An Analysis Of The Omniscient Narrative In Seize The Day From The Perspective Of Rhetorical Narratology

Through the concern for the governing principles of a narrative and the attempt to characterize what allows narratives to have meanings, narratology is especially effective to account for the distinctiveness of a given narrative, to illuminate certain reactions to a narrative disposal, and to support interpretive conclusions of a narrative text. And among those current branches of narratological approaches, rhetorical narratology distinguishes itself from others for its emphasis on readers' function and its belief in considering a narrative to be a progression with the interplay between text and audience in a specific narrative context through time. In light of the theories above, this thesis analyzes the narrative in Saul Bellow's Seize the Day from a perspective of rhetorical narratology in particular, arguing how narrative is disposed to convey remarkable characteristics to this novella.Based on the assurnptions and frames of rhetorical narratology, this thesis first discusses the two fundamental aspects - "who speaks" and "who sees" - in the narrative of Seize the Day. In general, this story is narrated by an omniscient third-person narrator, but the narrative voice is not an exclusive one all the time. Multi-voices, in which the protagonist Wilhelm's is a most distinctive one, participate into the whole narrative, presenting the latent tensions in the course of the novel. Besides, the focalization of the omniscient narrator shifts whenever necessary for certain purpose, which devotes to exposing the instabilities of characters and events in the story. Features of narrator and focalization in Seize the Day regulate its omniscient narrative mode into a dynamic development. Then, the thesis goes on to analyze the temporal relationship in this novel, a distinguished feature of Seize the Day as well as an important factor in the narrative progression which evolves through time. Variations existing in order, duration and frequency generate certain rhetorical effects and make the structure of Seize the Day coordinate smoothly the interlaced temporal references, leading further instabilities and tensions to the movement of the narrative. Furthermore, as a narrative is considered to be the transaction between text and audience in rhetorical narratology, this thesis later argues the different levels of audience engagement in the narrative of Seize the Day, revealing the audience function as an essential drive to the whole narrative progression.The analysis of the narrative in Seize the Day demonstrates how flexible and compatible an omniscient narrative can come to be. From the perspective of rhetorical narratology, an omniscient narrative in Seize the Day, modified to certain extent, takes shape as a progression impelled by those instabilities and tensions interweaving in the narrative text. With the emphasis on the audience participation, a general omniscient narrative like the one in Seize the Day is by no means simplex or static, but complex and dynamic. This thesis also shows how rhetorical narratology functions to interpret an omniscient narrative, a topic that has not been fully discussed by former studies, contributing in a way its possible complement to the development of the relevant narrative theories.