Narrative theory

Ewan McConnachie
Oct 21, 2016
2 min read

Basic Narrative theory is defined as "A chain of events in a cause-effect relationship occurring in time". in layman's terms, there is a story, There are many different kinds of narrative theory. The most basic being

ARISTOTLE THEORY

Aristotle's theory states that in a narrative, there are 3 constants, A BEGINNING, MIDDLE, and END. but doesn't necessarily have to be in that order. For instance if we look at a completely random music video, in this case its Simple plan's Astronaut

The beginning being he is alone, the middle being he is looking for people, and the end being that he has found someone.

Izetan Toderov then builds on this with his theory of equilibrium. where he said there were at least 5 stages to a story.

Equilibrium at start

Disruption of equilibrium

Recognition of disruption

attempt to repair disruption

Reinstatement of equilibrium

Then we also have Vladimir Propp. Propp said that all stories have 8 types of characters

The Hero

The Villain

The Donor

The Messenger

The False Hero

The Helper

The Princess

And Her Father

These dont all have to be individual characters, so one could have more than one type. the most common use of this is Darth Vader from star wars, where he is The False Hero, The Villain, and The Father .

In Linkin Park's Castle of Glass we can see a myriad of different types

In this scene The soldier is informing the son of his fathers death, so its safe to say he is the messenger. And from this we can say the Boy is the Hero of this story. However i also believe that the messenger i this scene could also be the False hero, as we see this scene later on, with the boy being the messenger to the little girl.

Next we have the mother, who offers emotional support so we can see that she is classed as the helper.

Then the father is also shown as the donor to the hero, as we can assume tha the deceased father is giving his son resolve

And finally, we have the villain and the Princess, the villain being the war overall, and the princess being the girl that the hero has to tell that her father is dead.

ALLAN CAMERON THEORY

This isn't much of a theory as much as what a narrative may include

ANACHRONIC - Flashbacks

FORKING PATHS - contradictory narrative, alternative story

EPISODIC- A series of shorter stories that appear to be disconnected

SPLIT SCREEN- A screen split into two or more times to show separate events

LEVI STRAUSS

Levi's theory is that there is usually a binary opposition. For example, there is Rich and poor, or good and evil.

The easiest place i believe we can see this is with Take that, and Kidz