Propp's Narrative Theories and The Shining

Vladimir Propp analysed many folk tales and found a common underlying narrative structure to them. This involves several character functions and many narrative functions which chart the development and resolution of the story line. We were asked to apply this to the horror film The Shining. We found that if you looked at the characters quite flexibly you could fit them into Propp's scheme. For example Halloran, the chef who can 'shine' can be seen as the doner because it is his attempts to rescue Wendy and Doc which provides them with their get-away vehicle. On the other hand the hero role and the princess role seem to be shared at different times between three characters Wendy, Doc and Halloran. The false hero is more obvious, it is Jack who begins as the main protagonist but becomes the monster.

The narrative functions are harder to pin down and I do not think that they really all apply to this film.

Overall I am not sure if applying Propp to the film tells us much about it although just the act of thinking about characters and story line as a sort of system does encourage us to think about the deeper structures involved in narratives.