Applying narrative theories to 'The Shinning'

Narrative theories are devices and conventions that govern the organisation of a story. This helps the audience to understand the contents better as the human brain is designed to rely on stories for better understanding and to make sense of the world around us. We come in contact with many different story forms throughout our lives, such as in childhood we are told fairytales by our parents, religion is often told as a story in the form of the bible and even our dreams can be considered a story form as they are little stories in themselves. In this investigation I will be comparing the theories of Tzetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss and Bordwell and Thompson to how well they fit or don't fit the narrative of 'The Shining'.

TODOROV's theory is based around the 'classic Hollywood' or 'classic realist' narrative, which is a belief that stories have a specific structure. They start with an equililbrium, then something happens to disrupt the equilibrium which sets the chain of events moving. The disruption is then solved and the equililbrium is then restored.
A graph to show Todorov's theory -->


I think that Todorov's theory relates to 'The Shining' really well as I will explain as follows:
Equililbrium=The 'normal' family life at the beginning of the film.


Disruption of equilibrium=Jack getting the job at the hotel and losing his sanity. He turns violent on his wife and child by chasing his wife with an axe and chasing his son Danny through a maze in the snow, also with an axe.


Return to equilibrium=Danny tricks his father in the maze through his footprints left in the snow and escapes the maze to reunite with his mother for them to escape together in the snow cat from Jack and the evilness of the hotel.


There are no problems in fitting this theory to 'The Shining''s narrative. I find this theory useful in helping me to understand the story in more depth and to prove that the majority of stories follow a specific structure.


PROPP looked at over a hundred folk tales and managed to identify eight character roles which are common in all or the majority of them. These are:


1-The villain
2-The hero
3-The donor-who provides an object with some magical property
4-The helper-who aids the hero
5-The princess (the sought for person)-reward for the hero and object of the villians schemes
6-Her father-who rewards the hero
7-The dispatcher-who sends the hero on his way
8-The false hero


I didn't find that this theory fits in as well to the narrative of 'The Shining' as Todorov's did, as I found that there is either more then one character that fits each discription or one that could fit the position vagely but not entirely. I found that Wendy and Danny combined fill most of the character descriptions roughly and Jack could be classed as the villian, along with the hotel and its evil inheritants, the father figure which could apply to the beginning of the movie or the false hero, as he turns from good to evil. This is the main problem for me when trying to relate Propps theory to 'The Shining' as no one character can fit one of the character roles exactly. Although there is problems with this theory I find it useful into the insight of the movie as it gets me thinking about the characters and their roles in more detail then I would of usually done.

LEVI-STRAUSS' theory is based on binary oppositions and unlike the other theorists I have mentioned, Strauss was not interested in the order in which the events occured, but he was interested in the deeper arrangment of themes within the narrative. For example we understand the consept of light being the opposite to dark. Some common oppositions used are:
good/evil
past/present
normal/strange
right/wrong etc


I found that certain aspects of this theory fits the narrative of 'The Shining' well, but sometimes there is a blurred line between two catagories, which doesnt allow for a straight forward analysis of two binary oppostions. For example normal/strange fits quite well as we as the audience know that the family life at the beginning is normal, but then we can also recognise that when Jack starts behaving strangely and seeing things that this is strange. An example for a blurred line in which i referred to earlier is the opposition of good and evil. It appears that Jack at the beginning is good, as we assume at the start that he is going to be the protaganist (or in other words the hero) of the story. His behaviour then confuses the audience when he appears to begin to lose his sanity. His behaviour turns violent towards his family and and ends up attempting to attack his wife and son with a knife, which makes him evil. This blurred line theory is the only problem that I have with Strauss' theory, as the themes in the story aren't always oppositions. Appart from this I think that the theory is useful in the way that it makes the reader read deeper into the film and notice the hidden aspects and themes.


BORDWELL AND THOMPSON define narrative as "a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, occuring in time and space." They have some very interesting ideas about how they think that a narrative typically begins with a situation which then is changed by a cause and effect pattern, which then leads to a new situation that ends the narrative. Time and space is also important in their theory, as they claim that it defines when, where and how quickly the narrative takes place. The human brain automatically tries to connect events to try and make sense of what is happening. This works in everyday life and when watching a film.

I think that this theory fits the narrative of 'The Shining' well but doesn't fit the time and space aspect quite so well. I think that 'The Shining' follows a cause and effect sequence as it begins with the normal family life, and then Jack is told by the hotel manager that there had been a psyco killer in the past that had killed his wife and two daughters. We then learn about the evil hotel ghosts, and how they encourage Jack to kill his family. Jack loses his sanity and attempts to attack his family with an axe. This causes his family to try and turn against Jack, which leads to the chase between Jack and Danny near the end of the film. The new situation at the end is when Jack freezes to death and Wendy and Danny manage to escape from his and the hotels evil clutches. I don't think that the time and space aspect fits as well as the picture at the end showing Jack from 1921 confuses the audience as we know he wasn't in that time and makes us ask ourselves why he was put into that picture. This theory is useful though as it makes the audience think deeper into the order of the narrative and into the storyline. A trailer to 'The Shining'