Narrative Theory

Narrative is how media texts organise events into stories. Almost every media product, from a two-minute advert to a 100-hour video game, uses narrative structures in some form, and several of the named theorists on the AQA specification focus on narrative. This lesson covers Tzvetan Todorov's equilibrium model, Vladimir Propp's character functions, Claude Lévi-Strauss's binary oppositions, non-linear narratives and narrative in non-fiction forms including news.

What Is Narrative?

A narrative is the structured organisation of events. In its simplest form, a narrative consists of a situation, a change, and a consequence. But narrative theory quickly becomes more sophisticated, distinguishing between:

• Story (fabula): the sequence of events as they occurred in the world of the text.
• Plot (syuzhet): the sequence of events as presented to the audience.
• Narration: how the events are told (point of view, voice-over, perspective).

These distinctions matter because media texts routinely tell stories out of order, from specific points of view and with unreliable narrators. A thriller that opens with its ending and then flashes back is one in which plot and story diverge sharply.

Concept	Definition
Story	Events in chronological order
Plot	Events as arranged in the text
Narration	The telling: voice, perspective, focalisation

Todorov: Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017), a Bulgarian-French structuralist, proposed one of the most influential narrative models. He argued that narratives typically move through five phases:

1. Equilibrium: an initial state of order or stability.
2. Disruption: an event breaks the equilibrium.
3. Recognition: characters recognise the disruption.
4. Attempt to Repair: characters try to restore order.
5. New Equilibrium: a new state of stability, usually different from the first.

This model is sometimes abbreviated to a three-stage version (equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium) for brevity, but the five-stage version is more analytically powerful.

Why Todorov Matters

Todorov's model is deceptively simple. Its value lies in drawing attention to the fact that most narratives rely on a disruption of some norm and the eventual restoration of some (usually transformed) order. This pattern is ideological: the "normality" at the beginning and the "new equilibrium" at the end encode values. A crime drama that begins with a safe community, has that safety disrupted by a murder, and ends with the criminal caught is implicitly endorsing the value of the initial equilibrium — social order, law, institutional justice.

Analysing the content of the equilibriums — what kind of order is normalised, what kind of change is tolerated — is where Todorov meets Barthes' theory of myth.

graph LR
  A[Equilibrium] --> B[Disruption]
  B --> C[Recognition]
  C --> D[Attempt to repair]
  D --> E[New Equilibrium]

Worked Example: A Detective Drama

• Equilibrium: a small town goes about its daily life.
• Disruption: a body is discovered.
• Recognition: the community and police become aware; the detective is assigned.
• Attempt to Repair: investigation, interviews, pursuit.
• New Equilibrium: the killer is caught, and the town returns to order — but the audience has learned, along with the detective, that something was rotten underneath all along.

Note that the "new equilibrium" is often not identical to the first. Often, it is more knowing, more compromised, more scarred. The difference between the two equilibriums is where thematic meaning often lives.

Propp: Character Functions

Vladimir Propp (1895–1970), a Russian folklorist, analysed a corpus of Russian folk tales and concluded that they shared a limited repertoire of character functions. Rather than thinking of characters as unique individuals, Propp proposed that each character occupies one of a small set of narrative roles.

Propp's Key Character Functions

Function	Role in Narrative
Hero	Seeks something; drives the action
Villain	Opposes the hero
Donor	Provides the hero with something (object, information)
Helper	Assists the hero
Princess (and her father)	The reward; the object of the quest
Dispatcher	Sends the hero on their mission
False Hero	Pretends to be the hero; is unmasked

Using Propp Carefully

Propp is enormously useful but needs careful handling. His terms come from a specific genre (Russian folk tale) and reflect the gender politics of those tales. Top-band A-Level analysis will:

• Use the functions as a lens to identify roles.
• Acknowledge that contemporary texts often blur, redistribute or subvert these functions.
• Notice where a single character fulfils multiple functions, or a function is distributed across a group.
• Critique the gendered assumptions (e.g., the "princess" function) where relevant.

For example, in a contemporary action thriller, the "princess" function may be replaced by an abstract goal (preventing a disaster); the "villain" may be an institutional force rather than a single antagonist; the "helper" may be a team rather than an individual.

Lévi-Strauss: Binary Oppositions

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), a French structural anthropologist, argued that human cultures make sense of the world through binary oppositions — pairs of opposed concepts such as good/evil, civilisation/savagery, us/them, male/female. He argued that narratives typically stage and resolve such oppositions.

Examples in Media