Narrative theories help understand narrative structure by identifying common narrative elements and character roles across different stories. Vladimir Propp analyzed Russian folktales and identified that narratives follow a structure determined by 8 character roles like hero, villain, donor. Propp's theory is applied to Star Wars to show how Luke, Darth Vader and others fit character roles and drive the narrative. While Propp's theory explains many stories, it does not apply to all narratives like Pulp Fiction that uses nonlinear storytelling. Overall, narrative theories provide frameworks to analyze how specific texts employ narrative devices and progress their unique stories.

1. How does narrative theories help us understand narrative structure?
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A narrative is a key part of storytelling; it is an element that everyone does every day
becoming second nature to us and yet it is an element that most people barely even notice.
When an audience engages with TV, cinema or reads a book, they receive narratives that
help uncover a pattern or structure. This enables the audience to make sense of the
experience. Challenging them to think about how different texts work and why the author
or director made certain choices. This essay will focus on why narrative theories help
understand narrative structure. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), Léon: The
Professional (1994) and Spiderman Homecoming (2017) all have a range of narrative
theories used within the scenes to help build their own narrative structure for the film. Key
narrative theorists include Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp, and Claude Levi-Strauss;
Narratological and analytic methods of study will be employed to explore these films.
Starting with Star Wars (1977) as the generic paradigm, this essay will examine the
evolution of the characters on screen. Utilising Propps’s narrative theory, the analysis will
aim to dissect the chosen films to examine how and why this theory helps understand the
narrative structure. Propp states (1968:21),
‘Functions of character serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of
how and by whom they are fulfilled. They constitute the fundamental components of
a tale.’
Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a soviet film theorist born in 1928 in Russia. He analysed
different narrative elements in Russian folk tales to identify the narrative elements in them.
His work helped breakdown the narrative structure in numerous media texts and is even
utilised today. His book morphology of the folktale (1968) has influenced people’s ideas of
folklore but also ‘It decisively shaped contemporary narrative and textual studies and
semiotic theory of all kinds, and some have argued that it gave birth to structuralism.’
(Forrester,2012:8). He also influenced other theorists such as Roland Barthes and Claude
Lévi-Strauss who will go in more about later in this essay. His theory suggests that every
folktale has the same eight characters that follow a certain role in the overall story. This idea
can be utilised to understand the narrative structure of certain films. Propp offers a
definition of the uncanny, as ‘the number of functions known to a fairy tale is limited’

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(Propp, 1968:21). In addition, it is argued that Vladimir Propp’s theory is not fully true as
there a number of films that do not follow his theory. Films such as Pulp Fiction (1997) break
from this tradition. Propp’s theory has caused other filmmakers to create unique stories and
characters to create a different type of narrative structure that this essay will address in
more detail.
Regarding to Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), there has been a lot written on this
film as it’s an extremely popular media text that has a very strong narrative structure
because of its simple storyline that utilises Propps theory of character roles. When you think
of “a hero’s journey” the first filmthat comes to mind is Star Wars with the film being very
fairy tale like, with the opening crawl beginning with “A long time ago in a galaxy far far
away”Star Wars (1977:65 min) like the fairy tale stock phrase “once upon a time” it
introduces a narrative of past events straight away and the themes and characters
represent Propps theory perfectly that each character plays a vital function to the overall
narrative. The filmis an epic space opera in the midst of a galactic war between the rebel
alliance and the galactic empire. Under orders from the villain Darth Vader to hold princess
Leia hostage to help quell the rebellion. A young farm boy called Luke Skywalker and
smuggler Han Solo work together to rescue the beautiful princess, help defeat the empire
and restore peace and freedom to the galaxy. Written and directed by George Lucas an
American filmmaker who has also made films such as America Graffiti (1973) and helped
produce Raider of the lost Ark (1981). It is clear that Lucas drawn inspirations from classic
fairy tales and old film serials like Flash Gordon (1936), The Wizard of Oz (1939) and others,
all have uncanny parallels between American myths and Propp’s folklore model. As stated
by (Lapsley and Westlake,2006:129) ‘Culture is saturated in narrative: myths, legends,
fables, tales, short stories, history, tragedy….’ Lucas also found inspiration from Akira
Kurosawa and Joseph Campbell, gaining ideologies of the samurai seeing imagery of
Japanese culture in the film, for example the light sabre, sword fighting style and Darth
Vader’s mask.
The characters in Star Wars (1977) heavily apply Propp’s theory that all narratives have the
same structure created by the chacrters, believing that the action of characters help shape
the overall narrative structure of the film. In Propp’s analysis on narrative Rick Altman

