The Grapes Of Wrath:Narrative Perspective For Its Thematic Reinforcement

John Steinbeck is a famous American writer, and his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath makes him the sixth Nobel Prize winner in literature field in American history. Among Steinbeck’s numerous works, many indeed record or reflect the poor people’s miserable lives in the period he lives. Maybe that is why he has been considered as a "social protest" novelist and his novels are usually studied from the aspect of social philosophy by critics at home and abroad for a long time, which undoubtedly limits the research of Steinbeck and his works in the frame of social criticism, and neglects the artistic aspects in writing for this reason.Owing to the influence of "non-teleological thinking" and "transcendentalism", his literature acquisition, and Broadway and Hollywood experiences, Steinbeck not only records the history objectively and truthfully, but adopts multiple narrative perspectives in reinforcing his gracious themes. Therefore, many of his novels, especially the novellas, reveal some narrative modes of dramas and films, and therefore are called "play-novelette" and "cinematic novel". Many of these novels are adapted into plays and films successfully, being played on Broadway stage and put on Hollywood screen. The Grapes of Wrath is one of them. Either the success of the novel, or the adapted drama or film, attributes not only to the vivid story and its gracious theme, but also the multiple narrative perspectives in telling the story. Based on Norman Friedman’s classification of narrative perspective and some relevant theories in drama and film, this paper will discuss the role of multiple narrative perspectives in the reinforcement of the novel, with the adapted drama and film as references.According to Friedman’s narrative theory, narrative perspective can be divided into eight categories. In The Grapes of Wrath, the author adopts three of them—editorial omniscience, dramatic mode and camera mode. There is one point needed to pay special attention, and that is the latter two modes are narrated in the frame of editorial omniscient point of view. This paper will analyze these three perspectives separately in three chapters of the main part, helping the readers to appreciate this novel from a comparatively new aspect.The first chapter of the main part analyzes this novel from the perspective of editorial omniscience. There are all together30chapters in this novel, including14 narrative chapters and16intercalary chapters. Though both editorial omniscient point of view, the narration in the narrative chapters are more objective for the focalization of these chapters are on one of the thousands of migrant families—the Joad family; while to strengthen the gracious theme, the omniscient point of view in the intercalary chapters are more subjective, besides, the author even makes some comments himself. The second chapter of the main part discusses the dramatic mode adopted in the novel, mainly from the aspect of dramatic dialogues and dramatic monologues, two distinct features in a drama. The third chapter of the main part introduces the camera mode in this novel. The author adopts the filmic transformation of camera shots and angles and the montage technique to depict the broad historical and social background to get the theme of the novel reinforced. This thesis will analyze this novel from the aspect of narrative perspective in reinforcement its theme, a new way to study the author and this great work.