Evaluation Task 1

Vladimir Propp was a Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who wanted to identify basic narrative elements in Russian folk tales. To do this he looked at 100 folk tales and decided out of all the large numbers of characters in folk tales that there were only 8 character types. These character types are the hero, the villain, the helper, the princess/prize, her father, the donor, the false hero and the dispatcher. All these appear somewhere in traditional folk tales, some more obvious then others but they all dont have to appear in everyone its just a general overview of every folk tale. The hero in a story is generally the main character and is the person to complete a task, quest or trying to solve something and we want the hero to succeed in the story. In my story Im doing Red Riding Hood, the woodchopper is the hero. Even though he isnt in the story a lot and only appears in a few scenes, he still saves the mum from getting killed as he kills the wolf. The story doesnt revolve around the woodchopper, its mainly revolved around Red Riding Hood but he succeeds in the story in killing the villain. He is trying to work out why Red Riding Hood looks different when its really the wolf under her cloak and this triggers off suspicion so he follows the wolf and kills him. The villain in a story is the one who is shown as morally bad and this drives the audience towards the hero as the badness from the villain reflects the goodness in the hero. The villain tries to prevent the hero from reaching his goal by causing obstacles, which stop him from achieving the goal as easily. In my story, the wolf comes across nice at first but then after being alone with Red Riding Hood and already trapping her gran in the wardrobe, he is seen doing morally bad which then seeing this, drives the reader towards the hero, which in most stories it is clear straight away who the hero may be, but in my story it isnt as clear. The princess or prize can be seen in two different ways in a story. For example, the princess may be captured by the villain, which causes the hero to fight for the princess and

try defeat the villain after finding out where they have taken her. Or, the princess may be a reward for the hero after successfully completing a challenge or task and this could lead to gaining the affection off the princess or having her hand in marriage. The princess may not be shown much in a story or in the total opposite, she could be helping the hero on their mission. In my story there isnt a character that fits in the role as the princess. Red Riding Hood in some aspects and views could be seen as a princess as the woodchopper who is the hero and her mum are trying to protect her and prevent her from being hurt as the wolf is after her and sees her as a prize. But as she is the main character in the story, she could also be seen as the hero as well because she is seen trying to help her gran out. Her gran could also fits in the princess role as the wolf is targeting her as well but she has such little impact to the story she is only seen in one panel which makes her role less visible as the rest of the character. The donor in a story gives the hero either a magical weapon, or some particular wisdom, a clue or special power and this helps the hero complete the task given. The donor could also not give up this gift for the hero without setting him another task to complete to receive the gift. My story doesnt have a donor in the story but an example of a donor in a different story would be Crush from Finding Nemo as he helps Marlin get to Sydney. So even though he helps them through the currents he is seen as the donor rather than the helper as he isnt in the entire movie and sticks by Marlin. The helper in a story is the person who sticks by the hero through theyre quest who provides support when its needed the most. The helper often highlights the heros characteristics such as intelligence, determination or courage. In my story there isnt a helper in it as there isnt a quest being set to win a prize at the end. But an example of a helper in Finding Nemo would be Dory because she is like Marlins sidekick and supports him throughout his journey to find his son and helps him throughout the story.

The princess father sets tasks for the hero to complete as the hero is very protective over his daughter and the hero needs to win him over by successfully completing the task. Propp noticed that the princesss father cant be clearly distinguished and this can make the character hard to define in modern story telling. In my story, there isnt a father of the princess and so an example of this would be The King in Shrek. He gets really competitive with Shrek, as he doesnt want Shrek to be as close to the princess as he is already and doesnt approve of him and this causes difficulty between them both. The false hero in a story tries to act heroically to steal the light off the actual hero and can sometimes be mistaken for the hero at times. The false hero can also gain respect off the princes father, which can cause the hero to be frustrated, as he wants to gain the princess hand in marriage. There is no false hero in my story, even though the wolf could come across as kind at first and seen as a caring person but then this changes when he reaches grans house. The dispatcher sends the hero on their mission, which could be a family member or even the princess father as he sets the hero on a quest so he can have the princess hand in marriage. The dispatcher could also merge with another role, which could be the false hero who could be disguised as the helper. In my story, the dispatcher is Red Riding Hoods mum as she makes Red Riding Hood go to grans to check up on her because she is ill so this is Red Riding Hoods quest. Propp also had a theory that in a story there are 31 different plot elements that makes up a story. In my story, there are 5 out of the 31, which are looked at in my story. The 31 functions are usually based on a longer story and because my story is a lot shorter, there isnt as many seen in mine. The first function used is trickery, which is where the villain attempts to deceive the victim. This is when the wolf goes behind Red Riding Hoods back as he is seen as a friendly wolf to start off with until he does behind Red Riding Hoods back and kills her as well as kidnapping and trapping her

