‘The Shadow is the door to our individuality. Insofar as the Shadow is our first view of the unconscious part of our personality, it represents the first stage towards meeting the Self.’
Edward Whitmont, The Symbolic Quest
It is no accident that many of the stories we particularly respond to in childhood are based on the Rags to Riches plot, because no other type of story so consistently follows the growing up of its central figure from childhood into adult life. We begin with a little hero or heroine who, in the early stages of the story, usually at home, is powerless, ill-treated and unhappy. The main reason for this is that they are cruelly overshadowed by heartless older figures who look down on them with contempt and hostility. David Copperfield is the little orphan who, after losing his real parents, has fallen into the clutches of Mr and Miss Murdstone, who become his tyrannical step-parents. Jane Eyre is the little orphan who, miserable in the guardianship of her dead mother’s sister and scorned by her young cousins, is sent off to the orphanage by the tyrannical pillar of rectitude Mr Brocklehurst. The little orphan Cinderella is tyrannised over by her wicked stepmother and ugly stepsisters. Joseph is despised and nearly killed by his older brothers. In fact, if we examine a whole range of Rags to Riches stories, we see how these overshadowing dark figures who surround the hero or heroine at the beginning of the story fall into three main categories:
Firstly there is the older man who stands in some position of power or authority over the hero or heroine, usually in the place of a lost father: e.g., Copperfield’s stepfather Mr Murdstone; Jane Eyre’s Mr Brocklehurst; Aladdin’s Sorcerer, who pretends to be the long-lost brother of the hero’s dead father. This powerful, tyrannical figure, representing strong male authority in its most heartless, egotistical guise, is the Dark Father.
Secondly there is his female counterpart, the older woman who may stand in place of a lost mother: e.g., Copperfield’s Miss Murdstone; Jane Eyre’s Aunt Reed; Cinderella’s stepmother, who has replaced her real, loving mother. This similarly heartless and oppressive figure is the Dark Mother.
Thirdly there are the younger characters, of the same sex as the hero or heroine, and of roughly similar age and status, who also act as oppressors: e.g., Cinderella’s stepsisters, Joseph’s jealous brothers.
As the hero or heroine go out into the world, they may meet with more general scorn or persecution from society at large: e.g., the other animals who heap derision on the Ugly Duckling, or the bystanders who scorn the ragged, uncouth little flower seller Eliza Doolittle. But, as the story develops, the only other serious contender they are likely to encounter along the way is:
This is a character of the opposite sex who seems to hold out the possibility of union with the hero or heroine, but is in fact self-seeking and treacherous, or in some other way inadequate: e.g., Potiphar’s wife, the Temptress who tries to seduce Joseph; Jane Eyre’s St John Rivers; Copperfield’s silly and infantile first wife Dora Spenlow.
All the main characters we see opposed to the hero or heroine of a Rags to Riches story thus fall into one of these four categories: Dark Father, Dark Mother, Dark Rival and Dark Other Half.
In the earlier stages of the story, particularly while the hero or heroine are still very young, the Dark Father or Dark Mother are likely to be dominant. As the central figure moves into adulthood, the emphasis is likely to shift more towards the Dark Other Half and the Dark Rivals, who are now seen more directly as competitors for the hero or heroine’s ultimate goal – as in the closing stages of Cinderella where, in the episode of the ‘slipper test’, we see her stepsisters hoping that it is they who will be chosen as the rightful ‘other half’ to the Prince. By the middle of the story indeed there may have emerged just one Dark Rival, posing such a particular threat that he or she comes to stand as a kind of Dark Alter-Ego to the central figure. An example is the emergence of Jane Eyre’s shadowy rival for the hand of Mr Rochester, his crazed and malevolent first wife. In Aladdin this shift of emphasis is expressed with particular subtlety in the hero’s changing relationship to the central dark figure who dogs him throughout the story. Initially, when Aladdin is still a young boy, the Sorcerer appears unmistakably as a Dark Father-figure. But later, when the hero has grown up, and the Sorcerer reappears to snatch Aladdin’s Princess off to Africa, he has become a classic Dark Rival, or Dark Alter-Ego. Finally he reappears as an even more deadly Dark Rival, when he returns in disguise to try to kill Aladdin; and his death corresponds to the hero’s final emergence into the light and union with the Princess.
