An Analysis Of The Narrative Art Of Sophie’s Choice

Novel is an art of narration, through which the author is able to represent history,criticize the reality, look forward to the future, and express emotions. The postmodernistnovels of the twentieth century break through the conventional narrative mode, whichbrings novel narration various artistic features. The American novelist William Styron’smasterpiece Sophie’s Choice is exactly a unique literary work in narration, a work thatwas born in the United State when the racial problem and the Jewish literature wereprevailing. It tells the extraordinary experience of the victim and survivor of theHolocaust―Sophie during the three periods of World War Ⅱ, i.e. the prewar period, warperiod and the postwar period. In the meanwhile, the story is also the cognitiveexperience of the narrator Stingo about the Holocaust, and also the development of hispersonal emotion.Though the study on the narrative strategies of this novel has become abundant bothdomestically and abroad, most of them choose certain narrative elements for generalstudy, such as narrative perspective, narrative time, and narrative voice, etc. Seldom dothey discuss the typical personal narrative style of Styron. This thesis, based on thetheory of narratology, discusses the extraordinary narrative artistic features of thisAmerican southern writer from three aspects that are narrative unreliability, narrativedelay and suppression and the crisscross of narrative time and space. Moreover itanalyzes how these narrative features or strategies are integrated into the reconstructionof the Holocaust history and the deep historical and realistic significance they convey.The whole thesis is divided into five parts. The introduction summarizes andconfirms the literary achievement and status of Styron, and gives an overview ofSophie’s Choice and its research status at home and abroad. Then it points out that thestudy significance is to interpret the narration of the work through the analysis of itsnarrative features.Chapter One penetrates into the unreliable narration of the work in three respects.First, it is the unreliable narrator, which is further divided into the unreliability of firstperson narrators and the unreliability of Sophie in contrast with the relatively reliablenarrator Stingo who is the embodiment of the implied author. Second, the thesis also pays attention to the textual unreliability and classifies the unreliable discourses into threecategories according to James Phelan’s theory of “misreporting” or “underreporting”along the axis of facts and events,“misevaluating” and “underevaluating” along the axisof values and ethics and “misinterpreting” and “underinterpreting” along the axis ofknowledge and perception (Phelan,1999:34-37). All these factors cause the unreliabilityof this work, but it is of no coincidence, but the calculated design of the writer. The thesisthen discusses the rhetorical and metaphorical significance of the narrative unreliabilitywhich reveals the writer’s intention in the unreliable narration that is to arouse readers’ethical thinking instead of the mere external delineation of the Holocaust.Chapter Two analyzes the narrative delay and suppression of the work. The narratorStingo retells the story Sophie told him according to his own narrative habit or inSophie’s first person perspective, thus there are a lot of information interrupted by thenarrator’s thinking habit, thought limitation and the insertion of incidents, which causesthe delay or permanent suppression of information. Through the analysis of the theoryand realization of narrative delay and suppression, the thesis points out its narrativeeffects in characterization, narrative rhythm and the enhancement of theme.The third chapter discusses the narrative time and space crisscross. The novel breaksthough the shackles of the representative crisis of history, integrating history into fictionand interlacing the historical time and space with the fictional reality through the fictionalcharacters from different possible worlds, by which it sets up a bridge between historyand fiction, and also between history and reality. By doing so, the thesis digs out the realpurpose of the writer in presenting us a fictional history.The conclusion sums up the above three aspects and also indicates that Styron,through unreliable narration, delayed and suppressed narration and the crisscross ofnarrative time and space, has presented a suspenseful and impressive Holocaust historyand a present life of American society. The realistic significance of the fictionalrepresentation of Sophie’s Choice goes far beyond sheer delineation of history andcriticism of racism and humanity. It, in fact, aims to lead readers to cognize andunderstand history in a rational way, then to revaluate the Holocaust history from a newangle, thus to reveal its essence. It is compared with the then U.S. racism, which helps inthe revelation of the essence of this phenomenon and removes prejudice and hatred. It also has a positive and practical significance in fostering a correct posture towards thereal social structure and the relationship between people as well as establishing ademocratic and harmonious world and social order.