On Response-inviting Structures In V.S.Naipaul’s In A Free State

Vidiadhar Surajajprasad Naipaul was one of the most well-known contemporary writers in the world who focused on writing post-colonial-related works and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.Naipaul’s works enrich English text with vivid narration style,colorful ethnic culture,and diversified English expressions.In a Free State is a novel wrote by V.S.Naipaul published in 1971.It won that year’s Booker Prize.This novel consists of a prologue "The Tramp at Piraeus" and an epilogue "The Circus at Luxor" and two short stories—"One out of Many,""Tell Me Who to Kill," and the title story—"In a Free State".Many literary critics have done researches on In a Free State.The studies on this novel abroad are mainly from the aspect of the theme of freedom,the post colonialism,existentialism and stylistic study.And the studies on Naipaul’s In a Free State at home include cultural study,post-colonialism,existentialism,the theme of freedom and space theory.Thus there is no study based on wolfgang Iser’s response-inviting structure.There are abundant response-inviting structures in In a Free State.By studying the response-inviting structures from different levels in the novel,we can better appreciate this novel and explore Naipaul’s writing characteristics.Thus this thesis studies In a Free State under the inspiration of wolfgang Iser’s response-inviting(RI)structure.The study mainly analyzes from readers’ aspect on how readers concretize the hidden meanings conveyed by the blanks left by response-inviting structures.The analysis is mainly made from several aspects,including narrative structure,symbols,irony and lexical level and graphological level.The analysis of response-inviting structures from narrative structure aspect focuses on multiple points of view and spatial narrative;analysis of response-inviting structures is made from the aspect of symbols including character symbols and object symbols;irony aspect,including situational irony and structural irony;discourse aspect based on the lexical level and graphological level,on the lexical level,synonyms and pidgin are mainly focused on to analyze the response-inviting structure,and on the graphological level,italicization and punctuation are mainly focused on to analyze the response-inviting structure.After analysis,the conclusion is:In the process of reading,response-inviting structures stimulate the imagination of readers so as to call for readers to concretize the meanings of the text.We realize that in the post-colonial period,people whether from the first world or the third world come to another country to pursue for freedom will fail.What these people gain in the end is depression and disillusion.