Irrational Narration In Alice Munro’s Lives Of Girls And Women

Lives of Girls and women has the most autobiographical significance in the whole works of Alice Munro. The themes discussed, the characters shaped, the narrative ways used and the writing style reflected in this work have highly representative significance in her overall creations.So it can be used as a key to study all her collections. Therefore, this thesis take this work as research object, and study the irrational narration from the following aspects:First, analyze the irrational narrative perspective. Through meticulously analyze about the narrators, the thesis find their perspectives reflect the commom irrational characteristics, that is,their understanding of things depends on the visual images, heavily relys on their own feeling,unconscious, and often with a lot of subjectivity. Based on the analysis of the irrational characteristics of the narrative perspectives, the thesis further domonstrates the irrational presentation of the death theme,religious theme and relationship theme in the collection of short stories.Second, analyze the irrational narrative structure. It is first reflected in the irrational time structure, the narration follows the narrator’s psychological time, not the physical time, narrative time switches in the past, present and future freely, switches back and forth between the narrative time and the characters’ time; It is second reflected in the irrational space structure, the short stories take space as a symbol of fate, emotion, and character, not just as a container for human activities. It is finally reflected in the irrational plot structure, the plot structure in the short stories is not complete and rigorous, there are lots of scattered fragments in the short stories. Connections between plots do not follow the logic of cause and effect,but follow a fateful contact.Third, analyze the irrational narrative effect. By creating impressive images and hazy impression, Munro makes her short stories present strong subjective color. Besides, Munro set the tone with a certain mood and atmosphere, so her work is full of strong appeal.