An Analysis Of Narrative Features In Graham Swift’s Waterland

Graham Swift has been praised as one of the most distinguished writers in England.His masterpiece,Waterland,published in 1983,brings him fame and fortune.Among his many works,Shuttlecock(1991),Waterland(1991)and Last Orders(2002)have been adapted into films.Graham Swift,a literature teacher in a college in London,is adept in presenting character’s inner thoughts and feelings via narrative techniques.This thesis analyzes the narrative features of Waterland from these three respects: narrative time in Waterland,unreliable narration of Tom Crick and polyphonic features.This thesis is divided into five parts: introduction,three chapters of the body and conclusion.Introduction part firstly concentrates on Graham Swift and his main works,then briefly summarizes the main plots of Waterland and the researches about Waterland at home and abroad.Finally,this part briefly introduces the concepts of narrative time,unreliable narrator,polyphony and dialogism.The first chapter analyzes narrative time in Waterland in the light of Genette’s concept of “order”,“duration” and “frequency”.The non-linear order conveys that the narrator Tom intends to minimize his guilt or release his trauma for the disastrous events in his adolescence,under the agency of the discussion of “analepsis” and “prolepsis on analepsis”.The rhythmic duration is conducive to the appreciation of aesthetic effect and the expression of the narrator Tom’s grief and regret towards the sorrowful events,according to the analysis of pause and scene,which slow down the narrative speed,and the discussion of summary and ellipsis,which expedite the narrative speed.The employment of varied frequency is beneficial to the perfect presentation of narrative.The alternation of the three kinds of frequency strengthens the expression of trauma of the narrator Tom,who is deeply haunted by the disastrous events in his youth.The second chapter mainly discusses the unreliable narration of Tom Crick according to the concept of Wayne C.Booth’s unreliable narrator.The first part of this chapter analyzes the narrator Tom Crick’s shifting of narrative person from the first-person narrative to the second-person narrative and the third-person narrative to convey that Tom attempts to minimize his guilt and evade his responsibility,which results in the unrealistic narration.The second part discusses the implausibility of Tom Crick’s narrative account through recounting the life stories of Sarah Atkinson in detail according to Fenlanders’ gossip and rumors.Meanwhile,it conveys that we can not know what really happened in the past due to the restriction of certain social,historical and cultural ideologies.The third part analyzes the inconsistency of Tom Crick’s narration through providing one event with two contradictory versions,which not only results in unreliability but also reflects the postmodern uncertain and chaotic state.The third chapter mainly introduces the concept of “great dialogue” and “micro-dialogue” to analyze the polyphonic features in Waterland.For the “great dialogue”,Swift discusses the dialogic relationships in narrative genres and characters respectively.The former provides the readers an opportunity to view the distinction among the six narrative genres and scan their complementary relationship,which vividly reflects the coexistence of multi-culture,while the latter provides readers with different interpretations about the farce caused by Helen Atkinson but without any definite answers.Both form the dialogic characteristics of heteroglossia.Apart from the “great dialogue”,Swift also employs “small dialogue” to discuss the dialogic relationship between “grand narrative” and “small narrative”.Swift successfully accommodates two narrative voices through parenthesis,which surfaces the marginalized voices.The “grand narrative” doesn’t play a dominant role any more and each one has the right to express his/her own ideas and thoughts.Conclusion part introduces that Swift is skilled in presenting character’s feelings through narrative techniques.The narrative features of Waterland reflect the technical maturity of Graham Swift’s narrative,which is in favor of the presentation of thematic feelings and aesthetic effect.