Measured against these dark figures, the hero or heroine themselves provide a complete contrast. They are not cruel, treacherous, vain or self-seeking. Their real problem, at the beginning of the story, as underdogs in the shadows, is simply that they are lost and do not know what to do. Initially they seem at the mercy of fate and of the dark figures who so cruelly dominate their lives. That is why, in so many Rags to Riches stories, the first step towards their being drawn towards some ultimate happy ending is that they find a mysterious ally; either a ‘helpful animal’, as when Dick Whittington finds his cat or Aladdin his genies; or a ‘light’ Father or Mother-figure, as when Cinderella meets her fairy godmother or David Copperfield his kindly aunt Betsey Trotwood, who eventually adopts him. The first half of the story shows them, with the aid of their light allies, making considerable progress as they grow up outwardly and venture out on the stage of the world. They may even, by the halfway stage, seem within reach of a happy ending, either on the brink of marriage, like Jane Eyre, or married already, like Aladdin or David Copperfield.
But then comes the ‘central crisis’, when their world falls apart again. They lose all that is dear to them, and we see that inwardly they have not yet really matured at all. What the second half of the story shows is how they discover their own inner strengths, and learn to take charge of their own destiny. The final test invariably shows them confronting the dark power entirely on their own, relying on their own strength. Jane Eyre, as she reaches the climax of her potentially deadly struggle with the iron-willed St John Rivers, is inspired by inwardly hearing the mysterious voice of Rochester; but she feels at last that ‘my powers were in play’. Aladdin finally overcomes the Sorcerer’s brother entirely on his own, having been explicitly told by the genie that he can no longer expect any magical help. David Copperfield goes off alone for three years after the death of his wife Dora, initially miserable: but he emerges as a rich and famous writer, with his own position in the world, recognising at last with overwhelming certainty that he must track down his ‘true angel’ Agnes (who for so long has been in the shadow of the monstrous Dark Rival Uriah Heep), to rescue her from the shadows and marry her.
What all these stories in fact show is that, in order to reach their goal, the central figure eventually has to demonstrate a particular balance of qualities. Initially these heroes and heroines are shown as open to the path which is to lead to their eventual self-realisation because they are good-natured. They are not blinded and isolated from the world by egocentricity. They are not, like the antagonistic figures around them, dark. But although this may win them the invaluable help of their light allies, it is not enough in itself to bring them to their final goal. Ultimately, as the other half of the equation, they have to prove themselves in two other respects. They have to learn to stand on their own feet, to demonstrate inner strength and will power, to become self-reliant. Secondly they have to develop understanding. They have to see clearly and precisely what it is they have to do. It is this combination of qualities, that they are selflessly loving, strong and have a clear vision of what they must do, which finally wins them complete union with their ‘other half’. And it is because they have become master or mistress of themselves, that we finally have the confidence when they succeed to rule over some kind of ‘kingdom’ that they will do it wisely, unselfishly and for the good of all.1
In the Rags to Riches story, the dark figures are seen as relating to the hero or heroine in a very personal way, in the context of private and family life. In keeping with the more mythical resonances of the Overcoming the Monster plot, the figures who here personify the dark power tend to assume much grander and more terrifying proportions altogether.
Nevertheless, a good many dark figures in such stories still appear in familiar guise:
1. The Dark Father-figure, or Tyrant: this may again be the older man who has in some way replaced the hero’s lost father: e.g., the Giant in Jack and the Bean-stalk, who killed Jack’s father and usurped his inheritance; or Sir Ralph Nickleby, brother of the hero’s dead father in Nicholas Nickleby. On the other hand, because of the wider ramifications of this type of story, this figure may represent paternal or masculine authority in some more general way, as a tyrannical king (e.g., Minos) or some other kind of ‘dark ruler’ (e.g., Squeers, the tyrannical headmaster; Gessler, the tyrannical Austrian governor in the legend of William Tell; the Sheriff of Nottingham in the story of Robin Hood).
2. The Dark Mother-figure, or Witch: this is the treacherous, ruthless older woman who no longer just wants to repress the hero or heroine, as in Rags to Riches stories, but to kill them: e.g., the wicked stepmother who is transmuted into the witch in Hansel and Gretel. But again this category now runs wider to include all those powerful and deadly older women who feature in stories as ‘the female monster’: e.g., the Gorgon Medusa; Oedipus’s Sphinx (literally ‘the strangler’), the witch who casts her murderous shadow over the kingdom of Thebes; Lady de Winter, ‘the most powerful woman in France’, who is D’Artagnan’s chief antagonist in The Three Musketeers; Rosa Klebb, the sadistic head of SMERSH in the James Bond story From Russia with Love.