grandma and also when he is about to go kill Red Riding Hoods mum. The second function used is departure. I used this in a slightly different way as the woodchopper doesnt set off on a mission to save the princess or any particular mission but he does notice that the Red Riding Hood he spots isnt right and sets off to find out what is going on. The third function used is guidance. This is shown when the woodchopper spots the wolf dressed as Red Riding Hood and reaches his destination to where the wolf is and this is where he becomes heroic and kills the wolf. The fourth function used is recognition. This is shown when the hero is recognized and noticed he is the hero. This is when the woodchopper kills the wolf as its a heroic thing and saves the mum from getting killed alongside Red Riding Hood. The final function used is punishment. This is when the wolf gets killed as he has been morally bad and killed Red Riding Hood and also trapped gran and so this is his punishment by having a brutal death given to by the hero. Todorov thought that all narratives followed the same path. He created a 3 and 5 step version to his idea. His 3-step plan is equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium. The equilibrium is at the beginning of the story. This is when we see the day-to-day basis of the character and everything is viewed on their every day life. So in my story, this is when Red Riding Hood is first seen when she is talking to her mum and then sets out to see her grandma and meets the woodchopper as it is all based on her everyday life when everything is normal in her eyes. The next step is disequilibrium, which is when events start to happen that change the life of the characters. It can be on different scales, e.g. missing a bus or something extreme like a race of zombies taking over the world. This then revolves the story around the character and this is when they attempt to get back to normal and back to equilibrium. In my story, the

disequilibrium starts when the wolf meets Red Riding Hood because seeing a talking wolf would throw you off track a little then after this, it becomes a hidden disequilibrium as we know something is going to happen when only the audience can see Red Riding Hood is not really seeing gran, its really the wolf, so we know this is when her life will change and an event will happen soon. Then when Red Riding Hood gets eaten the gran will be the one then reacting to the event because she has witnessed her granddaughter get eaten. The final component to the structure is the new equilibrium. This is the end of the story and when after the main event has happened, no matter how dramatic the events were, if the lives of the people left in the story dont go back to the equilibrium, things should go back to a new version of normal. In my story this will be at the very end when the wolf gets killed and even though it ends on a cliffhanger and we dont see what happens to mum afterwards, its still a big thing losing your mum and daughter at the same time and this will mean the mum adapting to a new version of normal life. Claude Levi Strauss came up with the idea to do with binary opposition. This meant that a story must have two opposing sides that come together because this drives the story when the two sides have a conflict. He had examples of which sides would oppose, for example, Good vs. Evil, Men vs. Women, Police vs. Criminals, Young vs. Old, Humans vs. Aliens and Humans vs. Animals. Overall in my story, there are only 2 out of these that fit in with my storyline. The first one is Good vs. Evil. This is when Red Riding Hood and the wolf first meet as she is the good and is the victim in the story and the wolf is the evil as he has something planned and acts friendly in front of Red Riding Hood but is really evil so she meets evil without realizing and this also happens when she turns up at her grans and gets killed. There is no conflict between the two until she gets killed so this is what drives the story and this is what causes the second conflict in my

story. The second binary opposition used is Humans vs. Animals. This is shown in the second conflict when the woodchopper comes into contact with the wolf and theres a conflict between them, which means the wolf gets killed. This is also shown when Red Riding Hood is killed and the conflict between them both when the wolf kills her so both the binary oppositions used link together in my story.