Literature Review

Most of the comments that my TA, Barbara, sent along with my grade for this literature review were positive. She did criticize me, however, for bring too much of a structuralist in my analysis. This criticism was justified, and despite giving me an A, she suggested that I consider the implementation of post structuralism, deconstruction, the avant-garde, etc. for the future. I will do that, but for now, I'm posting this assignment in its original, structuralist form. Maybe structuralism doesn't have to be the foundation of everyone's study of storytelling (as I seem to suggest), but I do think it is the best possible foundation for my study. Besides, for non-structuralist analysis, I would need to review non-structuralist resources. And as you'll read below, most of the sources that I selected below (exception of Freud) are meant for structuralists. Enjoy!

The Fundamentals of Story

A Literature Review by George Saad

The Necessity of a Two-Fold Analysis

Storytelling is inherently linked to psychological theory. Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud had two different but equally significant methods for evaluating unconscious desire, both of which are useful in the analysis of storytelling. Jung’s approach employs archetypes - psychological models for human personality and behavior, and Freud’s approach focuses on wish fulfillment – a concept that links unconscious desires to sexuality.

Stories typically follow triadic structure. That is to say, stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Screenwriters generally divide these three phases into three acts, and many of the resources used for this assignment are written specifically to discuss the three-act structure of films. However, it is important to recognize that the logic behind the three-act structure is the same as the logic that explains why all stories have a beginning, middle, and end. This logic involves a necessity for a transformation of consciousness for the hero of the story that is relevant to his/her desires. In this way, the triadic structure of the story is related to the theories of unconscious desire employed by Jung and Freud.

Joseph Campbell’s work of comparative mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is the most comprehensive and historically significant discussion of patterns in mythology ever written. Campbell shows that the journey of the hero can be outlined and described in a predictable path that integrates psychological models of unconscious desire with the triadic form of the story. His work is comprehensive and difficult to understand. Because Campbell’s work is dense and difficult, there are many secondary sources available that illuminate, analyze, and explain Campbell’s work. These sources also build on Campbell’s work and contribute to the discussion. In many cases, these secondary sources are effective in applying Campbell’s concepts to modern stories, mainly films. This literature review offers a two-fold analysis of storytelling that can prove useful to anyone interested in making a career of storytelling.

Storytelling and the Unconscious

Campbell was a student of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, whose work with archetypes had a powerful influence on The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Archetypes are constantly repeating characters within the mind and dreams of human beings. They are characters that represent human personality and desire and explain motivation for human actions (Goldgar 476). For this reason, archetypes are relevant to storytelling and mythology. Archetypes explain why the characters in a story act the way they do and more importantly, why audiences react to the character’s actions in the manner that they do. Campbell and Jung agree that humans are aware of archetypes at an unconscious level.

In a wonderful article entitled “The Literary Archetype: Some Reconsiderations,” Lauriat Lane explains that defining archetypes can be complex and problematic. This article is recommended as a general and comprehensive overview of the concept of the archetype. Lane discusses the distinction Jung recognized between introversive writers (who remain aware that their writing serves the purpose of the author) and extravertive writers (who allow their work of writing to take a mind of its own). According to Lane, this distinction is central to the problem of defining the archetype because of the unconscious origination of the story in extravertive writing.

Lane’s emphasis on the inconsistent definition of the archetype among thinkers shows that one must be careful not to assume that Campbell’s model for the archetype follows everything that Jung believed. The number of possible archetypes is as limitless as the dreams that the mind creates, and Jung placed most of his focus on five main archetypes. Campbell acknowledged these five archetypes while adding others and altering some. As the title suggests, Carol S. Pearson divides the archetypes into six main categories in her book: The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By. Continued research could be conducted in terms of determining the most useful way of categorizing the archetypes, but the complexity of human nature and limitless possibilities for characters in dreams (where archetypes originate) could make such research futile. What is important is to understand that archetypes exist in numerous forms, any of which can be linked to the natural, unconscious desires of humans and fictional characters alike.

A contemporary of Jung was Austrian physician, Sigmund Freud, who evaluated unconscious desires not in terms of archetypes, but rather in relation to wish fulfillment. Freud asserts that the root of conscious desires is repressed sexuality and believes that these desires are established during a person’s childhood and maintained through adolescence and into adulthood. In one example, Freud explains that the male child sexually desires his mother, and has contempt for his father because the father is a dominating force that interferes with the child’s relationship with his mother. Freud named this theory the Oedipus Complex, after the Greek King who killed his father and married his mother. The Oedipus Complex is one case of the manifestation of wish fulfillment for a person (Galdston 322). Of course, most people don’t actually kill their father out of jealousy or marry their mother out of love. However, hatred for people like their father and love for people like their mother may be a result of an Oedipal Complex, a form of unconscious desire. According to Freud, a dominating unconscious desire like the Oedipus Complex shapes the reasons by which a storyteller writes a story, and unconscious desires of the audience affect their reaction to the story.[1]

In “Freud and the Analysis of Poetry,” Kenneth Burke offers a correction to this belief of Freud. Burke states that the poem should be analyzed in terms of multiple unconscious motives, rather than a single dominating one. Burke points out that Freud oversimplifies the motives of storyteller and in doing so misleads prospective storytellers in terms of answering the question of why to tell stories. By illustrating the complexity of the function of storytelling, Burke is successful in correcting Freud’s application of unconscious desires to storytelling, and perhaps more significantly, he provides inspiration for one to be an artist.