3. The Dark Rivals: e.g., Moriarty, the ‘Napoleon of Crime’, who, as Sherlock Holmes’s only intellectual equal, is his Dark Alter-Ego; the outlaw gang who are rivals to Sheriff Kane’s authority over the town in High Noon.
But so potentially cosmic is the nature of the ‘monster’ in stories based on this plot – when we think of such examples as the Minotaur, Humbaba, Grendel, Dracula, the super-villains of Bond stories, with their ambitions to hold the entire world to ransom – that he often appears simply as a kind of huge, inflated ‘dark opposite’ to the hero, a grotesque abstract of the dark power in its most extreme form. He is the very personification of egotism, in all its greedy, aggressive, undisguised horror. He is twisted, treacherous, utterly malevolent. In his physical and moral deformation, and his curious combination of human and animal attributes, he is, as we saw, anything but a complete, whole human being. He may have a strangely ageless, supernatural aura, as if he represents some ancient transcendent power. Above all the monster represents death. He is not just out to imprison the hero but to kill him. He has probably killed many others before. He may spread his shadow over a whole community, a whole kingdom, even over the world. And in setting out to challenge such a stupendously powerful being, the hero is bidding to become truly exceptional, seeking to succeed where many others have failed.
Superficially we might think all that is required for the hero to overcome this monstrous figure is sufficient courage and strength. Certainly the great monster-slayers of storytelling, from Perseus to Beowulf, from Siegfried to James Bond, have never lacked for such manly qualities. But when we come to see how the conflict is actually presented by stories, there is rather more to it.
For a start we have to see the hero as light, in complete contrast to the darkness of his opponent. For this we have to see that he is acting not just to further his own interests but on behalf of others; in particular, in the first half of the story, this means on behalf of the wider community which the monster is threatening. Gilgamesh sets out to challenge Humbaba because the monster is casting a shadow over his kingdom of Uruk; David challenges Goliath because the giant is threatening his country, Israel; Theseus journeys over the sea to challenge the Minotaur and his master, the tyrant Minos, because they are threatening his father’s kingdom of Athens; Beowulf is called in from his own country because Grendel is threatening to destroy the kingdom of Heorot; Dracula is threatening to become master of England; James Bond’s villains are threatening England, the West, all mankind; Darth Vader, in Star Wars, is threatening to impose his tyranny over the entire universe.
Once we have established some idea of the terrifying threat the monster poses to the world, and the courage of the hero in setting out to challenge it, the main thing the action of the story requires is simply that the two protagonists should be brought closer to one another until they are ready for the final decisive confrontation. Either the hero is travelling towards the monster, or the monster is approaching him, until at last the hero has the centre of darkness fully in view: at which point the monster’s power seems so immense that it is hard to imagine how the hero in its shadow can possibly defeat it.
But as the story nears its climax, we may also become acutely aware that the monster is directly threatening another figure, the story’s heroine. When Perseus sees the sea-monster, he sees that it is also bearing down on the Princess Andromeda, chained to her rock. St George rides into battle not just to save the town the dragon is threatening, but much more particularly the Princess tied to a stake. Dracula may be threatening England, but much more specifically he has set his sights on the hero’s fiancée Mina, and is within an ace of destroying her. Dr No may be threatening the security of the Western world, but what matters more at the end of the story is that he has tied down the beautiful beach girl, Honeychile Rider, to be eaten alive by crabs. The central fact of which we are aware as Star Wars moves towards its climax is that Darth Vader, the would-be ‘dark ruler of the universe’, has imprisoned and is torturing the Princess Leia.
At such a moment, however little we may actually know about the heroine, we see her as a figure of extraordinary significance and numinosity. It is the most important thing in the world that she should be saved. In fact there are always three things we instinctively recognise in such a situation. On the one hand there is the hard, heartless, masculine strength of the monster. On the other, in total contrast, is the soft, vulnerable femininity of the heroine who is being threatened. The monster stands for strength without the balance of feeling, which means death. The heroine stands for feeling and life, but is without the strength to defend herself. But what we then see, as the hero comes between them to save her, is that he is a balance between the two. He is not only strong, fearless, utterly masculine. In responding to her helpless vulnerability he is inwardly open to the femininity which the heroine represents. The hero stands for strength transfigured and made life-giving by his capacity for selfless feeling. In balancing the opposites of masculine and feminine, the hero is potentially whole.
