Readers of Middlemarch by George Eliot may recall the dry old scholar Rev Casaubon’s failed attempt to create a unifying ‘Key to all Mythologies’. (You may have briefly felt in passing, that Casaubon’s plan was irrelevant and futile.) But Booker has succeeded in doing this and much more – a quite remarkable analysis of the nature of story, in a project which took him 34 years. But do not be misled into thinking that this is a sterile academic book – it is highly readable! And for its 700 pages, remarkably cheap.
Booker’s highly convincing thesis is that almost all stories, from every culture or time in history, use
only seven archetypal plots. Some stories may indeed contain more than one plot, occasionally all seven. Stories which try
to subvert their natural archetype can seem unsatisfying, jarring, like an out-of-tune or incomplete piece of music. (And,
incidentally, true events and biographies which also happen to conform to one or more of the archetypes, have
special resonance with us. Consider for instance the sinking of the Titanic, or books such as
The Hiding Place
And it is quite remarkable to see how moral cause and effect, and redemptive outcomes (or deserved punishment) are
intrinsic to all these plots. Perhaps we should not be surprised, for God has created people with an inbuilt moral compass
and sense of justice – as J. Budziszewski has illustrated in
Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law
If this book only explained the seven plots (his ‘Part One’), it would be a vital read. Booker’s original plan was merely to cover this ground, “...foolishly thinking that I had almost finished the book.” But as he explains in a Personal Note at the end, he realised that the story did not stop there, and three more parts of the book were necessary! He goes on to explore history, the arts, religion and worldview in the light of archetypal story and human nature.
Booker is perhaps uniquely qualified to write such a book. As a journalist and book critic, his experience of books, films, art, music and opera, history and politics is vast and insightful. It is a regret that two great minds who would surely have enjoyed engaging with this book (and likely agreeing in large measure) – C S Lewis and Francis Schaeffer – are no longer with us.
Booker writes, “What we have been uncovering, in short, is the essential core of the way stories are made, how they work, and what they are about. In this sense the real value of examining the seven central plots is that, between them, they provide a comprehensive introduction to all the fundamental elements from which a story can be made up.“The significance of this can hardly be exaggerated. For what it means is that whenever any of us tries to create a story in our own imagination, we will find that these are the basic figures and situations around which it takes shape. We cannot get away from them because they are archetypes. They are the elemental images around which the whole of the storytelling impulse in mankind is centered. And the reason for this is that these underlying patterns and images are somehow imprinted unconsciously in our minds, so that we cannot conceive stories in any other way.”
“...What this points to is something the implications of which are truly awesome. This is the extent to which stories emerge from some place in the human mind which functions autonomously, independent of any storyteller’s conscious control.”
Before you start this book, turn to the Glossary of Terms so that you can understand the sense in which Booker is using terms such as Self and Ego, light and dark. Although this vocabulary may not be immediately familiar to an evangelical, his underlying analysis resonates with a biblical understanding of human nature, folly, pride, and wholeness. In the Epilogue, Booker comes out clearly as a theist with a belief in Intelligent Design.
Why is this book so significant for Christians who wish to communicate the gospel?
- Because in the widest sense, story is everything. Everything that has happened to us is our story. And we are each powerfully shaped by other stories, both true and fictional: see Tell Me a Story: The Life-Shaping Power of Our Stories by Daniel Taylor. The French word histoire encapsulates this truth, in its breadth of meaning as both story and history. God has chosen to make story the primary means of human communication and conceptualization. The ability to remember and interpret past events, or to imagine real or fictional narratives that we have not experienced ourselves, in the past or the future, is what makes us human.
- Because humans have a huge need for story. Leighton Ford has observed, “It’s
been said that next to food and drink, our most basic human hunger is for storytelling.”
And we are hard-wired to understand ourselves, the world and indeed all truth, through story
rather than the presentation of abstract propositions. Read secular articles:
1 [www.storyispromise.com/wfound.htm] | 2 [www.eldrbarry.net/roos/st_defn.htm] | 3 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling] | 4 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_storytelling] | 5 [www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secrets-of-storytelling]Reference #5, a Scientific American article by Jeremy Hsu, echoes Christian professor Daniel Taylor’s explanation of the significance of story:
“‘If you’re training to be a pilot, you spend time in a flight simulator,’ says Keith Oatley, a professor of applied cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto. Preliminary research by Oatley and Mar suggests that stories may act as ‘flight simulators’ for social life. A 2006 study hinted at a connection between the enjoyment of stories and better social abilities. The researchers used both self-report and assessment tests to determine social ability and empathy among 94 students, whom they also surveyed for name recognition of authors who wrote narrative fiction and non-narrative non-fiction. They found that students who had had more exposure to fiction tended to perform better on social ability and empathy tests. Although the results are provocative, the authors caution that the study did not probe cause and effect – exposure to stories may hone social skills as the researchers suspect, but perhaps socially inclined individuals simply seek out more narrative fiction.”
- Because God has revealed himself through story, both within individual Bible stories, and through the entire meta-narrative of the Bible.
- Because Jesus used culturally-relevant story, not as mere sermon illustration, but as his primary means of embedding truth and communicating with outsiders.
- Because story always makes things real. This is why journalistic writing always illustrates non-personal news items with personal stories, witness reaction, other types of interview or quotations.
- Because testimony is story. But Christian testimonies for outsiders should avoid jargon, and address issues that not-yet-Christians can understand. In other words, we must aim to make our story overlap and engage with their story.
- Because understanding the different archetypal plots in fiction enables us to perceive far more clearly just how and why a story’s characters are making choices, mistakes, assumptions; then finding either resolution and wholeness, or problems and bad consequences. We can then use that story as a starting point in evangelism (which is both biblical and strategic), either by pointing to redemptive themes, or by analyzing the storyline in other ways.
- Because we are rapidly moving into a digital communication culture which is replacing both the ‘print communication culture’ which resulted from the invention of the printing press, and the ‘broadcast communication culture’ which became influential after about 1950 as one-way radio and TV began reshaping communication. Flickering Pixels and The Millennium Matrix explain this huge conceptual shift that Christians must rapidly adapt to, if we are to communicate effectively. One of the key elements of digital communication culture is its increasing emphasis on story – in this respect it parallels the use of story in oral communication cultures.
When you have read the book, please discuss the many questions it raises.
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