Point-of-View And Narrative Judgment In Lan McEwan's Atonement

Regarded by many as one of the most outstanding British novelists and screen writers nowadays, Ian McEwan (1948--) emerged onto the literary scene in 1975 with the publication of his first short story collection First Love, Last Rites. The novel Atonement was published in 2001. This novel has won him praise from both the literary critics and the ordinary readers. This thesis is intended to make an analysis of the interactive relationship between the author of the novel and the reader by having a close look into the subject about how McEwan skillfully guides the reader's narrative judgments by frequently using the rhetorical device:point-of-view.James Phalen suggested that the rhetorical understanding of narrativity is "tied (1) to the rhetorical definition of narrative as somebody telling somebody else on some occasion and for some purpose that something happened and (2) to the concept of narrative progression." This assertion suggests that a literary work's narrativity involves with both the dynamic progression of the author's telling a story and the reader's dynamic progression of understanding this story. Both of the two progressions are dynamic. In order to complete a narrative, these two progressions have to constantly adjust themselves. Therefore, narrativity consists of both the author and the reader's observation and judgments, and it encourages the interaction of observing and judging. Narrative judgment is crucial to the rhetorical understanding of narrativity, because it exists in both the author's writing procedure (the narrative judgments made by the author and the characters) and the reader's reading procedure. According to the interactive relationship between the two procedures, the author guides its reader's narrative judgment by using certain rhetorical device while telling the story, such as the various.point-of-views, so as to lead the reader to the certain understanding that the author intended.In the light of Phelan's theory of narrative judgment, and on the basis of careful reading and analysis of the novel Atonement, this dissertation concentrates on the application of the technique—various point-of-views. In the novel Atonement,, the application of various point-of-views can be seen in two major aspects:first, in the first three parts of Atonement, the author keeps switching the internal-focalization among different characters in order to repeatedly describe each event(such as the fountain scene and the library scene) from different character's eyes. Therefore, when the reader is informed with the truth of each event, they also acquire a full understanding of each character's consciousness; second, in the epilogue, the narrative mode is switched from the third-person narrative to the first-person narrative. It also contains the disclosure of Briony's real identity as the author of the first three parts and the fact that she has changed the ending of the story. This switch and disclosure give the reader two identities:(1) the reader of Briony's novel; (2) the reader of McEwan's novel. Therefore, the reader can view this novel from two different point-of-views.After analyzing the various point-of-views adopted in the novel Atonement, we realize that to observe an event from different angles, one can get information that differs in both quantity and content. It is by applying the technique of various narrative perspectives that McEwan has turned a simple story into a huge inforport. Step by step, he guides his reader to the theme of Atonement: the relationship between reality and fiction. Therefore, to track and analyze the reader's narrative judgments in the light of the novel's application of point-of-view is the key to the understanding of Atonement.