Analysis Of Three Narrative Spaces In A Mercy

Toni Morrison is an African-American female writer who won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 and is the first African-American female that received this honor in history.A Mercy was published in 2008.It is a book about what happened in Jacob's farm.The background of the novel is set around 1690.It is in the early days of North American colonies and there are all kinds of slaves,including blacks,native Indians.As a writer with strong spatial awareness,Morrison has shown her thoughts on the existing space of characters in her works.Analysis of Morrison's A Mercy from the perspective of spatial narrative could help us have a better understanding of the narrative art and multiple themes in A Mercy.The introduction part presents the life of Toni Morrison and her work A Mercy,literature review,and significance of this study,laying a foundation for the main content.The first chapter briefly reviews the development of spatial narrative.Meanwhile,it focuses on Gabriel Zoran's spatial narrative theory to lay a theoretical foundation for the analysis of A Mercy.The second chapter studies A Mercy from topographical space to analyze spaces where characters or objects exist in the novel.It includes the natural environment of North America in the 17th century and the situation of colonies that reflected in the novel,mansions of two white settlers,that are Jacob's and D'Ortega's and the Ship of Angelus,sailing from Europe to America.The third chapter studies A Mercy from chronotopic space.It includes both synchronic and diachronic levels.Synchronic level has a contrastive analysis of male characters,who are in relatively motion and have freedom to act,with female characters who are relatively at rest and don't have the right to take actions as their wills.Diachronic level analyzes Florens' movement from Jacob's farm all the way to the Blacksmith's residence,with the task of finding the Blacksmith to save her mistress Rebekka.Besides,it analyzes the diachronic space of Rebekka from her girlhood in Europe to her marriage in North America.The fourth chapter studies A Mercy from textual space to analyze spatial changes brought by transformations of viewpoints of characters,and it is analyzed from Willard's perceptual point of view,and Minha Mae's conceptual point of view.Besides,it analyzes the total space in the novel to associate each segments in space to form a whole.The conclusion part summarizes A Mercy through Gabriel Zoran's patial narrative theory,and explores multiple themes like slavery,ethics and religion,etc.through analyses from different spatial levels.