So much accounts for why we instinctively sense our support for the hero in his challenge to the monster. But it does not account for why he wins the battle: and here the reason is not usually that he is stronger than the monster. In purely physical terms, the monster may well be the stronger of the two, which is why he seems to have all the odds on his side. In straightforward hand-to-hand combat, Goliath would have beaten David any day. Perseus was probably puny compared to the sea-monster. Dracula had a whole array of magic powers at his command. The real secret of the hero’s ultimate superiority is that the monster has a blind spot. That is why, by the true hero, he can be outwitted: as Goliath was by David’s use from a safe distance of his slingstones; as the sea-monster was by Perseus’s use of the Gorgon’s head to turn him to stone; Dracula by the hero’s knowledge of the one thing which could kill him, a stake to the heart. Luke Skywalker can eliminate the Death Star because he knows of the one spot in all its immense structure where it is vulnerable. In all three Quatermass stories, most of the action centres on the hero gradually puzzling out the true nature of the mysterious monster he is up against, which eventually gives him the necessary clues as to how it can be overcome. What ultimately puts the hero in charge of the situation is that, by the climax of the story, he can in some crucial respect see more clearly than the monster, and knows precisely what he is doing.
Thus the combination of qualities which the hero requires to overcome the monster is exactly the same as that required by the hero or heroine of a Rags to Riches story. He has to show that is acting selflessly, in some cause outside himself. He has to show himself inwardly strong, determined, totally self-reliant. In the end, as the final key in the lock, he has to have superior understanding, a clear vision of what he has to do.
Of course there are also Overcoming the Monster stories where the heroine is not just a passive potential victim waiting to be rescued from the shadows by the hero, but where she herself plays a much more active part in saving him and assisting him to his victory.
When Theseus sets out for Crete to liberate his country from the deadly shadow cast by King Minos and his dreadful creature, the Minotaur, the tutelary deity hovering protectively over him is Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It might seem a detail strangely irrelevant to so ‘masculine’ a contest. But when Theseus arrives, the first person to see him is Minos’s daughter Ariadne, who falls in love with him. When he is led into the dark labyrinth to face the monster which lurks at its heart, it is Ariadne who secretly equips Theseus with the two ‘magic weapons’ which are to prove vital to his success: the sword with which he can slay the Minotaur, and the thread which will enable him to find the way out of the ‘pathless maze’. It is the Princess’s courage and strength of will which have enabled the hero to use properly his own masculine strength to win the victory. Where Theseus would otherwise have been reduced to impotence, it is the ‘active’ heroine who has given life to his strength and enabled him to see clearly his way out again into the light. Again we see a hero who, if he had not been open to the feminine, would not have succeeded in his immense task. It is Ariadne’s own balance of love with inner strength which enables her to supply what Theseus needs in his desperate plight, enabling him to rise to his fully manly stature, allowing him to take charge of the situation and to see whole. Thus is he able to liberate his country, and on his return home to succeed as its king.2
We again see the heroine coming to the hero’s rescue in his desperate hour of need in the film High Noon. When word comes that the murderous Miller gang is approaching to take over the town, Sheriff Kane seems wholly alone. No one will stand with him to resist the dark power. Fearing the worst, he persuades his new bride to leave town. As the climactic battle begins, he seems at the outlaws’ mercy. But, just when all seems lost, a crucial shot rings out from an unexpected quarter. Inspired by the hero’s bravery and her love for him, the heroine has returned, to provide just the element of strength needed to turn the battle. Thanks to her courage, he can complete the routing of the ‘monster’, and between them they have saved the ‘kingdom’.
In no other type of story is the hero faced by such a range and variety of dark figures as in the Quest. But again these fall into familiar categories:
(1) the Tyrant, or Dark Father-figure: Odysseus’s chief opponent through most of his journey, after he has blinded Polyphemus, is the giant’s grimly vengeful father Poseidon, the ‘dark lord of the sea’; Jason’s chief antagonist is the tyrant-king Aetes; other examples are the cruel, overbearing figure of Phaoraoh, who tries to keep the children of Israel imprisoned in Egypt; the evil King Twala, tyrant over the lost land of King Solomon’s mines; General Woundwort, the ‘dark ruler’ over the hostile warren of Efrafa in Watership Down;
(2) the Witch, or ‘Dark Queen’: Aeneas’s chief opponent through most of his journey to Italy is the grimly vengeful ‘Queen of Heaven’ Juno; another instance is Gagool, the ancient witch-guardian of the treasure in King Solomon’s Mines;
(3) the Dark Rivals: these again become increasingly prominent as the hero nears his goal: e.g., the suitors clustered threateningly round Penelope; Turnus, the hero’s rival for the Princess and the kingdom in the Aeneid; the resident tribes who try to prevent the children of Israel from occupying the Promised Land.
