Vladimir Propp's Theory

Vladimir Propp (1928) was one of the many theorists to study narrative over different stories. He concluded that many narratives shared character types as part of their structural features. He analyzed over 100 Russian folk tales and came to the conclusion that there are 7 main character types used in stories:

The Hero - the main protagonist
The Villain - the main antagonist
The Helper - the person that helps the hero on their quest
The Donor - the person that prepares the hero and supplies them
The Princess/her father - the princess is the victim that needs to be saved, often the love interest of the hero. Her father is the person that guides the hero through or towards the quest
The Dispatcher - the person who requests the help of a hero
The False Hero - tries to take credit for the hero's actions or tries to create a rivalry with the hero



I applied Propp's theory to The Departed(2006), one of the influences on our film, and easily saw how his theory works:

Character Type	Character	How?
Hero	Billy	Infiltrates the drug gang and becomes an informer
Villain	Frank Costello	The head of a major crime organization
Princess	Madolyn	The love interest of both the hero and the false hero
Donor	Queenan	The detective investigating the gang
Helper	Dignam	The police officer that keeps in contact with the hero
Dispatcher	Ellerby	The head of the police department
False Hero	Colin Sullivan	A member of the gang pretending to be a police officer to take down the hero

We tried to use Propp's theory on the characters we created but found it difficult to categorize them. This shows that our characters are very subversive and that the narrative of our film does not follow normal conventions.

We used Propp's theory on our film and the characters we created to see how it worked.

Character Type	Character	How?
Hero	Harriet	Being attacked and has to help the princess.
Villain	Clarke	Kidnapped the hero's lover and kills her friends.
Princess	Jane	Needs rescuing.
Donor	Carlo	Donor to the villain.
Helper	Sean	One of the hero's right hand men.
Dispatcher	Billy	Offers wise advice.
False Hero	n/a	n/a.