An Interpretation Of The Features Of Spatial Narrative In A Bend In The River

V.S. Naipaul is a very eye-watching immigrant writer in the current world literature. He was born in an Indian Brahmans family in Trinidad and Tobago of Central America. In 1950, he wined the scholarship and gone to the Britain Oxford University. In 1955, he married a British girl and settled in England. In the 1960’s, he traveled around the world. In 2001, he awarded the Nobel Prize in the Literature. His main works include A Bend in the River(1979), Miguel Street(1959), In a Free State(1971), and so on. In 1945, Joseph Frank firstly proposed the concept of the space form which marked the beginning of the space narrative theories. He proposed an important space concept: juxtaposition. It refers to all kinds of the images, suggestions, symbols, and correlations and makes them gain continuously references and cross-references in the text and become an entity. He also summarized a concept which is related to the juxtaposition of the figure images: pure time. It is called time, but its essence is space. Through intermittent appearances of the figures, the writer forces the reader to juxtapose the different images of the figures’ intermittent appearances in terms of the space in the moment. Every image must be considered as a unit when the reader understands the text. Only the meaning units produce response references each other in a moment, the writer’s purposes could be realized. The concept of repeat narrative means that the writer wants to make a space dimension through a set of correlated extensive image web. As the flashback, the repeated images also prevent the plots and lead the reader to notice on other earlier appearances of the repeated images. The multiple narratives are another ways which can form the space form. Through several juxtaposed story lines, the writer forces the reader to react with the figures’ actions of the different lines occurred in the same time. They influence the time development and place the development with a relative rest entity. Nowadays, the domestic academic circle mainly uses the narrative theories and the postcolonial theories to research Naipaul’s works. The results which apply the emerging space narrative theory to research Naipaul’s works are little and most of them do not analyze deeply. The innovation of the paper is that use Joseph Frank’s space narrative theory and the research techniques of document analysis method and case study method to research the repeat narrative feature, multiple narratives feature, and juxtaposition feature in the text of A Bend in the River(1979). The purpose of the paper is to know the changes of figure’s inner worlds and the figures’ final fates and reveal multiple themes in the work.The thesis includes three parts: introduction of the thesis, main body, and conclusion. The introduction contains three parts: brief introduction of the writer and his work A Bend in the River(1979), literature review, and overview of the thesis. The first little part briefly introduces the writer and A Bend in the River(1979). The literature review looks back the domestic and the foreign comments in the past fifty years and illuminates the significance of the topic. The overview of the thesis briefly introduces the frame of the thesis and the contents of every part. The main body of the thesis includes four chapters. The first introduces the rise and development of the space narrative theory and Joseph Frank’s theory. The second chapter mainly uses his theory to analyses the repeat narrative phenomenon and features of the work. The thesis mainly chooses three images: the water hyacinth, the rapids, and the jungle, which appear throughout the work to analyses in detail. The third chapter mainly uses the multiple narrative theories which are introduced above to analyze the multiple narrative points of view and multiple styles in detail. The multiple narrative points of view include the zero points of view, the first person internal point of view, and the first person external point of view. The alternate appearances of the three points of view make the traditional narrative sequence cut continuously and make the novel form presented in a space form. The third chapter mainly uses the concept of the juxtaposition by Joseph Frank to analyze the juxtaposed phenomenon in the text. In the first part of the chapter analyze the three Heterotopias settings: the river bend town, the New Domain, and the east coast of the Africa. With the point of the protagonist, the reader goes through the different scenes. Through this shuttling, the plots have been cut and the time sequence has been suspended which make the space effect happened. The second part of the chapter analyzes the figures of Ferdinand and Father Huismans. In the process also uses the technique of the juxtaposition. Naipaul juxtaposes many figures in the book of A Bend in the River(1979), which indirectly reflect the main themes and the ideas. These techniques all can make a space effect of the novel form.