BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND TWITTER BACKGROUNDS »

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Applying Propp's Narrative functions of a Fairytale to 'Finding Nemo'



Brief Synopsis
The clownfishes Marlin & Coral move into a new home but she and all but 1 of her eggs get eaten by a barracuda. Marlin names it Nemo as suggested by Coral. Some time later is Nemo’s 1st day at school and he gets annoyed and embarrassed by Marlin. Disobeying him, Nemo swims out to open water and gets caught by a scuba diver. Marlin chases after him but can’t catch up. On the way he meets Dory who has short term memory loss. Dory helps Marlin try to find Nemo and on their adventure they meet sharks, an angler fish, a school of fish, jellyfish, sea turtles called crush and squirt, a pelican called Nigel and also a whale who takes them to Sydney which is where Nemo is. This all goes on while Nemo is in a fish tank in a dentist’s making new friends who help him try to escape using various different methods, they have a time limit though as a little girl called Darla wants to take Nemo home to kill him. In the end Marlin and Dory find Nemo and Marlin reconciles with Nemo and apologizes for being overprotective. Once they have returned home, Marlin is able to let Nemo "go have an adventure" at school with his classmates, including the new exchange student, Squirt. The 3 sharks bring Dory home from a Fish-Eaters Anonymous meeting. The fish in the dentist's office make their escape, having followed their earlier plan of breaking the filter and rolling out the window, across the street, and into the harbor, leaving them with the dilemma of how to escape their plastic bags.


Character Types
Villain
Humans (Darla)Donor Dory gives marlin the address to where Nemo isHelper Dory helps marlin in his questHero Marlin

Narrative Functions
1) Hero is introduced
2) Interdiction announced (Marlin tells Nemo not to do dangerous things)
3) Interdiction violated - Nemo swims out to open sea
8)Villain causes harm, carries away a victim- scuba diver takes nemo away
8a)member of heros family desires something
11) Hero leaves home- marlin leaves home to find nemo
14) Hero gets magical object that helps with the quest- diver's mask
15) Location shifts to where the lack is to be found- the whale carries marlin and dory to sydney which is where Nemo is
16) Hero and villain in direct combat- in the dentists office where marlin is flown in by Nigel and chaos occurs

18) Viallain defeated - Darla loses Nemo as he goes down the drain
20) Hero sets out for home
25) Difficult task is set - all the fishes trapped in the net and Nemo has to save them

Critique of Propp - Here are the main functions that do not fit with the story:
There is not really any magical object or any kind of magic in the story.
Hero doesnt marry and ascend throne.
Hero is not given new appearance (but he does think differently about his overprotectiveness).
There isn't really a true and false hero - Nemo has his heroic moments but Marlin is the main hero.

0 comments: