A Study Of Narrative Strategy In A Mercy

Toni Morrison is hailed as a great contemporary modernist writer. Of all herworks, A Mercy is the latest novel which tells the story about a black girl and othercharacters living around her. Although the novel is seemingly very short in length andsimple in plot, it is outstanding for profound themes and multiple modernisticmethods.Form the publication of Toni Morrison’s first novel, critics have done a lot ofresearch on her novels from various respects. Her novels are good cases for the studyof feminism, postmodernism, new historicism and so on. A Mercy was published in2008and the previous researches have rarely discussed it. This thesis is an attempt atmaking a relatively thorough analysis of A Mercy in the light of narrative theory andexploring the hidden enslavement theme: the state of enslavement exists not onlyamong the black but all the people, it does not mean being wrested dominion butgiving dominion to another. The thesis is divided into five parts:The first part gives a brief introduction to Toni Morrison, some studies about herworks, A Mercy, research approach Narratology and the significance of the study. AMercy reflects the language talent of Toni Morrison and her thoughtful ideas. Thensome detailed techniques in A Mercy will be analyzed in the following parts formnarrative theory.The second part is an analysis of the narrative time of A Mercy from non-linearand repetitive narrative. The narrative time order of all the characters in the novel isfragmented. The boundaries of past and present are blurred. And quite a lot ofrepetitive narratives tell the miserable slavery. The non-linear narrative time andrepetitive frequency convey the great physical trauma of all the characters because ofthe enslavement.The third part discusses the focalization of the novel. A Mercy has seven focalizers from whose points of view readers see the whole thing and understand theinner world of characters. The novel tells the story by alternating between differentfocalizers and the worlds of them are connected with each other. With the shiftinginternal focalization, character’s inner world is exhibited and the theme ofenslavement gets ride of racism.The fourth part discusses narrator and unreliability. The frame story aboutrejecting is told by different narrators and Toni Morrison uses unreliable narrator toincrease the readability of the novel. In the process of recognizing the unreliablenarrator in the novel, readers get a clear idea about the theme of enslavement.Through the detailed analysis of narrative strategies of A Mercy, the thesis comesto a conclusion that A Mercy is a novel of delicate narrative strategies which make thereading into an active process and help to deepen the enslavement theme of the novel.