Rhetorical Construction Of The Character Image In The Flowers Of War

By taking character image construction as an entry point, this paper explores rhetorical strategies of Geling Yan’s"Jin Ling Shi San Chai"("The Flowers of War"). It mainly treats characters’appearance and manner, denomination of the title and characters, space choices, and dialogue strategies as the object of rhetoric study and then analyzes their respective rhetorical connotation."Shi San Chai"(Thirteen Hairpins) in the title is a metaphor for characters’tragic fate. Differences in appearance and behavior together with wordiness and brevity in speeches constitute the identity contrast between the two groups. Furthermore, the difference in naming female students and prostitutes is a way of rhetorically building their distinct status. Selecting the church as the event’ scene and through contrast between the inside and outside of the church as well as the bible workshop inside the church and the underground warehouse, the connection between spatial metaphors and characters’ status imagination is achieved. Various identity grades among characters are reflected through communication relationship of dialogues, which is the carrier of interpersonal communication. The novel’s expression strategy and rhetorical construction of characters’ image are incarnated in dialogues between prostitutes and various groups including female students, priests and soldiers as well as dialogues within the same group like prostitutes, female students and priests.Finally, the integration of character appearance, living space and speeches embodies Geling Yan’s rich rhetorical intentions. And by means of analyzing her rhetorical intents, the purpose of cognizing text’s meaning structure and value theme is achieved.