The Character Analysis Of Milkman In Song Of Solomon In The Light Of Interpersonal Function

Toni Morrison, a prolific African-American writer, is the first femaleAfrican-American winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Song of Solomon wonboth the National Book Critics Circle Award and the American Academy andInstitute of Arts and Letters Award after its publication, and was viewed as anothermilestone in African-American literature after Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940)and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952).The research and criticism of the Song of Solomon have focused on its themeand style. Milkman has been constantly concerned from different perspectives, suchas symbolism, bildungsroman and so on. Based on Halliday’s Systemic FunctionalGrammar, this thesis tries to investigate the dialogues between Milkman and othersfrom mood system and modality system and find out Milkman’s personalities and hisrelationships with others implied in his language, and attempts to find out thecharacter development from the perspective of interpersonal function by comparinghis mood and modality before and after his seeking journey to the South.This thesis analyzes the characteristics of Milkman based on the InterpersonalFunction of Systemic Functional Grammar. First, through detailed studies on theinterpersonal meaning of the dialogues in Song of Solomon, it can be summarizedthat there are numerous examples of interpersonal meaning in the dialogues. Second,it provides a new angle to character analysis by the interpersonal function analysis ofdialogues, and proves the applicability of the theoretical framework of SystemicFunctional Grammar in literary works. Third, the different choices of mood andmodality indicate different characteristics and statuses of the speakers, and canpresent the main theme of the novel: growth. To sum up, the interpersonal functionanalysis of dialogues in the literary works provides a new perspective ofunderstanding of characters and literary works.This thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter I is introduction, and Chapter II is literature review, they include a brief introduction to this thesis, the previousstudies of Song of Solomon and interpersonal function analysis in literary works andthe methodologies used in this thesis. Chapter III analyzes Milkman, the hero ofSong of Solomon, from the perspective of interpersonal function to reveal thepersonalities of Milkman and relationships between Milkman and others, andpresents his mental change by analysis of mood and modality. It points out that moodand modality play an important role in the process of character analysis, and issignificant to find Milkman’s characteristic and his mental change. The last chapteris the new findings and the limitation of this thesis, and the suggestions for furtherstudies.