Some might connect more with Jung’s approach to unconscious desire, and others might connect more with that of Freud. Either way, Blake Snyder explains that one can evaluate an idea for a potential story and easily determine whether the idea will resonate with the unconscious desires of an audience by asking one simply question. In Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, Blake Snyder implores writers to ask themselves if their story is primal? A primal story, as Snyder explains, translates to humans at their most basic form, as cavemen. That is to say, primal stories reflect the natural impulse of humans. Cavemen understand love, and the desire to protect loved ones. Cavemen understand fear, and the desire to escape pain and suffering. If a story is primal, a caveman will be able to connect with the issues that it presents, and if a caveman can do that, anyone can. Snyder explains that the best stories in the world are always primal because anyone can relate to them.

The Triadic Structure of the Story

The primal question of a story is the conflict, the problem that the story addresses as its central theme. The triadic structure of the story is a reflection of the process of problem solving. First, a problem must be identified. Second, attempts to solve the problem must be carried out. Finally, a resolution to the problem is reached. In this sense a story could be about any sort of problem. However, it is important to note that more interesting stories have complex problems without obvious solutions.

Campbell discusses the triadic structure in terms of the hero’s departure, initiation, and return. The hero is introduced in a mundane, ordinary world and presented with a problem. The hero recognizes this problem as one that affects not just him, but humanity as a whole. In some cases, the hero initially refuses his call to solve this problem before a mentor convinces him to do so. A dramatic moment in the story occurs when the hero determines that he is going to solve the problem that he has been introduced to. This moment involves a transformation of consciousness for the hero, and his life can never be the same. The hero crosses his first threshold and enters a new world where he faces many obstacles. The hero will struggle with these challenges and hit rock bottom, doubting both himself and the ideals in which he is fighting for, before seizing the courage to overcome his ultimate challenge. After doing so, he will return to his home world, bringing an elixir with him. This elixir can be a physical item representing the lessons he has learned, or it can simply be the knowledge he has gained that allowed him to have a positive influence on both worlds. Either way, the elixir represents a second transformation of consciousness for the hero, the decision to return home. Now that the hero has solved his problem and returned from his adventure, he must become comfortable with the new person he has become. The cycle of death and rebirth is complete, with the child dying and returning as a self-responsible adult.

When applying Campbell’s monomyth to screenwriting in particular, one must take particular notice of the two transformations of consciousness, as those moments will be significant scenes in the film. Renowned screenwriter Syd Field discusses the two major decisions of the hero at great length in his book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. Field refers to the decisions as “plot point 1” and “plot point 2” and states that the plot points occur at the act breaks of the film. In other words, the plot points are the markers that one can use to separate the beginning of the story from the middle and the middle of the story from the end. Field’s Screenwriting Workshop DVD is extremely useful in articulating how plot point 1 and plot point 2 oppose each other. Whatever action the hero decides to make at plot point 1 is effectively reversed by his decision at plot point 2.

Of course, the two plot points are not the only significant moments of a film/story. One good source for a checklist to ensure that your story hits all the required story points with sufficient dramatization is Linda Seger’s Making a Good Script Great. Seger points out that the introduction of a problem occurs in a film at an inciting incident, an event that sets the story in motion. After the inciting incident the hero must go through a period of debate, where he decides what to do, and only after the debate does he make the decision of plot point 1 that moves the story into act two.

Act two of the story involves facing obstacle after obstacle, but at Seger points out, these obstacles should not be confronted in a random order. Act two of the story is about character growth for the hero. As a result, the obstacles should get progressively more difficult as the second act continues. Eventually, the obstacles become so overwhelming that the hero loses all hope. The lessons that he has learned on his journey, however, will allow him to regain hope, and in doing so he is prepared to make the decision of plot point two that moves the story into act three.

It is important not to confuse plot point two of a story with the climax of that story. Plot point two occurs when the hero has made the decision to face the ultimate challenge, the climax of the story occurs when the hero actually faces that challenge. In his second book, Save the Cat Goes to the Movies, Blake Snyder breaks down several notable films by their three act structure. One film that Snyder is discusses was my favorite film growing up, Disney’s The Lion King. Snyder correctly points out that the second plot point of The Lion King occurs when Simba tells Nala, Timon, and Pumba that it is time for him to return to Pride Rock and become King. The climax, however, is when Simba actually fights and defeats Scar, and in doing so becomes King.