When we come to the fourth category, however, we see a curious ambivalence emerging:
(4) the Dark Other Half: this is a figure who, in her guise as the Temptress, plays a particularly prominent part in Quest stories. But when we are confronted by such examples as Circe and Calypso in the Odyssey, it is difficult to pin down whether they are to be regarded as the beautiful women they first appear to be, or as ageless witches in disguise, armed with supernatural powers to imprison the hero and to hold him back from pursuing his quest (Circe, for instance, is explicitly described as ‘a witch’). Similarly, when Aeneas falls in love with Dido (at the instigation of his real enemy, the dark goddess Juno), she is not represented as a young Princess whom he would easily marry. She is a widowed Queen, a mature woman with the power to bewitch him by her love, to enfeeble him and make him forget what he should be doing, which is to proceed on his journey.
In other words, when we consider the ‘dark feminine’ power which can hold back the hero of a story from his true purpose, we see a link beginning to emerge between the mature, beguiling Temptress as ‘Dark Other Half’ and the treacherous witch or Dark Mother-figure. When we consider the ‘dark masculine’ power standing rather more aggressively in the hero’s path, we have already seen in Aladdin how the figure of the Dark Father can be transmuted into that of a Dark Rival. Similarly in Watership Down General Woundwort is not just a Tyrant and ‘dark ruler’: as leader of the rival warren he stands as an exact dark opposite and rival to the story’s hero Hazel. Behind their variety of outward guises, the dark figures are more closely connected than they at first appear.
And of course we also begin to see in the Quest, more explicitly than in the earlier types of story, occasions where the hero and his companions themselves make potentially fatal errors, putting them at the mercy of their dark antagonists – and these invariably result from a failure of their own awareness.
When Odysseus sets out with his men for home there is no doubt about his manly strength and cunning. As a soldier he has been one of the great heroes of the Trojan War. What does come into doubt as soon as the journey begins is their ability to see clearly the nature of all the dangers they encounter on the way, and whether they have the self-control and willpower which will enable them to resist those perils. The essence of the journey is how again and again they make foolish errors, falling into one trap after another. They fall for almost every temptation placed in their way. To begin with they are beguiled and intoxicated by the pleasures of Lotus-eating. They then meet their first really serious disaster by failing to recognise the true nature of the island and the cave where Polyphemus lives. When Aeolus gives them bags holding all the contrary winds which enable them, still early in the journey, to come back within sight of Ithaca, Odysseus drowses off, losing consciousness. His men, blinded by greed into thinking the bags contain treasure, open them, leading to the worst disaster of all, when they are blown onto the island of the cannibal giants of Laestrygonia, who eat eleven of the twelve shiploads. They are fooled by the treachery of Circe, who seems to offer them feasting and ease, but in fact only wants to imprison them as animals. They fail to steer a proper course between the deadly ‘opposites’ of Scylla and Charybdis, suffering further losses to the monster Scylla.
Gradually, however, as the journey proceeds through one disaster and near-disaster after another, Odysseus develops clearer vision and greater self-control. Already, by the time they reach the island of Laestrygonia, Odysseus has become canny enough to remain behind, while the crews of the other eleven ships are tricked into their doom. When they arrive next on Circe’s isle, he is again careful to send only half his surviving men ahead, and it is this which allows him to win the help of the god Hermes in overcoming the witch’s powers and liberating all her victims. Once the Witch-Temptress has been mastered, she switches from dark to light to become an invaluable helper. And it is she who sends Odysseus on down to the underworld where the ‘wise old man’ Teiresias gives him a vision of what still lies ahead of him and what he must do to finish the journey. He survives the enchantments of the Sirens by the forethought of having himself strapped to the mast, although he cannot then stop his men from disobeying his strict orders not to interfere with the cattle of the Sun, which leads to their being struck by a thunderbolt. This leaves Odysseus at last all alone, to face yet another disaster when he steers this time too near the other ‘opposite’, the whirlpool Charybdis. At this point, literally ‘all washed up’, he is only too grateful to sink into the embraces of the beautiful Calypso for a seemingly interminable period of sensual ease and doing nothing, the longest episode of the entire journey. It takes Odysseus seven years to develop the strength and willpower to break loose from Calypso’s enchantments (with the aid of the king of the gods, Zeus). But again, once he has developed the manly resolve to free himself from this unreal, twilit existence in the witch’s cave, she switches to become a helper. After a last ordeal by shipwreck, he is washed up on the island of King Alcinous and his daughter, the Princess Nausicaa; and here he can tell the tale of all his adventures, as if he has returned to ‘the real world’. Finally he lands back in Ithaca to begin the second half of the story. He has at last become master of himself and is ready for his final great test.
