful is the presence of this figure, so great the sense of threat which emanates from it, that the only thing which matters to us as we follow the story is that it should be killed and its dark power overthrown. Eventually the hero must confront the monster, often armed with some kind of ‘magic weapons’, and usually in or near its lair, which is likely to be in a cave, a forest, a castle, a lake, the sea, or some other deep and enclosed place. Battle is joined and it seems that, against such terrifying odds, the hero cannot possibly win. Indeed there is a moment when his destruction seems all but inevitable. But at the last moment, as the story reaches its climax, there is a dramatic reversal. The hero makes a ‘thrilling escape from death’ and the monster is slain. The hero’s reward is beyond price. He wins the treasure, or the hand of the ‘Princess’. He has liberated the world - community, kingdom, the human race - from the shadow of this threat to its survival. And in honour of his achievement, he may well go on to become some kind of ruler or king.