A Study Of Narrative Features In Moby-Dick

As one of the best representatives of the romantic novels in the 19^th century, Moby-Dick is undoubtedly a very charming work and generally acknowledged as a classic work in the history of world literature. It is a book filled with Herman Melville's exuberant bookishness, a remarkably literary work capable of captivating audiences from widely divergent classes nowadays: the book has been prized by highly educated, sophisticated literary men and women, but it has also been treasured by readers with little formal education. However, as soon as it was published, it was vehemently criticized by those contemporary readers and critics for its utilization of many original writing skills that greatly deviated from those contemporary rules of novel writing. And it became a total failure at the time. Fortunately, the artistic achievements of Moby-Dick have gradually won the readers' and scholars' acknowledgements at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now hundreds of scholars have studied and criticized this work from multiple perspectives. However, research on the narrative features in the novel is quite weak, but the narrative technique is very unique in Moby-Dick. Therefore, the primary concern of the present thesis is the analysis of narrative features of Moby-Dick in the light of narratology from three aspects: narrative structure, narrator and focalization.Different from traditional western novels in which plot predominates, this novel is inserted a number of plot-irrelevant materials in the story. About the narrative structure, Melville discloses his idea through the narrator Ishmael at the beginning of Chapter 63: "Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters." Therefore, the author of the present thesis calls the structure of Moby-Dick as "tree structure". The plot of the novel is the trunk, while the "digressions" are the "branches" and "twigs". This structure helps Melville to compile the novel into an encyclopedic one. Though there is frequent digression of the narration, we can still feel a strong tension in the novel. How can the novel achieve this effect? This should be owed to the numerous foreshadowings and suspense in the novel.All narratives are uttered, whether metaphorically or literally, by the voice of a narrator. The narrator Ishmael is unique in Moby-Dick. First, there are two Ishmaels: Ishmael the narrator and Ishmael the character. The primary use of the distinction is to bring the narrator forward as the essential sensibility in terms of which all the characters and events of the fiction are conceived and evaluated. In addition, when the validity of his statement is queried or he feels that his authority is questioned, narrator Ishmael tries to defend himself and his authority even by making up a story. As a result, he becomes an unreliable narrator. In Moby-Dick, the narrator Ishmael often gives out his eloquent, verbose, and extravagant comment on the events around him, and he presents himself overtly. Sometimes, the narrator Ishmael fades in and out of his own narration, and he remains in the background to observe the character. Here he is the covert narrator of the novel. Many chapters in the novel are made up entirely of soliloquies, and the narrator is completely absent in the novel. In this way, Melville not only lets the narrator give out his judgments freely, but also gives the characters the chance to show themselves.Whenever the story is presented in the discourse, it is always presented from within a certain 'vision'. Focalization refers to the relations between the story presented and vision through which it is presented. In Moby-Dick, three types of focalizations are employed in narrating various stories: zero focalization, internal focalization and external focalization. Through the shift of focalization, Melville tries to present his different ideas and attitudes flexibly.Through the analysis in the light of narratology, this thesis will intensify and broaden the research on the narrative strategies which are in exquisite arrangement in Moby-Dick. By analysis, we find Moby-Dick is an encyclopedic novel with characteristics of modern novels and has exceeded his own time.