Defamiliarized Temporal Order And Fragmented Focalization

Sophie’s Choice is deemed as "the monumental work in the western history of novel". It is also a meditation on history and a gravely ambitious attempt to confront the truth of Nazi death camp and to define the moral legacy of the Holocaust not only for the Jews but for all humanity. The novel reflects the extremely profound significance of the Second World War and represents the sharp conversion and turbulence of thoughts of human beings after the war. Based on the topic of the Holocaust of Nazi, the novel is established on the basis of reality to argue the history. It constitutes the dialogue among the history, reality and future. According to American Narratologist Gerald Prince, narrative is the representation of at least two real or fictive events and situations in time sequence. The goals of narratology are clear:to discover, describe and explain the mechanics of narrative, the elements responsible for its form and functioning. Hence rooted in the theory of Genette’s Narrative Discourse and other related theories, this thesis attempts to explore and analyze the narrative strategies of the novel combined with some typical postmodernist narrative skills.This thesis includes five parts:Part one is a general introduction to William Styron’s life and his achievements. It also contains the purpose, the object and the methodology of this thesis. Part two is the literature review of the researches on Sophie’s Choice. Part three is the brief summary of narratology and focuses on the Genette’s Narrative Discourse and related theory of Narratology on which this thesis is based.Part four is the main body of the thesis, firstly the thesis discusses the double narrators:Stingo and Sophie. At the first level, Stingo who bears much resemblance to Styron himself, as a first-person narrator, narrates his own initiation story. At the second level, Sophie’s tales are narrated mainly by third-person narration on which the question of unreliability is discussed. Therefore, the story is narrated through the switch of narrative instances, the progression of narrative levels, and the transition of persons which make readers wander from historical macro-world into individual micro-world. Different narrators strengthen the three-dimensional sense and the expressive force of the novel.Secondly, the thesis analyzes the non-linear narrative time from two aspects:order and duration. The chaotic order of telling of stories is caused by using of analepses and prolepses in Sophie’s Choice. Different time duration as Scenes, ellipses, summaries and pauses create different narrative rhythms in the novel. Meanwhile this flexible time order and duration produce the unique effect of defamiliarization by means of juxtaposition of virtual actions and scenes which happens postwar American society and in the Auschwitz.Finally, the thesis analyzes the narrative focalization in the novel. Different Focalizations provide different perspectives for telling of novel, the combination of internal and external focalization stands out the subjective perspective. Sophie’s fragmented recalling fuses the fragmentation of dreams of Stingo and Sophie which reflects Styron’s fragmented and infinite imaginary world. Meanwhile those fragmented focalizations provide infinite imaginary space for readers and display complicated contradictions and crises of human beings after the Second World War. Those unique narrative Strategies are not only helpful in improving readers’ understanding of novel’s characters and themes, but keep them remaining defamiliarized and astonished for "plight of Sophie’s choices". By means of those slow narrative methods, Styron aims to redisplay that the Holocaust and the war engender permanent trauma on human beings. In addition, readers will be reminded to reconsider the history and the meaning of history to modern lives.Part five is the conclusion. It is concluded that the novel has unique narrative skills, complicated emotional appealing, profound theme as well as its delicate characterization which constitute the classic fusion of external form and internal spirit in the novel. Therefore, this thesis makes an attempt to its narratological analysis and its artistic effects exerted by narrative strategies in the hope that it will be helpful in the study of the novel.