An Analysis Of The Narrative Strategies In Faulkner's Go Down, Moses

As one of the most important and leading figures of American Southern literature,Faulkner is a prolific author, a profound thinker and an avant-garde experimenter. His works take root in the southern culture and subtly depict the exploration of self-identity of the individuals in the turmoil of time. The enchantment of Faulkner's works stems not only from their humanistic spirit and motifs but also from his unique narrative strategies, his talent to tell a story. The novel Go Down, Moses is one of the late achievements in his life. It recounts the growth of Isaac McCaslin from his childhood to adulthood, reflects the anxiety and despair of the entire turbulent southern society represented by the vicissitudes of the McCaslin family and displays the obedience and revolt of the new generations towards the southern traditions.This thesis will adopt narrative theories to analyze the narrative structure, narrative perspective and narrative voice of Go Down, Moses to reveal Faulkner's distinct narrative strategies. In the narrative time, Faulkner mainly adopts four kinds of techniques of treatment of time to achieve a multiple narrative perspective: discontinuous time,metamorphic time, overlying time and pasted time. This unique application of treatment of time breaks the boundary between reality and fiction, creates the enchantment of narration and inspires readers' participation. In the narrative space, he uses his self-experience to create “Yoknapatawpha county”. The combination of multiple physical spaces and psychological spaces provides the novel with a panorama of the traditional southern society and increases the reliability of the literary discourse. In the narrative perspective, he adopts third person point of view to organize the whole story. Various kinds of internal focaliztion narrations are integrated with omniscient narration and external focalization narration to form multiple narrative perspectives. In the narrative voice, Faulkner applies the polyphonic narration into the story and brings in various narrators to express different reflections towards the reality. The dialogicality of narrative voices constitutes the inner tension of the story. Through the detailed analysis of the narrative strategies in Go Down, Moses, this thesis will help the readers to foster a better interpretation of Faulkner's literary works.