An Analysis Of Tough Guys Don't Dance From The Perspective Of Unnatural Narrative

Norman Mailer,who has won the Pulitzer Prize twice,is undoubtedly one of the greatest novelists in the English-speaking world.With the employment of unique ideas and artistic concepts,he has produced numerous works,in which the writing thoughts prove that he is one of the indispensable figures in contemporary American society.Furthermore,his artistic technique has made him the pioneer in the literary world.Tough Guys Don't Dance,as one of his masterpieces,demonstrates the story of the protagonist‘s courage to gain the true self.This thesis consists of five chapters:The first chapter introduces Norman Mailer and Tough Guys Don't Dance as well as the research status at home and abroad.By elaborating the connections and differences between several narratological terms from the origin of narratology and the historical context,it concentratively explains the unnatural narrative and nine reading strategies proposed by Alber.Besides,it analyzes the feasibility and significance of the thesis and lays the foundation for the whole dissertation.The second chapter to the fourth chapter are the main parts of the thesis.With a meticulous dissection of Tough Guys Don't Dance,the thesis gets insight into unnatural narrators from the perspective of extreme narrators,non-human narrators and unreliable narrators to analyze how the unnatural narrators transcend the cognitive possibilities of the real world.Norman Mailer greatly enriches the form and content of the text as well as deepens the thoughts and meaning of the novel through the unnatural narrators in the novel(for example,the extreme narrator Madden,the non-human narrator: the surf and so on).The third chapter dissects the anti-realistic characters in Tough Guys Don't Dance,whereby the roles that are impossible in physical,logical or human domains.With an elaborate analysis,it is revealed that the context is inundated with non-human entities with ghost-like images,multiple coexistence patterns and extreme unnatural forms without the imitative characteristics of normal roles.The fourth chapter presents narrative scenarios that are impossible to be recognized or imitated by humans through interpreting the scenes and events that are impossible in physical,logical,and human attributes.These unnatural narrative scenes reinforce the fictional nature and unnaturalness of the novel.The fifth chapter is the summary of the thesis.Based on the analysis and summary of the main parts,it is concluded that Tough Guys Don't Dance is a great practice of unnatural narrative.Through excavating unnatural narrators,anti-realistic characters,impossible scenarios,this thesis demonstrates in detail the existence of unnatural elements in the novel.The five chapters are interlocking and demonstrate one of the most interesting things about fictional narratives: representing the unrealizable elements contained in the world of experience around us.To sum up,Norman Mailer has made full use of unnatural narratology and successfully constructed a world of impossible stories about murder and revenge.This thesis explores the unnatural narrative art in Tough Guys Don't Dance and the meanings behind it as well as opens up new fields for the analysis of Mailer‘s works.By dissecting its narrative texts,Mailer‘s superb ability of story-telling are well explored and his extraordinary capability of work-creating is fully evacuated.