Modern And Traditional

Patrick Victor Martindale White(1912-1990) is one of the most famous contemporary author in Australia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973"for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature". All the feature are showed in the novel The Tree of Man which was published in 1955 and brought a very praise to White. On the one hand, the novel imitates Genesis and show"the genesis"of Australia; on the other hand, the novel focuses on character's stream of consciousness instead of traditional plot, and show the process of Stan's approaching to God step by step. Because the novel contain so many factors of religion, many studies pay their attention on that and neglect the narrative art showed in the novel.Firstly the author in this paper approaches the point of view of The Tree of Man. The Tree of Man use omniscient perspective to introduce the background, and convert to limited one to show the specific scene by using character's eye and voice. And by using both telling and showing narrator make the novel presents the picture of the parkers'life to readers. While building this world of space in mind the readers construct the novel's spatial form, so we can say the presentation leads to the success of spatial narrative in The Tree of Man.And then the author analyzes the spatial form of the novel and the narrative function of the space in the novel by using spatial narrative theory. In The Tree of Man time and space became one and cross each other, so when the readers try to interpret the novel from the angel of narrative plot in the novel they only get a pile of debris of plot, but when we put the debris together we can find a spatial form constructed. The construction of the novel base on a line which is formed by Amy's and Stan's world's meeting, coinciding, estranging from each other, being closed to each other. The plot is already fragmented, so to promote story developing has no foundation according to the internal logic of events, and the development of the story is motivated by the character crossing the space border around themselves, the new circumstance will bring new life opportunities, also bring new conflict, which are essential elements of the story to continue. The spatial form of The Tree of Man make its plot over the traditional concept since Aristotle, the plot of the novel focus on character's inner conflict and weaken their action, and also the line of plot has became into parallel structure from a single one. Since the plot beyond the traditional concept of plot, the arrangement of events is not based on the cause and effect logic, but on the order of rhetoric and text generation and the combination of them. The new sequence not only can arrange events flexibly, but also can achieve an objective effect and break the readers'inertia. And the plot of The Tree of Man shows a kind of epic feel for its imitating Genesis.The Tree of Man on the one hand is an outstanding text reflecting modern narrative skills, on the other hand use the omniscient God-like perspective, and by Stan's life clues the whole story, so the novel can also be seen a text containing the great tradition of narrative art. So we follow that tradition intertwining with modern makes The Tree of Man have not only a dazzling modern form, but also deep historical meaning.