Propp Theory and Casablanca essays

Propp Theory and Casablanca essays Propp and His Analysis about the Fairy Tales Vladimir Propp is a formalist who developed an analysis for stories to find whether they are fairy tales or not. In order to obtain this theory he studied the narrative of folk tales and observed that they have similar characters and struggles. Because of these, in his theory, Propp says that all fairy tales must share some basic elements, which he called funtions and to be a fairy tale, a story must contain all of these and also they must be used orderly. At the same time, he says that there are seven roles in a fairy story and he describes them not with peoples name but with their duties in the fairy tale. In this situation, some people can still say that Michael Curtizs romantic melodram Casablanca which is about two men, a woman and their love triangle and how peoples lives were changed and ruined by Nazis in the duration of World War II, is a fairy tale and some of them say it cannot be a fairy tale. In this essay what I will clarify is that Casablanca is not a fairy tale according to Propp and his theory by making character analysis and examining where the function are used or not used. First to understand whether Casablanca is a fairy tale or not the characters should be analysed and should be tried to fit with the characters in Propps theory. One of the important characters in the Casablanca is Richard Blaine, generally called Rick in the film, who is the hero of the film according to Propps theory. The events that are told in the film are generally about him. He falls in love with Ilsa who is the wife of Victor Laszlo, one of the legendary heroes of French resistance against Nazis, and is said that her husband was killed in the concentration camp. Ilsa is the princess of the film. The helper in the film is the chief of French policeman Louis Renault in Casablanca. During the film although he seems he is not a reliable man, at the end of th...