An Interpretation Of As I Lay Dying From The Perspective Of Narrative Voice

William Faulkner is the representative of southern American writer. He sets the American society as the background, with variety literary forms to reveal the deep miserable and unbearable of the people. All his life, he has written twenty novels and eighty short stories. Most of Faulkner’s works happens in the southern society of American, but he is by no means a local writer, he concerns for the common problems of all people, such as human suffering, loneliness and unbearable. As William Faulkner has made outstanding contributions to the literature, he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949.As I Lay Dying was published in 1930, which has brought international reputation to Faulkner. Different from his Yorknapatawpha novels, which focus on the southern aristocratic families, As I Lay Dying is about a lower peasant family ——the Bundrens. The plot of this novel is very simple, it talks of a hard journey of a South American farmer, Anse Bundren, who sticks to his promise to his wife, together with his daughter and sons, sending his wife’s body to her home town for burying. During the journey, each family member not only goes through water and fire, but also experiences the emotional distress and failure. However the novel’s narrative structure is worth studying. The totally fifty-nine sections of the novel are narrated by fifteen narrators in different perspectives, and then the readers recognize the structure from the narrative fragments. Because different narrators have different narrative stances and positions, there will be different narrative perspectives for the same event. At the same time, the narrators are the characters as well, so the characters will be shown as different images. Through the summary of the narrative attitudes from the narrators, the author’s attitude is concluded. At last, the study of the narrative perspective, narrative images and narrative attitude, comprising the narrative voice of As I Lay Dying.The thesis consists of five parts. The introduction part introduces the author William Faulkner and his novel As I Lay Dying,and the critics in China and abroad as well, then state the research emphasis and the topic of this thesis at last. It is well known that Faulkner’s unique narrative style attracts attention from the critics and readers around the world, and one of his major works As I Lay Dying uses multi-perspective view to unfold the plots, portray characters, deepen the theme and convey the understanding of life. This thesis is focused on the research of narrative voice, and from the influence of narrative voice to the work to explore the deep social significance.The first part outlines the definition of the narrative voice, the development and the content of the theory. The narrative voice includes: narrative perspective, narrative images and narrative attitude. Who is talking in the novel? What does the narrator have said? How does the narrator have said? Those are the areas that many scholars focus their researches on. And the narrative voice is such a kind of theory, which tries to identify who is the real narrator in the novel to find out what kinds of perspectives the narrators use and discuss what kinds of attitudes the narrators take, then to let the reader have a full range of perspective in reading and understanding the literary work.The second part analyzes the narrative perspectives, including the axis narrative perspective, interior narrative perspective and peripheral narrative perspective. Through the multi-perspective narration, the readers have the opportunities to explore the inner worlds of the characters, observe the echoes and positions of the narrators, and help the readers to understand the reality and fantasy content in Faulkner’s work.The third part is the analysis of narrative images. According to the nature of the narrators, we classify the characters into three types: the warriors Anse and Cash who dares to face life, the loser Addie and Darl who escapes from life and the glorious defeated woman Dewey Dell. Study the meaning of the images will help us understand the deeper meaning of the character’s social significance represented by the character’s inner worldThe forth part discusses the narrative attitude. Narrative attitude refers to the intentionally or unintentionally evaluation that the narrator has expressed in the narrative discourse:affirmation or negation, praise or criticism. It concerns the nature of the characters’ behavior and how the author arranges their behaviors, a tragic ending or a happy ending; successful man or failure man that all constitute the affirmation and negation narrative attitude.At last, in As I Lay Dying, the fifteen characters’ various narrative perspectives construct the subtle and calm relationships between them, thus have produced many narrative effects. This narrative technique influences the readers’ understandings and perceptions of the novel, also reveals the spiritual world of the characters. Those narrative techniques originate from the profound thinking of Faulkner for the language, the depiction of the character and the reality of world, closely relates to his creation purpose. In Faulkner’s works, he shows his attention and sympathy to the suffering people, combining with his unique writing skills, making his works receive much attention.