A Polyphonic Interpretation Of Everything I Never Told You In The Postmodernist Context

Literature circles have shown much interest in the works of Chinese American writers.Against this backdrop this thesis gives a polyphonic interpretation of Everything I Never Told You,the debut novel by the Chinese American female writer Celeste Ng who has written against the traditional lineal narrative to picture in a postmodernist manner the suffering and opportunity of the immigrant offspring.This thesis through the polyphonic interpretation of this novel in a postmodernist context shall reveal its rich implications,especially those in its dialogue upon equality and indeterminacy.The first chapter gives a concise description of the work and its literature review to clarify the present studies.The critic circle pays more attention to the ethnic background,but few critics are concerned with the narrative analysis and aesthetic study.The second chapter focuses on the postmodernist context and theoretical framework,the necessity and basis of the relation between theory and the work as well as the postmodernist context and the work.M.M.Bakhtin has transplanted the musical term “polyphony” into a literary term,broadening its definition and implications as a type of fiction,artistic thinking,philosophic idea and humanistic caring,which are traces of the chain of the signifier and the signified.The postmodernist context is necessary for reading the work,in which diversity and the core idea of polyphony are reciprocally internal,enriching the polyphony.The novelist employs multiple-narrative to the dialogue with the characters,fading away from the mono-narrator,picturing the opportunities and failures of the offspring of the Chinese immigrants.The setting of the work could provide readers with the psychological status and existential way of the ethnic,female,and the other vulnerable groups.In the civil rights movements of the 1960 s,communities had appeal to equal rights and felt deep depression and frustration that the stubborn conservatives and social realities brought about.Polyphony as a way of humanitarian caring conforms to the wish of equality of all communities and organically constitutes part of the American dream,only to make the Dream too realistic.The third chapter composed of three sections discusses the polyphonic idea,the dialogue,and indeterminacy.The first section discusses the polyphonic idea,as part of the chain of the signifier and the signified,has impacts on the individual characters.The thesis explores the specific impact of signifiers as “Specter”,which is borrowed from Derrida,on several individuals.Seeking and maintaining themselves are the maximal influences on the individuals.The disorder of the signified is sure to be compensated for by the regain of the signifier.The second section explores the dialogue both in a narrow and in a broad sense.The former should pay attention to the equality and indeterminacy and the latter could extend to the equal dialogue between the chapters,the work and its relative work,the performativity of dialogues as well as the dialogue with the spirit of contract.The structure of the work presents to be diverse and non-lineal due to the postmodernist narration that different chapters could produce dialogue and are open to be reorganized by readers without losing the general linear logic.Performativity is easily omitted but contributes to the reading of the title of the work and contents.The analysis of dialogue with the spirit of the contract is an attempt of the thesis to enrich the polyphony.The third section is a sortation of the indeterminacy of the dialogues,terms,ending of the work to encode part of the indeterminacy.Lastly,the author of the thesis summarizes that the work manifests the polyphony with postmodernist features but it is not strictly a polyphonic work.The partial parody of The Sound and The Fury is obvious and the work is extended in timespan compared with that of Faulkner's work.The life of two generations of the immigrants may at large be the autobiographical writing of the novelist herself.As the debut novel,the work is not mature,but the novelist has huge potentiality.Polyphony as a narrative structure,thinking,philosophic idea and humanitarian spirit has been present in the novel,with the two features of equal dialogue and indeterminacy.