A Transitivity System Approach To The Stylistic Analysis Of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers (1917-1967) is considered to be among the most significant Americanwriters of the twentieth century. Her novels and short stories are thematically consistent inexploring isolation, loneliness and unfulfilled desire. Her works are also noted for thefrequent use of adolescent, grotesque, and socially marginalized characters to reveal thesethemes.Carson McCullers’ first successful work is The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, which waspublished in1940when she was only twenty-three. The story is set in a small town in theAmerican South and describes the lonely deaf-mute Singer and a group of people who areattracted by his kindness and sympathy, including the owner of a café, a girl who is eager togrow up, a radical drunkard, a bitter black doctor etc. Each of them pours out their hearts.Meanwhile, mute Singer has changed their illusive lives. The thesis applies the theory of thetransitivity system to analyze the alienation of those main characters of the novel in order tohelp the readers to understand deeply their loneliness, anger and helplessness as well as thetheme of the novel.This thesis applies the transitivity system to analyze isolation and the alienated state ofthe main characters. The system of transitivity belongs to systemic functional linguistics andis used for analyzing experiential meaning in language, that is, the way in which humanbeings talk of experiences. The system of transitivity builds on the assumption that verbs canbe divided into large groups depending on what kind of process they describe. Each kind ofprocess has certain participant roles linked to it, and the process is normally set against anumber of circumstances. The transitivity system analysis of the novel would be a newmethod for understanding Carson McCullers and her first novel, The Heart Is a LonelyHunter.This thesis is mainly divided into three parts. The first one is an introduction to thewriter—Carson McCullers, and the brief introduction of her first novel—The Heart Is aLonely Hunter. Meanwhile, this part also briefly offers a comprehensive survey of criticism on this novel at home and abroad, which is followed by a general explanation of the transitivitysystem forwarded by Halliday. The second part includes five chapters which make up themain body of the thesis, analyzing the five main characters of the novel in the light of thetransitivity system which consists of six types of processes, that is, material process, mentalprocess, verbal process, relational process, behavioral process and existential process. The lastpart of the thesis is the conclusion of the analysis in which summarizes the main issues of thethesis.