Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.
Plot Type : Voyage and Return
Anticipation Stage
Harry is in a bad way, looking for something to excite him in the boring, bourgeois world. He is usually drunk and lonely. Suddenly, one night, he finds an invisible door to a Magic Theater, and a man gives him a book that turns out to be about him. Things are about to get really wild.
Dream Stage
After meeting Hermine, Harry learns to dance and is introduced to a new world of sensual pleasure. He feels out of place because he's an old fogey, but he still digs it. He embraces his new, jazz-loving and hedonistic lifestyle… and starts to feel pretty awesome about it.
Frustration Stage
In the Magic Theater Harry has a good time, but starts to experience more and more disturbing scenes, like a wolf taming a man and ripping the rabbit to bits.
Nightmare Stage
Harry finally ends up in a room in the Magic Theater where he kills Hermine.
Thrilling Escape and Return
After murdering Hermine, Harry wakes up with Pablo in the Magic Theatre and realizes that it wasn't reality that he was experiencing. He learns that he shouldn't take things so seriously, and that he needs to learn to laugh. No wonder the flower children of the 1960s thought this book was so groovy.