Study On Point Of View In Atonement

Ian McEwan was a famous British contemporary novelist, whose works are mostly concerned about children's inner state. Atonement has been widespread noticed since it was published in 2001. It pushed McEwan to his highest point of creation after Amsterdam. This novel adopts a variety of point of view to demonstrate the crime forming process of the adolescent Briony and her atonement process throughout all her life.According to Genette's theory on point of view, this thesis studies the narrative way of the novel Atonement. Genette's narrative theory changes the confusion of the"point of view"and"focalization", and divides"point of view"into"who sees"(focalization) and"who speaks"(narrative voice). This thesis mainly analyzes the focalization way of each chapter of the novel, and gives some brief analysis on its narrative voice. The focalizer and narrator is unified to one person who is outside the story when zero focalization is adopted, while in the third-person internal focalization, the narrative voice is from one person who is outside the story but the focalizer is one character in the story. The idea that"who speaks"does not necessarily equal to"who sees"has been illustrated with detailed examples. At the same time, this thesis compares the traditional division of point of view with Genette's theory to find that third-person omniscient point of view is similar to zero focalization and limited-omniscient point of view is similar to third-person internal focalization.The novel contains three parts plus one epilogue. The first part depicts the love story of Robbie and Cecilia, and the crime forming process of Briony. This part adopts third person narrative. In the aspect of focalization, there are zero focalization which makes up the frame of the plot and creates suspense, and variable internal focalization, which shows how Briony commits her crime. Part two turns to the battlefield of WWII, which adopts Robbie and his comrade's focalization to show the bloody scene and part three turn to the hospital of the arm, which adopts Briony's focalization to show the wounded soldiers in hospital. Part two and part three continue to use third person narrative. The narrative voice comes from a narrator outside the story. In focalization, there still exists zero focalization. When Robbie and Briony use their different focalization to show the different aspect of war, it coincides with the concept of multiple-internal focalization. The epilogue adopts the first person narrative, which is different from the first three parts using third person narrative. Through the analysis of point of view of the novel, we find the art charm of McEwan's using narrative technique to show the plot skillfully, and it also gives a new direction to do research on Atonement.