The Library of All Stories: Purgatory, Therapy and Character Arcs in Dante and in Great Expectations, One Hour Photo, The Third Man and Sunrise, in Camus’ Novel The Fall, and in Edgar Allen’s Poe’s Short Stories

Abstract

This chapter analyzes Hellish, Purgatorial and Heavenly spaces by examining many different narrative spaces that all represent a protagonist’s personal Hell (an endpoint of negative outcomes after which a character has no character arc change). Through comparing Camus’ The Fall to the film One Hour Photo, we distinguish Active from Passive characters, then make the different distinction between Active and Passive hells. A typology of framing techniques is proposed that reveals how a character’s struggle is realized spatially in the Mis-En-Scene of a film or television show. This shows how framing can link many otherwise disparate elements in a film to communicate deep empathetic aspects of a character’s relationship to her space: this is illustrated in the film One Hour Photo. We then use these tools to examine Poe’s Dantean short stories, Murnau’s film Sunrise, and the Dantean Spaces of The Third Man.