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defines ‘The only important thing to know is what the characters do; who does something
and how he does it are the questions of secondary importance’ (Altman,2008:6) This is
presented in this film. The first character role is the hero who is usually the main character
of the narrative who is trying to seek something. In this film, Luke Skywalker is the hero as
he seeks to become something greater like a Jedi and to defeat Darth Vader. The villain
character role is Darth Vader a person wanting to rule the galaxy and to defeat the hero
Luke. These two character roles are a pivotal in this film and in all narrative creating a binary
opposition to each character, which will go into more detail later. We associate these
character roles these characters because of the different personalities and context each
chacrters shows us, for example Darth Vader is dressed in all black a colour associated with
death and evil and he usually standing in a colourful sci-fi setting throughout the film
visually making him pop out and to tell the audience he is the villain. The same goes for Luke
as the innocent farm boy that wants something more which the audience can relate to. The
rest of the character roles are the princess, which is princess Leia as being a literal princess,
needs recuing from the empire by the hero. The Donor who provides the hero with some
magical power, which is Obi Wan Kenobi, who provides Luke the lightsabre of a Jedi. The
dispatcher who sends the hero on his mission by proving him with information, in this case
it is the two characters R2D2 and C3PO who holds the message from Leia as well as Kenobi
with the information of the empire and Jedi. The helper who is Han solo and Chewbacca
alongside the droids who aid the hero on his quest. The false hero is the character that
disrupts the hero’s journey in some sort of way, this can again be Han solo who fills in this
role at first. The father who is Darth Vader as he is Luke’s biological dad, information that
we do not learn until later in the film. The functions of characters are mixed and twisted and
this creates a narrative of expected and unexpected. For example, Vader being the villain as
well as being the father creating one of the biggest movie twists of all time that shocked a
lot of people. The purpose of his theory was to show that nearly all narrative structures in
different media texts share the same character roles and that those character roles serve an
important function with in the story. Propp’s theory helps us understand the narrative
structure more because we know which character is who in a fundamental level and what
role they are going to play in the bigger narrative.

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Furthermore, my other chosen films Leon and Spiderman also contextualizes propp’s model
of the eight character roles, and like star wars, it helps to create their own narrative
structure. The hero being Peter Parker and Leon. The villain being the Vulture and Norman
Stansfield, and so on. In addition, it shows that props theory is still relevant and utilised
today as each filmis from a different decade in time, Spiderman homecoming (2017) being
released this year. As I have said before this theory is not fully reliable and true, as other
films such as Pulp Fiction (1997) do not really, follow Propp’s model unlike star wars, which
fits perfectly with it. Since the story of pulp fiction is not a fairy-tale like Star Wars (1977)
and that the narrative is non-linear meaning that the disrupted narrative is out of order not
being in a chronological timeline. With non-linear stories certain functions of propp’s theory
do not fit as well as more than one character can fill in one of the character roles as well as
that more than one character in the movie has multiple character roles in terms of Propp’s
theory. It is stated ‘Instead of treating all narratives as fundamentally identical, we must
recognize that different narrative types operate according to different rules.’
(Altman2008:97) Quentin Tarantino is famous for nonlinear storylines ‘producing substantial
differences among narrative texts.’(Altman.2008:97) that Propp suggests. Other works
include his critically acclaimed film debut Reservoir Dogs (1992) which also has a non-linear
narrative.
Tzvetan Todorov was a Bulgarian- French historian born in in Bulgaria in 1939. He was man
with knowledge in various different fields such as philosophy, semiotics, literally theory, and
such. However, more importantly he was an author who wrote many books and essays
analysing and breaking down narrative. It is stated that ‘Narrative is a way of experiencing a
group of sentences or pictures which together attribute a beginning, middle and end to
something’ (Altman, 2008:6) this definition regards to Todorov’s five steps of narrative
theory. He entails that storylines follow the same five-step pattern. Step 1 is the equilibrium
where the first part of a story is balanced and the characters are content and everything is
how it should be. Step 2 is the disruption where the process of something comes along and
disrupts the equilibrium. Step 3 is realisation where the characters realise the problems and
chaos going on at that moment of the story. Step 4 is attempts to repair the disruption
where they try to repair the damage but fail in their attempts. Finally, Step 5 is resolution,
which is the final plot of the film where the problem has been solved, and equilibrium is