Through all the closing stages of the story, Odysseus can see – with the help of the goddess of wisdom Athene – exactly what he has to do, and is entirely in control of his actions. Outwardly, ‘above the line’, his kingdom is still triumphantly in the hands of the dark power, the loud-mouthed, swaggering, lecherous suitors, who infest his palace and press closer and closer round the increasingly despairing Penelope. But now, in the ‘inferior realm’, we see Odysseus, disguised as a humble beggar, moving inexorably through the shadows across the island, towards the final confrontation with his Dark Rivals. Again we see the story coming to the familiar three-cornered climax: on one hand, the overbearing ‘masculine’ power of the suitors, greedy, proud, quarrelsome, drunken, cruel, using their power only to indulge and to assert themselves; on the other, the helpless Penelope, the vulnerable feminine imprisoned in the shadows. Finally into their midst comes Odysseus, now stronger than ever because he is a man completely in charge of himself, who knows exactly what he has to do to take charge of the situation. At the same time his strength is balanced by his openness to the feminine and the fact that he is acting in a cause far greater than just his own. At the climactic moment he reveals himself in his true kingly majesty, as the only man able to bend the mighty bow. He fires his first arrow clean through the twelve axe-heads, to symbolise the twelve ordeals he has surmounted: there is no longer anything between him and his goal.3 With contemptuous ease he puts the suitors to rout, dispelling the dark power forever. He liberates his ‘other half’ from the shadows. At last he is whole and can assume his rightful sovereignty over the kingdom.
Such is the essence of the Quest story (although there is no more complete and profound version than the Odyssey). It shows a hero who is initially ‘all at sea’ and at the mercy of events being gradually tempered by his ordeals into learning how to direct and to discipline his strength single-mindedly towards one end. He must develop his awareness and become master of himself until nothing can stand in his way. But at the same time he must show that he is entirely light, by his inward openness to the feminine, so that he is using his strength in the service of life and of the whole. Only when he has finally reached this state of complete balance and become fully himself is he ready to be united with his ‘other half’ and to claim the ‘kingdom’. Thus does the Quest end at the same point as the earlier plots: because the fundamental impulse behind them all is the same.
When the hero or heroine of a Voyage and Return story fall into the mysterious ‘other realm’, they may well find themselves in a landscape peopled by a familiar range of dark figures:
(1) the Dark Father-figure, or Tyrant: e.g., Mr McGregor, the terrifying denizen of the garden in Peter Rabbit, who has earlier killed and eaten the hero’s father; Captain Hook, the would-be tyrant over the island in Peter Pan;
(3) the Dark Queen, Witch, or Dark Mother-figure: this is the tyrannical female version: e.g., the Queen of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland or the Red Queen in Through The Looking Glass; the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz; Mrs Best-Chetwynde, the rich older woman who makes a plaything of Paul Pennyfeather, the hero of Decline and Fall;
(3) the Dark Rivals: e.g., the cannibals and the mutineers whom Robinson Crusoe encounters as rivals to his sovereignty of the island; the shadowy Morlocks who eventually capture the hero’s little friend Weena in The Time Machine.
But the first thing we recognise about a Voyage and Return story, as we have seen, is how in the early stages, even more obviously than in the Quest, the emphasis is put on the limitations of the hero or heroine themselves. The essence of the deeper versions of this plot, such as Robinson Crusoe, The Golden Ass or the Ancient Mariner, is that we see a young man who falls into his horrific experience precisely because he is feckless, self-centred, uncaring – and because his awareness of the world is so severely limited. This is what puts him completely at the mercy of events, and why he suddenly finds himself plunged into the wholly strange ‘other world’. What then happens?
