Story Types: Enlightenment

Definition:
An Enlightenment story type starts from a place of confusion and misunderstanding.  By exploring, investigating, conversing the heroes eventually gain wisdom, dispel confusion, and attain enlightenment, often leaving the characters better off than when they started.

The heroes often start out with an incomplete or incorrect pictures and may proceed to make bad decisions, which will make things worse for everyone else, and may increase their own confusion. After their initial missteps, the heroes begin to put together the pieces, and may even become alarmed at how wrong they were initially and how far their confusion has spread to others. This alarm may lead them to impulsive actions and additional poor decisions, causing fresh confusion to be injected into the situation with new characters drawn into the net.  This cycle may repeat, each time leading to greater distress.

Eventually, often as a result of a heroic act or event facilitated by diligence and patience, or brilliant insight, or a benevolent act such as forgiveness, the heroes will reach an epiphany and begin to see the truth and dispel the confusion. With clearer understanding of the confusion, the heroes then set about correcting all the difficulty that they caused.

This epiphany also may confer an insight into deeper truths about their lives. Things that they didn't realize were out of balance in their lives may suddenly become much better as deeper mysteries are brought to light.  The lives of the characters don't merely return to the status quo before the misunderstanding, but will actually improve and achieve a higher state of happiness, a higher state of enlightenment.

Modern comedies, particularly romantic comedies, often are Enlightenment stories.  The humor springs from purposeful misunderstanding and the ridiculous situations that arise from it.  Shakespeare's comedies were full of disguise and hidden or mistaken identity which is ultimately revealed after a point has been made and a lesson has been learned.

Unexpectedly, detective and mystery stories often fall into this type as well.  The detective enters a scene marred by confusion and disarray.   Through patience and inquiry, but not without some early missteps and red herrings,  the hero eventually is able to untangle the confusion and restore society  to order.

Components:
Heroes: Unlike other story types that focus on a single protagonist, Enlightenment stories often have multiple protagonists creating intertwined webs of confusion.  For Comedies, that could be the two partners in a relationship, or multiple relationships that are often intertwined.  For mysteries, there could be the detective and the victim, or the detective and the villain, or the detective and his foil, or the detective an his agent: creating and dispelling the darkness.

Setting: The setting is often unusual in some way; often in a way that increases the chance of misunderstanding.  The heroes may initially have difficulty navigating through the setting long before they have any hope of addressing the misunderstanding.

Expect green worlds and fantasy-like environments where rules are turned on their heads and normal societal conventions don't apply.  Servants become equal to their masters, and strict rules of behavior are abandoned.   This may actually facilitate an understanding that could never be achieved if social niceties were to be preserved.  For modern stories, look for tropical resorts, cruise ships, or larger-than-life big cities.  Alternatively, the fantasy world could be a dark, film-noir setting, or could cross class boundaries either to glamorous high society, or a remote subsistence existence.  

Conflict and Development:  the conflict is often simple, initially, but becomes exponentially more complicated as the story progresses.  This may be as a result of the characters' misguided efforts to extricate themselves from the situation, or it could be that the apparently superficial problem is revealed to be increasingly complex as the story develops.

Conflicts revolve around balance;  something is out of balance in the natural or social order and must be put right.  There is a sense that the problem that the main characters are struggling with is representative of a larger assault on society.  The problem may even have grown out of a inherent social problem; the solution will not only restore the heroes but also repair the larger breech as well.  In some stories, the heroes may not be fully restored but the restoration of the larger societal issue justifies their actions.

Resolution:  Resolutions are often sudden and sometimes come from an unexpected quarter.  The problem may become so intricate that it appears impossible to resolve, until some master-stroke untangles it. However, the resolution usually grows from seeds planted earlier in the story.  The solution often grows from the information gathered along the way

With enlightenment stories, the resolution can be quite abrupt.  Once the solution is gained, there is little left to develop, often because the most satisfying solutions bring all the threads together into one comprehensive resolution, after which there is little left to discuss.

On the other hand, the enlightenment resolution may often precede a physical resolution, which will take on the characteristics of a Struggle story type.  This does not convert the entire story to a struggle.