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restored where normality in terms of the film can start again. Todorov also saw underlying
structures to narratives. His idea of equilibrium can be applied to nearly every filmbut not
all films exactly fit perfectly. So that again showing that I think these theories have certain
limitations and are just analysation on the idea of narrative we know today from beginning
of storytelling. Films like Fight Club (1999) do not follow his theory of equilibrium at the
start and end although you can argue that fight club could fit in to the theory, nevertheless
he demonstrates the ‘interconnectivity of event at the beginning with those at the end and
those in between, provides the narrative with temporal axis and casual logic’
(fourie,2001:154).
There is a lot written on Léon: The Professional (1995), especially about is narrative and
genre. (Altman,2008:1) says ‘Where there is no narrative, there is no history’ and like most
Hollywood films it does follow a narrative model like all stories, Syd Field’s idea of the three-
act structure, where one event leads into another. The film can be separated into three
dramatic acts of narrative. I will focus on Todorov’s model and analysis how it contrasts with
Leon. The film was directed by Luc Besson a French film director and is the debut film of
Oscar winning actress Natalie Portman. The protagonist Leon is living in New York City as a
professional hitman and lives in an apartment. His neighbour Mathilda a twelve-year-old girl
who has family problems and is already familiar with the dark reality of life. After her
abusive father and awful mother as well as her siblings, get murdered by crooked DEA agent
Stansfield. Wanting revenge for her brother and being alone, Leon takes her in and teaches
her his methods and ways of being a hitman while an unusual relationship develops
between them. Already from this synopsis, you can see todorov’s model being cooperated
In to the narrative. Genre plays key factory as the filmalso utilizes Nick lacey’s five elements
of genre. Setting, characters, narrative, iconography and style. Narrative and genre are two
key parts that creates each other. (GENRE AND NARRATIVE QUOTE.) Todorov’s theory can
be applied to the Spiderman homecoming as well. There is Equilibrium at the start with
peter getting his foot in at crime fighting trying to become a superhero as well as studying at
high school. The villain causes disruption when the peter run into criminals with high tech
weapons run by the Vulture himself. After his best friend Ned finds out his identity he tries
to restore equilibrium by himself without any help be confronting the villain. Ultimately, he
fails and gets his suit taken away from him by stark. His quest on trying to restore

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equilibrium ends him up at the climax of the film, which the final battle on homecoming
night. In the end, there is resolution as the vulture is behind bars and perter returning to his
regular crime-fighting schedule as Spiderman. The theory itself has been evolved and played
with for instance films like Pulp Fiction (1999) have aspects that have been read in a number
of different ways. In terms of equilibrium, it is shown in a nonlinear path both still in the
structure but splits in different storylines. This is confusing in pulp fictions nonlinear
narrative but aspects of Todorova’s theory do apply to pulp fiction. His model makes the
narrative structure clear and he demonstrates it by telling us each events in a movie lead
into another critical event that builds a narrative structure.
Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in Belgium 1908 and was a French anthropologist. He had
come up with different theories and works that focused on various aspects of humans in
past events as well as structuralism. He argued that all meaning not just narratives rely on
binary oppositions where two sides are at conflict with each other. It is stated that ‘When
two characters are opposed in a binary structure, their symbolic meaning is virtually forced
to be both general and easily accessible because of the simplicity of the difference between
them’ (fourie,2001:152). This can be seen in every movie for example, light and dark, good
and evil, boy and girl, black and white etc. So in a narrative scene (fourie,2001:152) states
‘Indians attacking a white homestead is a concrete metaphorical transformation of
the opposition between nature and culture, and the narrative is an argument.’
Let alone, applying this theory to Léon: The Professional (1995), Levi Strauss’s use of binary
opposition where it uses two opposed elements to come into one. We see a lot of
opposition in this movie, which always shows us the representation of the filmand maybe
foreshadowing future events in the narrative. For example, at the start of the film we see
the phone and knife to a grunt’s head. One is to save his life and one to kill him showing
opposites and tone of the movie. We also see conventional oppositions in action films such
as good vs evil with Leon representing good and Norman representing bad in the point of
view of the film. We also get male and female, young and old, strong and weak, life and
death, and countless of others. The usage of binary opposition can be noticed in my other
chosen films such as Spiderman Homecoming (2017) and Star Wars (1977) with Young vs
old, Pure vs Corrupted, Dark vs Light, Bright Colours vs Dark colour and etc. Furthermore,

