The Eternal Dramatic Situations

Georges Polti’s Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations

“Gozzi maintained that there can be but thirty-six tragic situations. Schiller took great pains to find more, but he was unable to find even so many as Gozzi.” — Goethe, as quoted in Georges Polti’s The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations

The Pattern Beneath the Plot

Published in French in 1895, Georges Polti’s Les trente-six situations dramatiques gathers recurring forms of human conflict into thirty-six dramatic situations. Polti read Greek drama, classical and contemporary French literature, and a smaller group of works from beyond France. He presented his work as a continuation of Carlo Gozzi’s earlier claim that the field of tragedy could be reduced to thirty-six fundamental situations.

Polti’s list is not a catalogue of complete plots. Each situation is a charged arrangement of persons, desires, obligations, dangers, and revelations: a seeker before a gate, a fugitive under pursuit, a family divided by vengeance, a lover brought before a taboo. A single story may contain several situations, and one situation may appear in tragedy, romance, myth, scripture, or modern fiction.

In the Library, the list is best held as a map of recurring dramatic knots. It does not close the field of story; it names some of the enduring pressures through which story takes form.

The Thirty-Six Situations

1. Supplication. A persecutor, a suppliant, and an authority whose decision remains uncertain. A threatened person appeals for deliverance; an intercessor may plead on another’s behalf, as Esther comes before the king for her people. The deciding power may be a person or the peril already held over the suppliant.
2. Deliverance. An unfortunate person, a threatener, and a rescuer. Punishment or danger is about to fall, but another intervenes. Examples: Iphigenia in Tauris, Deliverance, and Superman (1941).
3. Crime pursued by vengeance. A criminal and an avenger. Where ordinary justice does not reach the crime, an avenger seeks to exact it. Example: The Count of Monte Cristo.
4. Vengeance taken for kin upon kin. A guilty kinsman, an avenging kinsman, and the remembered victim to whom both are related. The wound becomes a conflict within the family. Example: Hamlet.
5. Pursuit. Punishment and a fugitive. A person flees the consequence of a deed, often through a conflict that has been misunderstood. Examples: Les Misérables and The Fugitive.
6. Disaster. A vanquished power and either a victorious enemy or a messenger. A ruler or great power falls through defeat, or through the arrival of news that makes defeat irreversible. Example: Agamemnon.
7. Falling prey to cruelty or misfortune. An unfortunate person and either a master or an impersonal misfortune. The sufferer is overwhelmed by cruelty, catastrophe, or fate. Example: Job.
8. Revolt. A tyrant and a conspirator. A harsh power is met by an organized act of defiance. Example: Julius Caesar.
9. Daring enterprise. A bold leader, a desired object, and an adversary. The leader attempts a perilous seizure or quest against resistance. Examples: Queste del Saint Graal, The Lord of the Rings, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
10. Abduction. An abductor, the abducted person, and a guardian. Someone is taken away from the protection or claim of another. Example: Helen of Troy.
11. The enigma. A problem, an interrogator, and a seeker. A riddle confronts the seeker, and its answer bears upon the seeker’s destiny or power. Example: Oedipus and the Sphinx.
12. Obtaining. A solicitor and a resisting adversary, or an arbitrator and opposed claimants. A desired thing is withheld, contested, or awarded between rivals. Example: the Apple of Discord.
13. Enmity of kin. A malevolent kinsman and a hated—or mutually hating—kinsman. Conflict is born within the bonds of family. Example: As You Like It.
14. Rivalry of kin. A preferred kinsman, a rejected kinsman, and the object of rivalry. One relative is chosen while another is displaced. Example: Wuthering Heights.
15. Murderous adultery. Two adulterers and a betrayed spouse. The illicit pair conspires against the one wronged by their union. Examples: Clytemnestra and Aegisthus; Double Indemnity.
16. Madness. A mad person and a victim. Disorder of mind leads to a grievous wrong. Example: The Shining.
