Research On Animal’s People From The Perspective Of Phelan’s Rhetorical Narratology

Animal’s People is the representative work of Indian-British writer Indra Sinha.In his works,Sinha adopts different rhetorical narrative techniques to show the tragic lives of the victims in the novel,expressing the concern and care of backward areas under the ecological crisis or imperialist oppression in western developed countries.Based on the rhetorical narrative theory,this thesis analyzes three rhetorical narrative techniques in Animal’s People: the components of characters,narrative progression and narrative judgments.Through the detailed analysis,the major findings are as followings: First,the mimetic,synthetic and thematic components of characters enable Sinha to construct realistic characters,which makes the author’s readers produce various emotional reactions such as sympathy and disgust to the constructed characters.Second,the interweaving of overt progression and convert progression has caused instabilities at the text level and tensions at the discourse level,which not only deepens the readers’ thinking about the narrative theme,but also greatly improves the author’s readers’ aesthetic pleasure.Third,the gradual progress of narrative judgments not only reconstructs the ethical principles and aesthetic principles of the readers,but also causes them to evaluate the characters,and judgments involved in this novel.It can be seen that in Animal’s People,Sinha’s choice and application of three typical rhetorical narrative techniques: the components of characters,narrative progression and narrative judgments,not only reflect his unique writing skills,but also help to better present the theme of the novel.Using rhetorical narrative techniques to interpret Animal’s People,this thesis can expand the research perspective of the novel to a certain extent,and provide some reference for increasing attention to backward areas under imperialist oppression in western developed countries.