The Narrative Strategies And Their Effects In God Help The Child

Toni Morrison is the first African-American female who won Nobel Prize of Literature.From her first novel The Bluest Eyes,to the latest one God Help the Child,Morrison and her work have been attracting attention from both critics and readers in her half-century writing,which is the center and focal point of African-American literature study.Based on Morrison's racial equality promotion,insightful social criticism and gifted language skills,she is praised as “the conscience of America”.There are two reasons to explain why Morrison and her novels are so accomplished.On the one hand,Morrison is well in commanding plain but thought-provoking language to shape a series of featured characters,demonstrating profound themes.On the other hand,Morrison is good at applying diverse narrative strategies,which not only serves well for character shaping and theme revealing,but also fuses the form and content perfectly.God Help the Child is the eleventh novel of Toni Morrison.With her magnificent command of language,the novel portrays a twenty-first-century black woman named Luna Ann Bridewell who is accomplished in cosmetic career.The novel gets engrossing plot and well-designed narrative strategies,which attracts numbers of critics from home and abroad to study it.However,as it has been published only for a short time,most scholars tend to focus on the content of the novel,such as racial discrimination and the protagonist's traumatic growth and its effect etc.There are a few papers discussing its narrative strategies,exploring Morrison's plain narration and space narration etc.So far,the literature which analyzes the novel's narrative strategies in a comprehensive range is comparatively rare.Therefore,this thesis aims to conduct an all-round inspection of diverse narrative strategies Morrison applied and their literary effects in God Help the Child.Through the exquisite shift between the first and third-person perspective narration,God Help the Child tells a story of Bridewell's growth,love and the process of her self-recognition and self-realization.Being racially discriminated for her “dark blue” skin color,not only from the black community but from her own family,Bride is abandoned by her father Louise and abused by mother Sweetness,experiencing traumatic childhood life.However,Bride has been through the period from self-discrimination to self-recognition,and turns top executive in cosmetic business.The relationship between Bride and Booker is another main thread of God Help the Child.In the depiction of the couple's breaking up and reunion,Morrison has applied non-linear narrative strategies such as anachrony,flashback and stream of consciousness.Besides,musical metaphors and epistolary narration are employed when picturing two key plots: the direct cause of Bride and Booker's breaking up—Bride's framing behavior to the white female teacher Sofia;the reason why Booker always bears a cross in his heart—Booker's elder brother Adam is abused to death at a young age.It is beyond doubt that Morrison sets double themes in the novel,including criticizing child abuse and concerning black females' living condition.Based on the text itself and the significance of Morrison's diverse narrative strategies,the first chapter will analyze non-linear narrative strategies such as the suspense creator anachrony,key images highlighter flashback and defamiliarization contributor stream of consciousness.The second chapter will focus on the multi-person perspective narration and its effect including first-person perspective narration which shapes Bride a round character,and the shift between the first and third-person perspective narration which demonstrates two themes well.Chapter three will examine musical metaphors and epistolary narration and their effects.From the analysis above,this thesis concludes that all the narrative strategies Morrison applied are contributing factors to demonstrate themes.That is to say,Morrison criticizes child abuse and shows her concern about black female's living condition,the effort they make to get over self-discrimination and achieve self-realization,during the application of non-linear narrative strategy,multi-person perspective narration,musical metaphors and epistolary narration.