Narrative Theory

Narrative Structure

Vladimir Propp

When we watched The Shining in class we talked about different critics who talk about the different parts to the narrative structure. One of the critics we looked at was Vladimir Propp, who talks about the characters within a film. The character roles he identified are; The Villain, The Hero, The Donor - who provides the object, The helper who aids the hero, The princess - who is usually classed as a final girl in horror films. In the Shining we come across a lot of these characters. The villain we see is Jack when he starts acting strangely and at the end he tries to kill his own family. The helper which aids the hero is Wendy but it could also be Danny. The final girl in the film is Wendy as she tries to fight jack off which works. The hero and victims in this are Wendy and Danny also as they both get injured and both get away and fight the villain.

Claude Levi-Strauss

Another critic we have looked at is Levi-Strauss who looked at narrative structure in terms of binary oppositions. Binary opposition are just opposite values like Good and Evil. But then he looked deeper into different arrangements of themes. For a Horror film such as The Shining the binary oppositions could be Good/Evil and maybe Normal/Strange.