In Sharon's most recent CS session, we covered the concept of 'Spheres of Action,' that being the role which a character in a story can be defined as, if you were to strip away their character and leave them simply as a narrative device. Propp defined them as Villain, Donor, Helper, Princess & Father, Dispatcher, Seeker-Hero/Victim-Hero, and False Hero, and wrote that the in majority of the stories her applied this thinking to, every character could be placed into at least one of his spheres.
We played a game of Exquisite Corpse, and were then asked to write a short story of 500 words about our character, making use of the roles that Propp defined. The character I ended up with is below, which I have assigned the role of helper.
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Once
upon a time, there lived a small cat, whose life was plagued by
small mishaps. Mishaps like getting locked out of the house whilst her owners
were out, or like losing her favourite squeaky toy in the garden. Normally
these mishaps were resolved by the cat’s loving owners, who were attentive;
opening the door for her when she wanted to come inside, and getting new toys
to replace her old ones.
One day, however, the little cat climbed out of a
window to get outside, as she always did. What was different about this day was
that shortly after it started raining, and when she scratched at the door to
return inside, nobody came to get her. After a while of standing in the rain
for her owners, the cat ran around the side of the house, hiding under some
cardboard that had been left outside. Not wanting to sit in the cold waiting
for someone to help her, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.
What the little cat awoke to was an incredibly
tall girl, with swirling black hair, and two cats resting on her chest.
“Are you cold?” asked the girl, who apparently
was some kind of spinning top.
The cat looked at her sadly, unable to understand
what she was saying. She hoped that the strange girl could help her back
inside. Instead, what the girl did was pick the little cat up in her arms, and
spin into the sky. This made the cat very dizzy, but also dried her off, the
force of the girl’s spin propelling the water from the cat’s fur.
When the two reached high enough to be above the
clouds that were raining down, the girl stopped spinning, dropping the cat off
on a soft cloud. Opposite the two, stood an old man in a smart suit. He had a
small moustache and a balding head. He wore thin-rimmed glasses, and the light
they reflected dazzled the small cat. Despite this, the cat immediately
recognised the man. To us, he appeared on the television presenting the weather
forecast. To the cat, he was the man that made the rain come and go.
“Please, mister,” begged the girl, seeming to
understand the cat’s predicament “please make the rain stop so this cat doesn’t
have to be cold.”
“But my dear!” explained Michael Fish, “I don’t
control the weather! I simply tell everyone what it’s going to be!”
The cat, despite not understanding English, was
unsatisfied with the strange weatherman’s response, and so hissed at Michael,
showing her teeth.
Although small, Michael Fish was suitably
unsettled by the cat’s response (cats, after all, do enjoy eating fish), and
decided that, despite his inability to change the weather, he would speak to
his higher-ups and resolve the issue.
The girl, happy with the outcome of the exchange,
gathered the cat back up in her arms, descending back through the clouds. As
the cat fell back to sleep in the girl’s warm embrace, she heard the girl
commending her bravery to standing up to the weatherman, despite him being much
larger than her. At least she would have, if the cat could understand her.
When the cat awoke, she saw the most brilliant
sunshine beaming down from a beautiful clear sky. The sound of a door opening caused
her to look at the porch, where she saw her owner beaming down at her, with a
few strands of long, curly black hair falling in front of her face.
“Would you like to come in now?” Asked her owner.
“I’m sorry we didn’t let you in earlier, we couldn’t hear your scratching over
the sound of the rain! I hope you didn’t-“ She stopped mid-sentence, examining
the small cat. “Well you’re not wet at all! What a clever kitty, hiding under
this card to keep yourself dry! The door’s open if you want to come in!”
The cat,
however, decided that she would stay outside, and bask in the glorious sunshine
that she won from the hands of the weatherman in the sky.
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As I wrote before, my Exquisite Corpse character was the helper in my story, with the cat being the hero and the weatherman being a villain (although unintentionally). In some ways, you could say that the sunshine, or the lack of rain, was the Princess, as that was the cat's reward. Equally, you could match the owners with the sphere of dispatcher, as their negligence led the cat to go on her adventure.
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