Examples: 
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a classic enlightenment story.
Rather than following a single heroic protagonist, multiple heroes are caught in an increasing web of confusion, including the two young couples, Titania and Oberon, and Theseus and Hippolyta. While each of these couples don't have equal stature in the story, they each become entangled in some way and require extrication.

The setting, in typical fashion, starts in ancient Greece, and from there moves into a greenworld of the enchanted forest, the realm of faeries.  And, as Helena remarks, undergoes the typical casting aside of normal social rules: "Run where you will, the story will be changed: Apollo flees and Daphne holds the chase. The dove pursues the griffin."  Helena herself realizes that everything has been turned upside down.  And this is true even for the faeries, with Oberon and Titania at odds with each other and servant Puck uses his enchantment on Queen Titania showing an inversion of the regal hierarchy.

The conflict seems simple at the beginning, a typical love triangle where a girl loves a boy who loves someone else.  But as Puck becomes involved, we see these complications multiply.  Even as he ostensibly tries to "correct"  the situation, he makes things worse.

Oberon to Puck: This is thy negligence!

But even as we see the young lovers caught up in Puck's mischief, we also see the unnatural authority that a father has over his daughter, and we see the struggles between the king and queen of Faerie, each of which has a hand in the current conflict.

The resolution is also typically abrupt, with Puck fixing it all, and Theseus giving approval.  The result is marriages all round the next day.  What cupid has put wrong, Oberon can put right, and what Athenian law has allowed, Athenian law in the form of Theseus can correct.

At the end of the story, we return to Athens and through the wedding celebration see that everything has been put right not only with our own society but also that of Faerie.



Move over, Darling.   Doris Day, James Garner.   Doris Day, as Mrs. Arden is lost at sea when her plane crashes.  After 5 years on a deserted island, she is rescued by the navy and returns to Los Angeles to discover that her husband has just re-married.  He finds it awkward to tell his new bride the news.

Mr. Arden:  Look, I'll explain.  It's really a very simple situation.  You see, my wife... my bride..."
Mrs. Arden:  What my husband is trying to tell you is that he has two wives"
Manager: I don't care if he has 10 wives.  While he is in this hotel, he will have only one wife:  his first wife.   His second wife?
Mr Arden:  You're confused.
Manager:  Yes!
Mr Arden:  Look I can explain...
Mrs Arden:  You do that, darling...  First to him, and then to her.

After being on a deserted island for 5 years, Mrs Arden is initially confused by the society she returns to, from the cost of a pay phone, to meeting her own children who don't recognize her, to finding that her husband has re-married.  On top of all this, her husband seems to have a great deal of trouble informing his new bride that she really hasn't married him as she thought she had.  This leaves Mrs Arden in even greater confusion, with suspicions that her husband doesn't really love her any longer.

Mr Arden achieves his own confusion in the juxtaposition of his happiness at seeing his lost wife, with his hesitance of causing pain and unhappiness to his new wife, a person for whom he has genuine feelings.  The bride on the night of her honeymoon is confused in turn by her new husband's sudden aloofness.  In Mr. Arden's hesitance to hurt anyone, he instead makes everything much worse for everyone.

Later, Mrs. Arden reveals that she wasn't entirely alone on that deserted island, but there was a man there with her.  Then, things begin to get complicated.  And there's a car chase.


Twelfth Night. Viola is shipwrecked on a desolate shore, believing her twin brother to have been killed in the crash.  Disguising herself as a man, she is employed by the local Duke to woo the Lady Olivia, who falls in love with Viola instead.  Later, her brother, rescued by a sailor, reappears to take Viola's place as the object of Olivia's affections, leaving her free to return to her true persona and wed the duke.

Viola: My master loves her dearly,

And I, poor monster, fond as much on him,

And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.

What will become of this?
...
 “O time, thou must untangle this, not I.
It is too hard a knot for me t'untie.”

"That's what I like about you, Roger.  No matter what calamity befalls your fellow man, you're still able to laugh about it."

"Eat...  You need strength to suffer."