Robinson Crusoe, aimlessly drifting round the world, ‘all at sea’, is suddenly pulled up short by the catastrophe of finding himself shipwrecked. The first part of the story shows him gradually coming to terms with his new situation, both outwardly and inwardly. He slowly wins control over his immediate environment, and also develops a wholly new attitude to life, coming to view his position realistically, without self-pity, grateful for what he has, learning to see objectively and whole. The second part of the story begins when we see his new-found qualities being put to the test. He becomes aware that he is not alone on the island and that it is under a deadly shadow cast by the visiting cannibals. Because Crusoe has won understanding and mastery of himself, and feels protectively towards their helpless victims, he can now act as a strong potential leader, becoming in the shadows the centre of light opposition to the dark power which dominates the island. First he is joined by Friday, whom Crusoe educates and trains to fight. Secondly, between them, they rout the cannibals, releasing more victims. Finally the ship which has been taken over by mutineers arrives, and Crusoe secretly reveals himself to the captain who accepts his complete authority. Crusoe masterminds the mutineers’ overthrow and steps from the shadows as at last undisputed ‘king’ of the island. He can now return home, a king over himself, to live happily and prosperously for the rest of his life.
Lucius, the hero of The Golden Ass, also begins as an egocentric young drifter, only interested in sexual self-indulgence and the occult – in other words, with a dark, inferior desire for ‘love’, which he sees only in terms of physical self-gratification, and for ‘secret knowledge’, which he sees only as a way to win power for himself. It is precisely a combination of these two weaknesses which, by a catastrophic misjudgement, lands him in the horrific plight of being turned into an ass. He now finds himself entirely at the mercy of mindless, unfeeling human beings until, when he finally recoils from the degradation of having to perform the sexual act in a circus, knowing also that it will mean death, he is miraculously released by the mysterious goddess of wisdom Isis. Now his real transformation begins. Under the guidance of Isis and through intense self-discipline, he gradually comes to recognise the true meaning of selfless love and of that spiritual reality which is obscured to limited consciousness by physical appearances and appetites. His heart and his eyes are opened. His two original dark obsessions have each been transformed into their ‘light’ version. The story ends by showing him, as a devotee of Isis, a strong disciplined figure, at one with himself and with life.
When the Ancient Mariner, also a young man ‘all at sea’, casually shoots the great, friendly albatross which has been following the ship, he has committed an appalling crime. He has used his strength blindly, unfeelingly, selfishly, to kill a perfect symbol of wholeness, something immense, beautiful, mysterious, self-contained, floating entirely at one with the world of nature. He sinks down into the living death of his unfeeling egocentricity, seeing all the world around him drained of life. He sees the spectral ship approaching, containing the ‘Nightmare Life-in-Death’, the terrible ‘Dark Mother’ of final unconsciousness – until finally some deep impulse for life within him prompts him to croak out a blessing on the only other living creatures around him, the crawling water snakes. At last he is beginning to feel for life outside himself and to ‘see whole’ beyond the confines of his own ego. Both within him and outside him, life begins to flow again. He is at one with its power and, now master of his ghostly ship, he is carried home.
Even the story of Peter Rabbit, as we saw, is that of a feckless and selfish little hero at the mercy of his idle curiosity and his physical appetites who, by eventually coming to a higher level of consciousness and managing to ‘see whole’, wins a measure of conscious control over his destiny and escapes from death to life. In other words, in its fully resolved versions, the Voyage and Return story is still shaped by precisely the same fundamental impulse as the earlier plots – except that we are now seeing the hero much more clearly having to move from one ‘centre’ of his personality to another.
The essence of all these Voyage and Return stories is that they show their hero having to move away from the pole of limited ‘ego-consciousness’, which puts him at the mercy of events he does not understand, towards that other pole which connects him up to the world outside himself and gives him the wider vision which is necessary for his liberation. This winning of a wider vision is seen to be a process of the most profound importance, essential not just to the hero’s survival in a limited, physical sense but, at least in the instances of Robinson Crusoe, Lucius and the Ancient Mariner, to his reaching an entirely new relationship with himself and the universe. The move from restricted ego-consciousness to the state of wider awareness means that he is at last, in some mysterious way, at one with life itself. And of course no type of story is more centrally dependent on the importance of this transition than Comedy: where coming to ‘see whole’ is what the process of recognition is all about.