Cracking the Story Code

One of the greatest mysteries in our lives lies so close beneath our noses that we don't even recognize it to be a mystery. Why do we tell stories? Why has evolution given us the ability to conjure up these sequences of imaginary happenings, on which, through movies, novels, plays, TV soaps and comic strips, we spend so much of our lives?

I have spent 34 years of my own life unraveling this riddle. And the starting point for an answer, I suggest, lies in that age-old notion that, all through the storytelling of the world, a handful of basic plots recur. Crack the code of why stories repeat and we see how fundamentally they reflect what human nature confronts us with.

The first and most basic of plots, for instance, is Overcoming the Monster. From Greek myths to "Jaws," "Star Wars" and James Bond, we see a hero who, on behalf of a community, sets out to challenge and slay some monstrous deadly figure. The monster -- malevolent, blinkered, totally selfish -- personifies the dark power of the human ego. But in this respect, it is only the extreme version of the dark figures we see in stories of every kind.

Similarly selfish figures overshadow the disregarded little hero or heroine of the second plot, Rags to Riches -- Cinderella, David Copperfield, Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady." But he or she is eventually revealed, like Superman, to be someone exceptional, and the story usually ends on the image of a man and woman united in perfect love.

A third plot, the Quest, centers on the battle of a hero and his companions to reach some far-off, priceless goal. From Homer's "Odyssey" to "Raiders of the Lost Ark," they must face all kinds of ordeals and enemies. But, in the end, the power of darkness is overcome, the treasure secured, the kingdom established. And often again, as Odysseus with his Penelope, we see the hero united with the woman he loves.

Fourth is another type of story based on a journey, Voyage and Return. The heroes or heroines drop out of their familiar world into an abnormal world. Its strangeness, at first exhilarating, gradually turns to nightmare until, in a final thrilling escape, they return to where they began, like Dorothy returning from Oz, Robinson Crusoe from his island, Scarlett O'Hara returning to Tara.