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Struss’s theory helps us understand the narrative structure more because binary opposites
help to thicken the plot and introduce contrast between character and scenes. The theory
can be applied to any genre; however, an issue with binary opposition is that it often
perpetuates obvious stereotypes and movie clichés. For example, most movies usually have
the opposition of man vs women and sometimes this would be portrayed as the man strong
and the women weak to create more of an opposition. Overtime these stereotypes have
been fading away with movies introducing more oppositions that are complex. Regarding to
what I said previously this theory helps analysing media forms to give analyses depth and
broadness to the narrative structure.
To conclude, these narrative theories are fundamental elements that explore distinctive
parts of narrative such as time, process, characters and mise en scene. They do not just
draw ideas from literal studies but also studies of philosophy, sociology, psychology, myths
and more. Thus, I also see and acknowledge that these theories are not perfect and apply to
every narrative. Most of these theories have limitations to only by-products of their time of
invention. QUOTE. However, the reason why it helps us understand the narrative structure
is that it shows us how stories work and advances our thinking on why certain choices were
made. Narratological studies uncover structuralism and patterns seen with in the media
text, so theories help us think how and why the structure was made for narratives by
analysing different levels and elements showing us the narrative structure.
REFERENCES:
Altman, R. (2008) A Theory of Narrative. Columbia University Press.
Bal, M. (2004) Narrative theory: major issues in narrative theory. Routledge Taylor and
Francis group.
Chatman, S. (1978) Story and Discourse- Narrative structure in fiction and film. Cornell
University Press
Fourie, A. (2001) Media Studies: Content, audiences, and production. Juta and Company.

8. How does narrative theories help us understand narrative structure?
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Lapsley, R. Westlake, M. (2006) Film Theory: A introduction 2nd ed. Manchester university
press
Propp, V. (2012) The Russian folktale. Series in Fairy-Tale Studies.
Propp, V. (1968) Morphology of the folktale. University of Texas press Austin.
Todorov, T. (1990) Genres in discourse. Press syndicate of the University of Columbia
FILMOGRAPHY:
American Graffiti (1973) Directed by George Lucas [Online] Available through Netflix.
[Accessed on 1st December 2017]
Fight Club (1999) Directed by David Fincher [Online] Available through Netflix. [Accessed on
5th December 2017]
Flash Gordon (1936) Directed by Frederick Stephani [Online] Available through Netflix.
[Accessed on 10th December 2017]
Léon: The Professional (1995) Directed by Luc Besson [Online] Available through Netflix.
[Accessed on 3rd December 2017]
Pulp Fiction (1997) Directed by Quentin Tarantino [Online] Available through Netflix.
[Accessed on 5th December 2017]
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Directed by Steven Spielberg [Online] Available through
Netflix. [Accessed on 6th December 2017
Spiderman Homecoming (2017) Directed by Jon Watts [Online] Available through Netflix.
[Accessed on 3rd December 2017]
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. (1977) Directed by George Lucas [Online] Available
through Netflix. [Accessed on 3rd December 2017]

9. How does narrative theories help us understand narrative structure?
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The Wizard of Oz (1939) Directed by Victor Fleming, King Vidor, George Cukor and Norman
Taurog [Online] Available through Netflix. [Accessed on 13th December 2017]
Draft Plan:
ADD MORE QUOTES EVERYWHERE
‘Film theory for the purpose of achieving knowledge, psychoanalysis has concluded by
imposing limits on what can be known.’ (Lapsley and Westlake,2006:219)
‘If everyone has a great deal of money, rich loses its meaning; rich means something only in
contrasts to poor’ (fourie,2001:152)
‘Present from the begging of human history in all cultures at all times.as such it has always
appeared to be as naturel as “life” itself.’ (Lapsley and Westlake,2006:129)
‘Description and narrative both presuppose temporality, but the temporality differs in kind.’
(Todorov,1978:28)
I have a theory that movies operate on the level of dreams, where you dream yourself.”―
Meryl Streep
1 intro
2 propps theory and history
3 star wars plot summary and analysis propps theory (how it helps us understand the
narrative structure) (link all paragraphs together at the start from the last film)
4 spiderman homecoming analysis propps theory
5 leon propps theory/ each film consists propps theory from each film from different
decade, how it helps you understand the narrative structure and (blogger) pulp fiction.
6 todorov theory and history

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7 pulp fiction summary/directory films he’s done/ todorov theory blogger
8 star wars todorov theory how it helps us understand the narrative structure
9 levi strauss theory and history
10 leon binary opposition and how it helps us understand the narrative structure
11 conclusion
YOU SPENT HOURS EVERDAY IN A ROW DOING THIS,IT HURTED YOUR BRAIN BECAUSE OF
VCABULARY AND HARVARD STYLE.