Thematic Study And Stylistic Features Of Seize The Day

This thesis from a literary styiistics perspective, deals mainly with the thematic study and stylistic features of Seize the Day followed by their respective stylistic functions. Then the style of this novella has boon arrived at. The thesis is divided into the following parts: introduction, Chapter One to Chapter Pur and Conclusion. in Introduction, I make a passing mention of literary sty![isbics with the emphasis on the a in and inc thud of th i s di sci p1 inc and then sonic i flU roduc tory remarks of the au thor of Lb i s novell a. The [il (1W ing four chapters arc devoted to the analysis of the novella, both thematically and stylistically. Chapter One deals with, on the basis of highly recurrent words and phrases in the novella, the thematic study. The theme can he summarized as follows. En a modern American society where money is the dominating force, where there is full of chaos and confusion, where there lacks love and understanding between people and whore people arc so distorted and twisted to such an extent that human beings are dehumanized to be creatures and animals, urban life is a reak heavy burden of existence for such a person as the protagonist is depicted or narrated. The switch of personal pronoun, stylistically speaking, is intended to involve the reader to shorten the psychological distance between the reader and the character, or between) the character and the?narrator, and thus to Increase the reliability and strength of persuasion, to expres?the author opinion and counent, to create a sense of chaos and confusion which is one theme of the novella. chapter Three mainly deals with rhetorical devices employed and their respective stylistic functions. The rhetorical devices discussed Include animal metaphor, the image of ate symbolic use of ears paradox and pun. Animal metaphor is used to express one theme of the novella. That is, human beings have already degraded into creatures and animals. The image of ater is the sign of life that theprotagonist is afraid of and is not dispensable with. The symbolic meaning of ears seems to be that the protagonist has a heavy burden of existence to carry. The Image of ater and the symbolic use of ears?are closely connected. Through these two, what is intended to convey is that the protagonist finally gets baptized pnd reborn and seized the day. He has come back to the real life. Ifaradox and pun are another wo rhetorical devices discussed with mlny an example from the novella. Their functions are mainly to char4aerlze characters, to express author comments on given issues, producing ridiculous or satirical effect. Chapter Four mainly copes with textuai features of the novella and their respective stylistic functions. The textual features discussed include graphological features, sentential features and cross ?sentential ones. Then at the end of this chapter the style of Seize the Day is arrived at. As far as graphological features are concerned, spacing and format, italicization and punctuation (mainly dash and exclamation mark) are studied with many samples. As for sentential features, what is most striking is that sentences are frequently begun with a proposition, a conjunction orapronoun. This gives a mood of artless, conversational looseness and thus lends itself weLl to comedy and also the expression of Bellow抯 own...