The method that Snyder employs of looking at notable films and identifying the critical scenes of each is an extremely useful exercise. After all, it is this same basic method that allowed Joseph Campbell to identify the similar elements of all stories and establish the monomyth in the first place. Snyder mentions in his writing that he has studied Campbell at great length, and he credits Campbell as being the mind that helped him develop a true understanding of the structure of story.

Another useful source for employing this methodology is Thomas Pope’s Good Scripts Bad Scripts: Learning the Craft of Screenwriting Through 25 of the Best and Worst Films in History. It may be fairly obvious that studying the best scripts/stories in history can help a screenwriter learn the structure of stories and thus be able to create their own story that is good. What is not as obvious, however, is that looking at historically bad scripts can be just as useful to screenwriters because it shows what not to do, what doesn’t work, and why it doesn’t work. The answer to what works and doesn’t work, of course, involves the question of primality/primalcy/primalness (none of which are real words) that Snyder raises. Pope’s examples are, like Snyder’s, useful exercises for a person that wants to get a firm grasp on the art of storytelling.

One final resource related to the structure of the story is Robert McKee’s creatively named book: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. McKee is a former Fulbright scholar who has worked as a screenwriter for several television shows and feature films in addition to working as a consultant for film production companies. I have yet to read a screenwriting book that does not mention or credit McKee in some way, and I believe that in many ways McKee does for screenwriting with Story what Joseph Campbell did for storytelling as a whole with The Hero with a Thousand Faces. That is to say, McKee outlines the path of the journey for the film hero in a way that can be useful and understandable for anyone that cares to watch the film.

Relevance to Future Work

I have argued in this review that there is nothing new for academics to learn in terms of the utility of storytelling and the structure of the story. The work of Jung, Freud, Campbell, McKee, Field, and many others has already established everything we will ever need to know about storytelling. I have also argued that the very practice of reviewing the work of the thinkers previously mentioned and thinking about the logic behind the theories they present is invaluable experience for a storyteller. If what Jung says about archetypes is true, it must be possible for a person to understand the structure of the story without such research because the archetypes by their nature resonate with the mind naturally at an unconscious level. That said, this research is a useful exercise because to a degree, it brings the archetypes to a conscious level. Reading and thinking about the structure of stories, the fact that all stories revolve around the problem, and the idea that all problems need to be solved is an exercise in introspection. The student of storytelling uses the mind’s eye to see the unconscious desires and thoughts that shape their reactions to stories, heroes, legends, and myths.

In a future project within this program, I want to create an original story about a hero that follows the monomyth. I want this hero to be universally relatable, and I want his journey to be a reflection of the struggles and dilemmas that people are forced to deal with in the present day. In a time of war and economic recession, I’m sure that deciding on a primal problem, a dramatic need for my hero that is relatable, is an accomplishable task. However, I never would have properly identified this task as that which is at hand for me in my studies without a review of the literatures cited in this article. I still don’t know what the hero of my story will look like, what he will believe in, or even if he will be a he, but I understand that the possibilities are limitless and the way to approach this issue involves the advice that Joseph Campbell discusses in his conversation with Bill Moyers called The Power of Myth. Campbell says to “follow your bliss.” In doing so, he says, you will realize a healthy balance and harmony that you might think is only reserved for heroes in stories.

Works Cited

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton University Press, 1949).

Lauriat Lane, “The Literary Archetype: Some Reconsiderations,” The Journal of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Dec., 1954), pp. 226-232. Stable URL:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/425915

Kenneth Burke, “Freud-And the Analysis of Poetry,” The American Journal of Sociology,

Vol. 45, No. 3 (Nov., 1939), pp. 391-417. Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2769854

Harry Goldgar, “Review: Jung and the Freudians,” The Hudson Review, Vol. 41, No. 3

(Autumn, 1988), pp. 575-580. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3851502

Iago Galdston, “Sigmund Freud: A Critical Summary and Review,” Isis, Vol. 40, No. 4

(Nov., 1949), pp. 316-327. Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf

of The History of Science. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/226366.

Blake Snyder, Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need (Michael

Wiese Productions, 2005).

Blake Snyder, Save the Cat Goes to the Movies (Michael Wiese Productions, 2007).

Christropher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Third Edition

(Michael Wiese Productions, 2007).

Syd Field, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (Delta Publishers, 2005).

Robert McKee, Story: Substance Structure, Style, and Principles of Screenwriting (Harper

Entertainment, 1997).

Linda Seger, Making a Good Script Great, Second Edition (Samuel French Trade, 1994).

Thomas Pope, Good Scripts Bad Scripts: Learning the Craft of Screenwriting Through 25 of

the Best and Worst Films in History (Three Rivers Press, 1998).

Carol S. Pearson, The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By (Harper One Publishing,

1998).

Syd Field’s Screenwriting Workshop DVD Learning Series (Harley’s House Productions,

1999).

Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth: A Conversation with Bill Moyers (Apostrophe S.

Productions, 1988).

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[1] Freud is actually referring specifically to poetry in his discussion, but the ideas he presents are generalized sufficiently to be applicable to other forms of storytelling.