Applying Narrative Theories to our thriller
Propp’s character role- our thriller doesn’t follow Propp’s character role theory because our hero isn’t seeking something. He is simply an every day person going about every day things. However, later on in the thriller it is clear that the hero seeks answers to his questions; like what is happening to him and who the murderer was. The Villain being our murderer tries to confront the hero and kill him to prevent our hero calling the police and prosecuting the villain. We do not have any other roles in our thriller other than the hero and the villain because of the nature of the situation (Our hero has fregoli delusion in which he believes everyone is the killer in disguise) and too many characters would confuse the audience and the plot would be lost.
Barthe’s codes – Our thriller contains mostly the enigma code because the audience is helping the hero discover who the real murderer is and what his plans are. The audience must also figure out why the hero is suffering from these delusions and how he can overcome them. There is also essences of connotation and denotation throughout our thriller, an example of which being the milk being purchased in the opening sequence, as milk connotes normality as it is an everyday item, representing the main character.
Todorov’s Narrative Theory – Our thriller makes use of Todorov’s narrative theory, at the beginning equilibrium is our main character, the protagonist, purchasing milk from a supermarket. The next stage, dis-equilibrium, is apparent upon sight of the murderer, the theory continues to apply to our thriller as the main character realises of his mental illness, and then makes attempts to resolve the solution by trying to find the real murderer, this is then resolved and there is a return to equilibrium, the re-equilibrium.
Claude Levis-Strauss – There is not so much use of Strauss’s theory of binary opposition throughout our production, our protagonist and antagonist are both males and of similar age groups, and throughout there are no other striking uses of binary opposition.
