| Colson Whitehead(1969 –),known as the “literary chameleon,” is an eminent contemporary African-American writer who has won the 2017 and 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction due to the publication of The Underground Railroad(2016)and The Nickel Boys(2019),making him become the fourth writer in history to have won the prize for fiction twice.Whitehead exerts magic,reality,technology,metaphor,and popular culture in his literary creation,which makes his works refreshing and gives his works a unique style.In The Underground Railroad,Whitehead employs diverse narrative strategies to probe into how narrative focalization,time,and structure work together to convert a female slave’s escape adventure with the help of the underground railroad to an epic.In doing so,this thesis will interpret The Underground Railroad in three narrative strategies,including focalization,time,and structure,and then further reveal Whitehead’s narrative aesthetics and creative thoughts.The thesis is divided into five parts.The first part introduces Colson Whitehead,his works,and achievements.And then,research results and trend of The Underground Railroad both at home and abroad are sorted out to elucidate the research background and significance of this thesis.Finally,the last part introduces critical terms extracted from narratology,which serve as the theoretical support.Chapter One begins with narrative focalization.Whitehead interchangeably employs zero focalization,external focalization,and variable internal focalization in the novel to show his adept narrative skills.Zero focalization provides information behind characters and broadens readers’ horizons.External focalization gives characters autonomy,showing ups and downs of plots.And variable internal focalization enables the narrator to switch flexibly from different narrative perspectives,enhancing the authenticity and flexibility of narrative.Through different perspectives,Whitehead presents a real picture of society.In the second chapter,narrative time in the novel is discussed in terms of order,duration,and frequency.Whitehead replaces the traditional linear time arrangement with analepsis and prolepsis,avoiding the monotony of storytelling and arousing readers’ interest.Scene and ellipsis present the beauty of rhythm.Repeating narrative and singulative narrative enhance the narrative tension of text.With different forms of narrative time,Whitehead shows the protagonists’ painstaking search for their dream.Chapter Three delves into the narrative structure.Whitehead uses his uncanny ability to inhabit and reinvent conventional narrative structure,making the text structure extraordinary.“Place chapters” can be connected to the linearity due to the protagonist’s northward journey.However,owing to the arrangement of “character chapters,” the linear structure is suspended,which fills the gaps in reading for the reader.In addition,the dual narrative threads represented by two characters in the novel move forward under the impetus of the same character,highlighting the intricate framework conceived by Whitehead in the novel.The fifth part is the conclusion.Through the analysis of narrative focalization,narrative time,and narrative structure in The Underground Railroad,this thesis reveals aesthetic characteristics of the novel and creative thoughts of the author,which highlights Whitehead’s great concern about racial issues.In order to avoid a similar fate,people need to face the truth of history instead of escaping from it,so employing unique narrative strategies in the novel helps people bravely face and then ponder over the future of the black.To be specific,Whitehead uses multi-layered narrative strategies in The Underground Railroad to innovate the traditional paradigm of slave fiction and bring readers a refreshing sense.At the same time,the narrative strategies permeate the text of the novel,which not only conveys the author’s attitude of disappointment in the past and hope in the future but helps people evoke historical memory in the post-racial era. |
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