The Shift In Internal Focalization And Its Narrative Effect In Alice Munro's "Baptizing," "A Wilderness Station," And "Runaway"

Canadian novelist Alice Munro won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature.The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences praised her as "a master of the contemporary short story." That comment speaks very highly of Munro and affirms her status in the field of short stories.Before she won the Nobel Prize,many scholars had already begun to study the way she tells stories.They found that Munro relied on shifting perspectives when presenting a story.However,few people have studied how she arranges those shifts and what kinds of narrative effects those shifts produce.This thesis uses the theory of"focalization" put forward by Gerard Genette in narratology to analyze the shifts in internal focalization and discusses the effects produced by the series of shifts in"Baptizing," "A Wilderness Station," and "Runaway."This thesis finds that Alice Munro uses fixed,multiple,and variable internal focalization in the three stories selected for analysis.These three kinds of internal focalization produce narrative shifts.In the shifts,narrative agents such as the focalizer,the focalized character,the focal character(the main/important focalized character),and the narrator keep changing.These forms of shifts are as follows:In "Baptizing"(1971),the shift in fixed internal focalization is seen in the sixteen focalized characters who keep changing,yet the narrator and focalizer Del Jordan remains constant.In "A Wilderness Station"(1994),the shift in multiple internal focalization is seen in five letter-writing characters who play the role of narrator as they describe three events from their own perspectives.In "Runaway"(2004),the shift in variable internal focalization is seen in changes between the focalizer Carla and the focalizer Sylvia Jamieson.In addition,the shift in variable internal focalization is also seen among the focal characters include Carla,Sylvia Jamieson,and Clark.This thesis draws the conclusion that Munro is skillful in producing strong narrative effects by using shifts in internal focalization.These shifts have the effects of portraying the protagonist's independent image,foreshadowing intricate layers of the story,and highlighting the theme of "enclosure" and "escape." These narrative effects are as follows:In "Baptizing"(1971),the fixed focalizer remains constant so that she is granted more freedom in describing what Del sees,thinks,and experiences.As a result,readers notice that Del insists on the principle of independence when dealing with others.It helps shape her image.In "A Wilderness Station"(1994),the shift in multiple internal focalization creates a series of conflicts and confusions to create the effect of narrative suspense.Setting up the suspense has the effect of foreshadowing intricate layers of the story and keep the attention of readers on the story.In "Runaway"(2004),the shifts in variable internal focalization reveal the process of Carla's "enclosure" and "escape"from the perspectives of two female characters,so that readers may have more reliable information to assess the psychological change of the heroine.Thus,readers are more likely to identify the theme of the story.