| Leslie Marmon Silko(1948-),as one of the “Four American Indian Literary Masters”,enjoys a great popularity in America.The researches on Silko are mostly circled on the first two novels of her trilogy Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead through the perspective of post-colonialism,to explore deconstruction and reconstruction of the Indian identity.Gardens in the Dunes,as the last novel of Silko’s trilogy,transcends the previous two in significance.The literary researches on Gardens in the Dunes mainly focus on the aspects such as the crisis of identity,cosmopolitan themes,colonialism,feminism and eco-criticism.However,there are few researches on Gardens in the Dunes conducted from the perspective of narratology.Therefore,this thesis attempts to analyze the features of main characters in Gardens in the Dunes from the perspective of narrative space,narrative speech representation and narrative tension.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One briefly introduces Silko,Gardens in the Dunes,an overview on narratology and the literature review.Chapter Two elaborates the characters’ disposition and mentality through the narrative space.Chapter Three focuses on the narrative speech representation,including free direct speech,direct speech and free indirect speech,to elucidate the diversity in the characters’ sub-consciousness,self-consciousness and emotional resonance.Chapter Four,through analyzing the narrative tension,respectively explores the conflicts among the characters,within the characters,between the characters and the land.All these conflicts actually are rooted in the unbalanced relationship between the characters and the land.Chapter Five analyzes the characters’ destiny.Indigo finally returned to her homeland;Hattie reconciled with the land,gaining a spiritual salvation;Edward incurred his death by confronting the land.Through the characters’ destiny,this chapter illustrates Silko’s expectation of multiracial commensalism. |
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