Final answer:
Grimms’ fairy tale “The Frog King” aligns with Vladimir Propp’s narrative structure through its sequence of events that reflect Propp's functions such as Absentation, Interdiction, Violation, Delivery, and Victory, illustrating typical folk tale progression.
Step-by-step explanation:
Grimms’ fairy tale “The Frog King” follows Vladimir Propp’s narrative structure, which is a series of 31 functions that describe the typical progression of a folk tale. In Propp's analysis, he identified common characters and actions that constitute fairy tales, known as 'functions' and 'dramatis personae'. The Frog King starts with a princess playing with a golden ball, which falls into a pond. The frog offers to retrieve it in exchange for her friendship. The princess agrees, but once she has her ball back, she leaves the frog behind. This could illustrate Propp's functions of “Absentation” and “Interdiction”, where a family member leaves the home (the princess goes out to play) and an order is issued to the hero (the frog asks for her friendship).
Later, the kingdom is met with the frog at dinner, and the king obliges the princess to honor her promise, which can be seen as the “Violation” (the princess breaks her promise) followed by “Delivery” (the king enforces the promise), leading to the central “Struggle”, where the princess has to deal with the frog. Finally, the transformation of the frog into a prince represents Propp’s “Victory” and possibly “Liquidation”, where the initial misfortune or lack is rectified, and the prince's identity is revealed.
The Grimms' tales like “The Queen Bee” reflect an analogous moralistic structure, where characters who treat animals well are ultimately rewarded, much in the spirit of the rewards seen in “The Frog King”. Tales from the Brothers Grimm continue to resonate in American culture, not just in literary form but also through pop culture adaptations like Disney movies and even video games like Frogger. They depict the evolution of characters, much like the metamorphosis of a frog from tadpole to adult, as a metaphor for personal growth and learning.