Narrative Theorys in The Shining

This is Todorov's Theory on Narrative, he says that all stories start with an equillibrium, that is where all the opposing gorces are in balance. Relating this to "The Shining" I think this works very well. The equillibrium is that Jack gets the job at the hotel and the family move up there for 5 months.




The disruption/disequillbrium is inforced by an agent of change, we were unsure if this was Delbot Grady, Room 237 or The Hotel itself in the film but in my opinion I think Room 237 is the agent of change the first time around, it starts to make Jack go mad. The pathway to resolution in the film is a long pathway, Jack is asked to kill his family by Delbot which again makes him an agent of change as this wasn't Jack's intention. When he chops down the bathroom door we think it will be the death of Wendy but this gets interupted by the prescence of the Chef( and then he dies). There is a peak in the pathway where Danny and Jack are in the maze and Jack chases after Danny with an axe, we think that Danny may die but then the restoration of the equillibrium is when Danny and Wendy are free from Jack and when Jack dies.




Although the argument is that it dosn't fully resolve as we don't know if Sanny and Wendy survive the storm and when we zoom into the picture of Jack in 1921. Can Jack truly die? Will he come back again?












Vladimir Propp proposed that in most tales/stories there are 8 character roles, these are:






1. The Villain-Jack? Delbot?




2. The Hero-Danny




3. The Donor-(Provides The Hero with some magical item or property)-Tony




4. The Helper-(who aids The Hero)-Dick




5. The Princess-Wendy?








6. Princess's Father-N.A




7. The Dispatcher-The Hotel Owner




8.The False Hero-Jack



Claude Levi Strauss looked at binary opposites in the narrative structure. Binary oppisites are sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of a media text. These were more analysed than other as they went more in depth. The ones that are present in The Shining are:


1. Good/Evil


2. Known/ Unknown


3.Life/Death


4. Known/Unknown


5.Present Life/Afterlife


6. Adult/Child


Bordwell and Thompson described narritave as a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, occuring in time and space. We piece together what we see in a media text so that we try and understand the story better. For instance if we were to see a still of a man holding his face in his hands and then moved to another still of a dead body we would assume that the man then killed this person, if we then moved to another image of the man crying and then to a picture of him with his mother we would assume his mother has died. We try and find a casual effect between them. This technique is done using flashbacks, replays of action. slow motion, speeding up and jumping between places and times.


This is done in The Shining mainly in the part of where Danny is on his trike and he is out side Room 237, where Danny sees the twin girls form the "past" and it then flashes back to Danny becoming scared, we obviously assume that he is being terrified by these 2 girls and then when we flash quickly to them had being cut up and blood painting the walls, we then assume that they are dead and Danny is being haunted by beyond the grave. What we are unsure of is that Danny so far has only seen the future and been told the future by Tony we are unsure if that they are dead or that they are going to be killed, by who?





In my opinion I think Todorov's theorys nake more sense and apply to The Shining better than any other ones, because there is the disequilibrium and a pathway to resolution before that. There is a rise just before the ending and the resolvement to resolution where Jack kills Dick Halloran and then chases after Danny in the maze but then order is restored when they escape in the snow cat and Jack dies. Or does he? There is however one flaw in applying Todorov's theory to The Shining, do we know if Jack really dies as we zoom in onto the picture at the end of the film and do we know if Wendy and Danny escape and get back to civilization?