Research On First Person Narrator In Ba Jin's Novels

Ba Jin's works have always been considered to be more passionate and less skilled.However,as a recognized great author,Ba Jin showed his own charms in his works.This paper focuses on the texts of Ba Jin's works,researching on the skills and functions of the first person narrative in Ba Jin's novels,from the perspective of narratology.The first person narrator "I" in these novels has three different identities: the protagonist of the story,the participant of the story,or the witness of the story.Different identities have different roles.When the narrator "I" plays the role of the protagonist of the story,Ba Jin mainly uses the three forms of diary,autobiography and epistolary to let the protagonist express his own feelings.In New Life,the narrator "I" and Jingmei were actually representations of the character's two personalities,and the narrator was the more complicated and tangled one.Finally,the narrator was influenced and brought to a new life.The polyphonic writing style has become a prominent feature of New Life.In Dog,the first person narrator "I" became an unreliable narrator.The reader needs to find clues from the lines in the text to discover the true intention and the truth of the story.In the epistolary novel Lina,the text became rich,and three first-person narrators appeared in the whole novel.The three narrators "I",interacted with each other in three levels of text,and eventually made a successful heroic enlightener.In other novels,the narrator “I” is a participant in the story.“I” sometimes experienced together with other characters,or led the readers to find the truth of the characters,or directly influenced the characters and make certain changes to the characters.In Ward No.4,the narrator "I" appearing outside the story and the narrator "I" inside the story presented a state of mutual complementation and tangled backgrounds.They confirmed each other's narrative authenticity,trying to prove the reliability of the narrative of the text,and finally became one harmonious narrative community.The narrator in A Garden of Repose was leading the reader to search the truth like a detective.He also showed the image of a failed enlightener.This failed enlightener is the embodiment of Ba Jin's thoughts and creations entering maturity.It represents a mark in literature of the times.The first person narrator in Sinking narrated the story in a reminiscing tone,so there were two "I" narrators and perceivers in the text,one at present and one in memory.In the entire text of the story,the narrator and the perceiver alternated,and the contrast of their narrative showed the dramatic tension and artistic charm.When the first person narrator "I" appears only as a bystander of the whole story,the influence of "I" in the development of the whole story is weakened as much as possible."I" is only responsible for witnessing and does not work to influence others.The "I" can neither prevent someone from advancing or retreating,nor can he motivate someone to change.The story characters continue to develop according to their own established development trajectory.But this does not mean that the narrator "I" is not important.In Ghosts: A Person's Self-Remarks,the narrator "I" was such a bystander,but the narrator "I" appeared at the same time as the opposite side of the story's protagonist Sakaguchi.The whole story denied more than just the choice of Sakaguchi,but also that of "I".The meaning of the narrator "I" and the protagonist at this level was equally important.These two characters were opposite and together constituted the theme of the novel.Therefore,the first person narrators in Ba Jin's novels can be divided into different "I" s in different texts."I" plays different roles,the narrator in one and the character in another.This multi-text model of Ba Jin's novels can be called the “Matryoshka dolls” model.A Dream of the Sea and Vengeance are classic examples that are composed of superimposed multi-texts.In this model,the readers can view the text from the perspectives of different narrators and characters.The multi-transformation perspectives give the readers rich and comprehensive reading experience.Ba Jin himself always stressed that he did not like and was not good at using writing skills.But researchers can still discover the artistic consciousness in Ba Jin's works.As an author who was strict with himself,Ba Jin was good at using first-person narrators to show a variety of states,and the identities,roles and functions of these narrators differed a lot.