Kindle Notes & Highlights
Quests
As classic literary exemplars of quests, we need only mention Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh.
Comedy
Tragedy
Rebirth
Fairy tales often feature this plotline: Sleeping Beauty; Snow White; Beauty and the Beast. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is another abiding example. Ascent
Such questions drive the plot of fairy tales like Cinderella, or the narratives of Dickensian orphans. For those of you with memories of the 1970s disco scene, the John Travolta movie Saturday Night Fever (famous for the soundtrack by the Bee-Gees) belongs to the same underlying genre.
Voyage-and-Return
The change may involve a drastic geographical relocation, as in adventure stories such as Tolkien’s The Hobbit, or the visits to Narnia in the C. S. Lewis chronicles, or Mr. McGregor’s garden in Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. On the other hand, the change may involve social or cultural relocation, as in the novel Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, whose main character is plunged into the heady world of the aristocracy via Oxford University in the 1920s. In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, the “voyage” takes the main character into an alternative history, namely, the history that would have
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Is it ever possible to truly return to “the way things were”?
Overcoming the Monster
Our final genre roots in the reality of evil, and our seemingly innate sense of justice. Some of the most popular stories involve the conflict between light and dark forces (with the latter often personified in monstrous forms such as dragons). Booker labels such plots “Overcom...
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Plot Archetype Essential Feature Overcoming the Monster presence of external enemy Tragedy destruction of protagonist Rebirth passivity of protagonist (requires agent of rebirth) Ascent elevation of protagonist Comedy ends in social/relational unity or reconciliation Quest goal-directed journey (literal or metaphorical) Voyage-and-Return involuntary (non-purposeful or accidental) journey plus return
Like I said, I don’t buy into all the Jungian story of the subconscious. But, as a Christian thinker, I do wonder: Is there some sort of theological explanation for the pervasiveness of these seven basic plots?
Did God hardwire us to generate seven archetypal plots, because the gospel follows the narrative arcs of these typical plotlines?
Putting it in theological terms, archetypal plots would be “natural revelation,” and the gospel would be “special revelation.”
Through his missionary work, Don Richardson concluded that God has placed “redemptive analogies” in the cultural scripts of every nation, tribe, and tongue on the earth.242
Obviously, this cultural “value” of treachery posed an acute social problem for the Sawi. If treachery is supreme, how can two villages ever live at peace with one another? The culture provided a remarkable “redemptive analogy”: the peace child.245 The two villages exchange an infant, who is adopted by the opposite tribe. The peace child is sacred, and an enduring bond of peace and trust. For the Sawi, “If a man would actually give his own son to his enemies, that man could be trusted.”246
If fundamental story types and patterns actually house wisdom implanted by the Creator, then thirty-four years—the time devoted by Booker to uncovering his seven basic plots—would scarcely be too long for such a vital quest.
But did his quest uncover pure gold—or maybe only silver? Is there a “platinum version” of plot archetypes out there—a model that better captures the varied forms in which we tell stories?
However, there are plots that don’t fit the scheme so neatly. What about the ancient stories of cosmic creation (Genesis 1, for instance)? Booker concedes that these don’t fit under the seven-plot umbrella.248
Alternatively, since there is no story without struggle, why not classify plots according to the kind of antagonism faced by the main character? Some critics do just that, resulting in plot types such as these: • man/woman versus nature • man/woman versus society • man/woman versus technology • man/woman versus self • man/woman versus rival(s) • man/woman versus monsters • man/woman versus God(s) • man/woman versus fate
According to Tilley, all plots are driven by one of five basic types of cause.255
I paraphrase his scheme below.
Here is a list of causal types (that drive the plot forward): • ordinary desires and fears in present time • “fatalistic” influences inherited from previous generation(s) • “coincidences” that reveal hints of destiny • meaningless “accidents”; mere contingency of events; futile interruptions (i.e., absence of traditional cause-and-effect) • actions with universal resonance; wholly inter-dependent events
We may leave this brief analysis (of the intersection of causality and genre) with an interesting question. In your own consumption of fiction and film, do you gravitate toward a storyline governed by one of the five causal modes listed above? For example, do you like heroes with a strong sense of personal destiny, who experience meaningful “coincidences”? (I know I do!) And, what might your genre-preference reveal about your view of life?
In the light of the fact we have been considering—that plots can legitimately be approached from multiple complementary angles—here is my advice. Find a model, a rudimentary inventory of plots, which works for you. Use it flexibly, not rigidly, as a search strategy for starting conversations with literature and with life. Remain open to additional insights offered by other windows onto the world of story, other inventories of plots.