17. Fatal imprudence. An imprudent person and either a victim or an object lost. Neglect, ignorance, or rashness brings injury or irreparable loss. Example: Kris Kelvin and his wife in Solaris.
18. Involuntary crimes of love. A lover, a beloved, and a revealer. The lovers unknowingly violate a taboo, and the concealed truth is disclosed. Example: Oedipus and Jocasta, with the messenger from Corinth.
19. Slaying of kin unrecognized. A slayer and an unrecognized victim. The killing occurs before the bond of kinship is known. Example: Oedipus and Laius.
20. Self-sacrifice for an ideal. A hero, an ideal, and a creditor or a person or thing surrendered. The hero gives up what is precious under the claim of a higher principle.
21. Self-sacrifice for kin. A hero, a kinsman, and a creditor or a person or thing surrendered. What is precious is yielded for the sake of a family bond.
22. All sacrificed for passion. A lover, the object of a fatal passion, and the person or thing sacrificed. The lover gives everything to passion, only for the desired object to be lost forever. Example: Breaking Bad.
23. Necessity of sacrificing loved ones. A hero, a beloved victim, and the necessity that demands the sacrifice. The hero wrongs or relinquishes the beloved under an inescapable command. Example: the Binding of Isaac.
24. Rivalry of superior and inferior. A superior rival, an inferior rival, and the object of rivalry. The apparently lesser figure overcomes the greater and wins what both seek. Example: Godzilla vs. Kong.
25. Adultery. Two adulterers and a deceived spouse. The illicit union turns against the person betrayed by it. Example: Brothers (2009).
26. Crimes of love. A lover and a beloved. Love itself crosses a taboo and becomes the source of the transgression. Example: Siegmund and Sieglinde in Die Walküre.
27. Discovery of the dishonour of a loved one. A discoverer and a guilty one. Someone learns of a beloved person’s wrongdoing and must face its consequence.
28. Obstacles to love. Two lovers and an obstacle. The lovers are joined in desire but divided by a force that bars their union. Example: Romeo and Juliet.
29. An enemy loved. A lover, a beloved enemy, and a hater. Affection and hostility converge upon the same figure, dividing those bound within the conflict.
30. Ambition. An ambitious person, a coveted thing, and an adversary. Desire for advancement or possession places the seeker against resistance. Example: Macbeth.
31. Conflict with a god. A mortal and an immortal. Human will enters into open contest with a divine or superhuman power.
32. Mistaken jealousy. A jealous person, the object of possession, a supposed accomplice, and the cause or author of the mistake. Error breeds jealousy and turns the jealous person against an imagined rival.
33. Erroneous judgment. A mistaken person, a victim of the mistake, its cause or author, and the guilty one. Judgment falls upon the innocent when it properly belongs to another.
34. Remorse. A culprit, a victim or sin, and an interrogator. Having committed the wrong, the culprit is pressed to reckon with it. Examples: The Bourne Supremacy and Memento.
35. Recovery of a lost one. A seeker and the one found. The drama rests upon the movement from absence toward reunion. Examples: A Very Long Engagement and Finding Nemo.
36. Loss of loved ones. A slain kinsman, a kinsman who witnesses the loss, and an executioner. The killing is defined by the witness’s bond to the one who falls. Examples: Braveheart and Gladiator.

How to Read the List

A situation names the pressure point of a story, not the story in its entirety. Hamlet, for instance, can be read through vengeance, kinship, enigma, madness, remorse, and erroneous judgment at once. The value of Polti’s scheme lies in the questions it gives the reader or writer: Who is threatened? What is owed? What is hidden? What must be sacrificed? Who stands between desire and its fulfillment?

For a wider map of plot types, story shapes, and narrative sequences, see Common Plot Types and Structures.

Legacy and Limits

Polti’s book endured as a tool for dramatists, storytellers, and writers seeking to recognize the ancient tensions beneath particular stories. George Pierce Baker engaged the thirty-six situations in Dramatic Technique, and later scholarship has examined Polti’s relevance to Christina Stead’s analytical novel writing.