Adelphiasoplot
Nine Plots in Casablanca: Georg Polti Plots or Storylines - The 36 Dramatic or Tragic Situations
Abstract
Wise Women Discuss—Plot!
Nine Plots in Casablanca
How many plots can be discerned in dramatic fiction? Aristotle merely distinguished simple and complex tragedies:
- in the simple the superiority remains with the same side until the end—there is no change of fortune or surprises
- in the complex, there are changes of fortune and surprises as power changes.
Slightly more complex is the idea of three types of dramas: someone struggling with nature, someone struggling with someone else, and someone struggling with their own personality.
Yet people have long thought that there are only seven basic dramatic plots. Perhaps Gerard de Nerval began the idea of seven by associating each of the seven capital sins with a plot. He tried to categorise dramatic situations based on the deadly sins but was obliged to eliminate two from the start, gluttony and sloth, as being hardly the stuff of drama, and nearly had to lose lust.
Nevertheless the rumour that there were very few different plots in the world persisted. Rory Johnston has claimed in the London Guardian that his father, the Irish playwright, Denis Johnston, detected just eight dramatic plots. They can appear as tragedy, comedy, farce,and be inverted but always form the basis of all captivating writing.
A fascinating rejoinder, by Robert Blake, later showed that all of Denis Johnston's plots and one more could be seen in the film, Casablanca. So the mysterious seven plots expanded to eight then nine and finally condensed to one!
Blake's nine plots of Casablanca are:
Cinderella
Unrecognised virtue at last recognised; the hero doesn't have to be a girl, it does not have to be a love story—the Tortoise and the Hare is the same plot. The essence is that Good is despised but recognised in the end—something we all want to believe. In Casablanca, Rick, the expatriot bar owner in Morocco, is a drunken cynic, but in the end his goodness emerges.
Achilles
The fatal flaw; the basis of all classical tragedy, though it can also be comic, as in many farces. In Casablanca, Rick is the fatally flawed hero who spends much of the drama sulking, but is forced into selfless action by Elsa, the woman he loves.
Faust
The debt that must be paid, the fate that catches up with us sooner or later. In Casablanca, Rick has everything but the woman he loves, but he loses it all for her sake.
Tristan
The standard triangular plot of two women and a man or two men and a woman. In Casablanca, heroic Rick (Tristan) loves Elsa (Isolde) but she is already married to solid but unexciting Victor Lazlo (King Mark).
Circe
The spider and the fly; Othello, and The Barretts of Wimpole Street. In Casablanca, Elsa's wiles lure Rick into helping her only to destroy him.
Romeo and Juliet
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy either finds or does not find girl—it does not matter which. In Casablanca, Rick had loved Elsa in Paris but had lost her; in Morocco, they are reunited but are parted again.
Orpheus
The gift that is taken away. The action may be based on the tragedy of the loss itself as in Juno and the Paycock, or based on the search following the loss as in Jason and the Golden Fleece. In Casablanca, the gift is both concrete and abstract. A letter of transit allowing Rick to return to the USA is given to Lazlo. Rick's personal happiness is also given up to save the world for democracy.
The Irrepressible Hero
As in Harvey filmed with James Stewart. In Casablanca, Rick is the hero who cannot be kept down.
The Wandering Jew
Robert Blake, whose observations on Casablanca these are, notes that there is a ninth type, the Wandering Jew (Rick), the persecuted traveller who will never return home.
Thus there is only one plot not nine—Casablanca!
