Narrative Theories

We applied the theories and ideas on narrative from the theorists Todorov, Propp, Strauss and Bordwell & Thompson to The Shining (1980).

Tzvetan Todrov is a Franco-Bulgarian philsopher, born in 1939. Todorov's theory was that every story began with an equilibrum; normality for the hero, which is then distrupted by an changing event which starts a chain reaction of events. The hero has to go on a quest or misssion to solve it and restore the world or diegesis to normality. Normally, the story ends with a reuniting of the hero with the heroine and a wedding. Normally, the new equilibrum is better than before.

In The Shining, Todorov's theory of the structure of the narrayive can be appiled. The normality is the family life; Danny, Wendy and Jack. The distruption is the insanity or madness that is "consuming" or "possessing" Jack. Is it the hotel that is evil and changing Jack? The pathway to the new equilibrum is Wendy and Danny trying to escape Jack. However, even though Jack is trying to kill them they are reunited and escape the hotel. Jack is frozen to death.

Vladimir Propp was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1895. he was an Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. Looking at 100s of different folk tales, he identified 8 key character roles and 31 narrative functions.

The 8 character roles are:

• The Villian(s)
• The Hero
• The Donor - who provides an object with an magical quality
• The Helper
• The Princess (who sought for help) - reward for the hero and object of the villian's scheme
•  Her Father - who rewards the hero
• The Dispatcher - sends the hero on their way
• The False Hero

He also said that each character type has an important function within the narrative. In The Shining we can appily his theory to the charcters.

• Jack is the villian as he tries to kill is family, but at the same time you could argue that the hotel itself is evil as it makes Jack go insane. 
• The Donor is the chef as he gives the warning that you shouldn't enter room 237. Along, with Tony, the voice in Danny's head, he helps out by going to save the family. Sadly he ends up dead.
• Danny and Wendy are both the heroes and victims of the film as they are both being chased by Jack, who is trying to kill them but defeat Jack and escape. Along with these two, Tony is also a hero as he warns Danny that Jack is out to murder them.    

Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology". He looked at narrative in terms of binary oppositions. In this film there is:

The hotel in situated in the mountains. It's
very issolated.

• Past and Present
• Cause and Effect
• Good and Evil
• Natural and Supernatural
• Normal and Abnormal
• Community and Issolation
• Sanity and Madness

The image of the girls isn't real. It is the past. The girls
were murdered by their father, 10 years ago.

The hotel is in the mountains and is closed making it very issolated from anyone; Wendy has use the radio to contact the police. The hotel isn't quite sure where it is in time as their of visions from 1920s and 70s mixed into the present day making time seem confused.



David Bordwell  is an American film theorist and film critic. He works with his wife, Kristin Thompson who is also a film theorist and author whose research interests include the close formal analysis of films, the history of film styles, and "quality television", a genre akin to art film.

Their theory is that narrative is "a chain of cause and effect occuring in time and space." The plot of The Shining is over the course of 6 months, which would make the film very long if we saw every single second of the 6 month so like all films time is taken out in chunks. This is called the Elipsis of time. 

In The Shining duration of time varies; screen duration is 115 minutes, plot duration is 6 months while the story duration is 60 years. Time seems to be confused and mixed up with bits of the past appearing in the present. It seems there's a collapse in time.

A good example of this is the present and past of both Jack and Grady. Grady killed his family in 1970 but however, the apiration or vision of him seems to be from the 1930s. Confused. Well so was the audience. Jack in the present is from 1980, yet the photo at the end shows Jack at the 4th of July ball at the hotel in 1921.

It is very confusing. I have a little theory about Jack. In the bathroom Grady tells Jack "your the caretaker. You've ALWAYS been the caretaker." It seems to me that some how Jack was the caretaker back in the 20s. I might b
Possibly, the intertiles of 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday' etc are a countdown to the anniversary of the murders commited 10 years earlier by Grady.

I personally believe that Thompson and Bordwell's theory is best way for us to understand the narrative structure of The Shining as it shows that the story is spread over a long peorid of time in which nothing is for certain because time is mixed up.