The Bishop of Ephesus Protestants have treated “Saint” Paul as the Christian equivalent of the philosopher Plato. An ivory-tower thinker, dedicated to producing an abstract system of “timeless truth.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Paul, writing concrete responses to specific circumstances, was a “task” or “occasional” theologian. And a narrative theologian. His letters initiate a flexible dialogue between the story of Jesus and story of a local Christian community.257
9 Alpha and Omega
After the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, the Rabbis must have agonized over the loss of their holy place. Sacred space, evoking the transcendent, enables us to center our lives on something permanent. So, how did the Rabbis respond to the loss of their temple? They came to view the Torah scroll (the five books of Moses) as a “portable temple.” Meditation upon the Torah became a portal to sacred space.
In this chapter, I offer concise CliffsNotes on the big plotlines of the Bible. We’ll zoom the lens out, for a multi-angle view of God’s redemptive work in history, an overall sense of what God has done in the world. And, by implication, a sense of what God is doing in the world, right now (and what he might be doing in your life and in mine). After sketching seven basic plots found in the Bible, I will zoom the lens in, with a personal illustration of how the macro-story of Scripture can intersect the micro-story of everyday life.
What Kind of Story is the Bible?
Tragedy
According to Christopher Booker, this is the plot that most closely mirrors real life.269 The plotline of human degeneration, begun in Adam,270 transmitted to his descendants, tending downward into an abyss of violence,271 encapsulated in Romans 1:18–32, and culminating in the “fallen, fallen” refrain of Revelation 18:2, gives the whole Bible a sadly realistic or tragic texture.
Comedy In the pages of the New Testament, the funeral dirge accompanying the tragic plotline gets drowned out by the music accompanying the comedic plotline of reconciliation on a cosmic scale, celebrated in the hymn of Colossians 1:15–20. As the notes from this hymn ripple throughout the world, a symphony of unity replaces the cacophony of violence of Genesis 4 and 6. Swords get beaten into ploughshares, tribal hostilities cease.272 In the pages of the Old Testament, humanity breaks faith with God, but God renews his peace treaty.273 Using language comfortable to mystics, the Bible imagines
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Rebirth
Pessimism pervades the book of Ecclesiastes; a philosophical quest for meaning, rendered futile by the biography-obliterating fact of death. Romans 8:20 picks up Ecclesiastes’s idiom, and extends it to the domain of nature, whose entropic death-ward storyline echoes the futility of death-haunted human existence. But Rom 8:21–23 rewrites the cosmic music of despair, superimposing earth-mother’s cry for deliverance in hope of new birth. God’s Spirit, first-fruits of cosmic harvest, echoes the cry of birth-pangs.275 God’s Son, second Adam, first-fruits of a resurrection harvest of new
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Quest
A search for wisdom in the face of death, goading Gilgamesh on his epic journey, may well be the primordial human narrative.
Nevertheless, a strong search-for-wisdom plotline unfolds, moving from the “thesis” of Proverbs, through the “antitheses” of Job and Ecclesiastes, and culminating in John’s narrative of wisdom incarnate. Bridging Old and New Testaments, we read of a wisdom-quest that begins with the self-assured proverbs of Solomon, takes a detour through the tortured doubts of Ecclesiastes and the unanswered questions of Job, and resolves with the “one greater than Solomon” (Matt 12:42).
Ascent
If quests are driven by external objects, then plots of ascent are often driven by character ...
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The royal ideal of the king as apex of humanity, the image of God, means that the plot of ascent most naturally focuses on the story of kingship. This story accelerates in the books 1–2 Samuel. An abhorrent leadership-vacuum. No priest who will act according to the values of God’s heart and mind; no king after God’s own heart.279 Unless we count David.
Slaying of Dragons
We can trace the whole story of the Bible via the “holy warfare” plotline, triggered by Genesis 3:15, with its promise of human offspring to bruise the serpent’s head.
As the biblical epic unfolds, its dragon-slaying archetype also morphs. The battle narrative culminates in the disarmament of evil powers—not by greater violence, but by the cross of Christ.282 Accordingly, the enemy the church battles is not our “flesh and blood” human kindred,283 but systemic evil of all kinds.284
For example, ancient Canaanite myths depicted Creation in terms of a Chaoskampf, in which an “Apollonian” god (representing order) overcomes the forces of chaos (often depicted as a sea-monster). The authors of Scripture were not shy about incorporating modified versions of this narrative, with Yahweh as the God who brings order out of chaos.
Voyage-and-Return
This plot type differs from the quest (which also involves a journey) chiefly with regard to the absence of inner direction in the protagonist. The journey may be casual, accidental, or entirely involuntary.
Accordingly, the Old Testament subplot of Israel’s Babylonian captivity belongs to this genre. Key questions addressed in such plotlines concern the means of return, and ...
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