The Study on Narrative Communication in Winesburg, Ohiofrom Narrative Perspective

完惠娟

Abstract:Winesburg, Ohio was written by Sherwood Anderson, who is one of the forerunner of modernist literature. This short story vividly reflects more than twenty ordinary peoples strange, grotesque personalities and confrontations, through which the appearance of Winesburg, the small town was depicted. In the reading process ofWinesburg, Ohio, readers can often feel the powerful communicative intention of Sherwood Anderson, and generate a desire to communicate with him and with the characters in the story. Therefore, this paper attempts to analyze narrator inWinesburg, Ohioas the “story-teller” and the communication function of the narrator from the narrative perspective, it is found that the communication function of the “story-teller” serves Sherwood Andersons narrative purpose faithfully and plays an important role in realizing the narrative communication ofWinesburg, Ohio.

Key words:Winesburg, Ohio; story-teller; narrative communication

1.Introduction

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) is a very important writer in modern American literature. He published several novels such asWindy McPhersons Son(1916),Marching Men(1917) andPoor White(1920), and some collections of short stories likeWinesburg, Ohio (1919), Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories (1921), andHorse and Man(1933). It is the publication of these short stories that brings Sherwood Anderson fame. He has been widely picked up by critics ever since the publication of the collection of the short storiesWinesburg, Ohio in 1919. This short story vividly reflects more than twenty ordinary peoples strange, grotesque personalities and confrontations, through which the appearance of Winesburg, the small town was depicted. Winesburg is actually a miniature of Mid-American town during the age of industrialization. Before the revolution of industrialism, people in small towns in the Middle West “worked in the fields and labored hard. They believed in God and the churches were the centers of the social and intellectual life of the times”^[1]. Then the industrialism changed everything, from peoples lives to their thoughts. Together with it came the increase of trains, the growth of cities, and the building of interurban car lines that weave in and out of towns and past farms and houses. Peoples lives and habits of thought experienced tremendous change.

Winesburg, Ohio has a strong readability, in which, Anderson shows us his skillful mastery of the great ways to narrative a story, which has, and will still, exerted significant influence both on the public and American literature. In the reading process, readers can often feel the powerful communicative intention of Sherwood Anderson, and generate a desire to communicate with him and with the characters in the story. The communicative purpose of novel was realized by two elements: the implied author and the narrator. It should be noted that the narrator is different from the implied author. The implied author is the real authors literary version of himself, unlike the narrator, the implied author can tell us nothing, he has no voice, no direct means of communicating^[2]. The narrator, the one who tells the story, is the mediating instance between the author and the reader. This paper mainly talks about the narrative communication at the text level—the narrator inWinesburg, Ohio.

As a discipline, narratology began to take shape in 1966. It holds that narrative is an act communication, the fundamental purpose of which is to convey the story and its significance to the reader. The same is true of novel narration. In his preface toNovel Rhetoric, Booth, the American scholar regards the novel as “the art of communicating with readers”^[3]. Therefore, an important task of narratology is to theoretically explore the communicative process of novel narration.

2.The Narrator as the “Story-teller”

In her the Trinity of the Narrator—a Brief Discussion on the Third Person Omniscient Narrator ofWinesburg, Ohio, Yang Xiangou^[4] puts forward the trinity of the narrator—George Willard, the old writer and the young thing within the old writer, which provides us a new perspective to understandWinesburg, Ohio. This paper, however, has a slightly different view with Yangs. George Willard, as the main character, has participated sixteen stories inWinesburg, Ohio. This book is about his life, about the story how he grows from a naive kid to a mature man who seems has grasped the meaning of life, the stories may be observed from his perspective, but he has no voice, the voice comes from “I”, the old writer and the young thing within the old writer.

According to Gerard Genette^[5], the narrator can be divided into four types in terms of the level of narration in which the narrator is located. That is, a) extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator, b) extradiegetic-homodiegetic narrator, c) intradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator, and d) intradiegetic-homodiegetic narrator.Winesburg, Ohio adopts the extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator, “I”, the old writer and the young thing within the old writer altogether shoulder the narrator role.

The extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator is usually referred to as the third person narrator, who is at the first level of the narrative, adopting the third person to tell the presenting the story in a relatively detached manner and maintaining a certain distance from the reader. It is not easy to express personal feelings to make subjective comments on the story^[6]. However, Sherwood Anderson takes a more positive approach to the treatment of the extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrators, giving them the narrative style of the “story-teller,” the reader can feel the presence of the narrator for the extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator, like the true story-teller, does not conceal his personal feelings in the narration, and embodies his self-consciousness everywhere, so that the reader can be fully aware of his existence.

In the narrative process, the extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator, like the story-teller, is not stingy in expressing his praise and true feeling. For example, in Hands:

“Wing Biddlehaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression”^[1].

“Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name...He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads...With them, Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day”^[1].

In these description, the narrator shows his love to wings hands, extending to the nostalgia for the traditional handicraft society, and from this perspective, the narrator becomes the spokesman of Sherwood Andersen.

The extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator inWinesburg, Ohio, acts as the story-teller, comments on the content of the story. In the Book of the Grotesque, the narrator makes a statement:

“That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful”^[1].

“the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood”^[1].

In view of this, the grotesques are not just those who murmur to themselves, but you, me or him^[7]. The extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator, like the story-teller, from time to time, breaks free from the story and develops a direct dialogue with the reader. For example, in Hands:

“Let us look briefly into the story of the hands...Perhaps our talking of them will arouse the poet who will tell the hidden wonder story of the influence for which the hands were but fluttering pennants of promise”^[1].

Through the above analysis, it is found that the extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator inWinesburg, Ohio has a narrative style of story-teller, and with the help of this style, the narrator can effectively communicate with the reader. In the form of storytelling, the extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator express his feelings directly in the narrative process, connecting the author, the story and the reader. The reader is a bystander and passively accepts everything in the story, yet the active communication in the language and the true emotion of the narrator converts bystander into “participant” in the story, so that the understanding of the story becomes more active and conscious.

3.The Communicative Function of the Narrator

Gerard Genette classifies the functions of the narrator into five types, later, Chinese scholar Hu Yamin^[8]makes a little adjustments as follows:

The first one is narrative function, which is the primary function of the narrator, without which any narrator will be disqualified at the same time. The second one is organizational function, which is linked to the text. It is designed to manage the internal structure and elements of the story and to deal with the interrelationships of the various parts of the story. The third is the witness function, which explains the extent to which the narrator is involved in the story he tells, and the relationship between the story and him. The fourth is the evaluation function, which is related to the narrator himself, and mainly refers to the narrators explanation and comments. The fifth is the communication function, which is relative to the narratee, and refers to the communication between the narrator and the narratee in the narrative process.

The boundaries between the five functions are not distinct, but intermingled and dependent on each other. In addition to narrative function, the other functions are not indispensable. This paper holds that these five functions can combine into the one, that is, communication function. This is because Sherwood Anderson wants to pass on his ideas, beliefs and values to the reader, or to share his feelings with the reader inWinesburg, Ohio.

Specifically, when the narrator performs organizational function inWinesburg, Ohio,he takes George Willard as the main line, from Wing Biddlebaum coming into the small town, Winesburg, whose first listener is just George Willard, who finally leaves Winesburg to Chicago to pursue his dream, reasonably arranges chapters, inserts background information where necessary, or comments on the text, the aim is to minimize the inherent inadequacies of the written text compared with other media, so that the reader can easily and smoothly accept text, so that the communication between the text and the reader is not hindered.

The same is true with the witness function of the narrator. When the narrator explains his source of information in the course of the narration, or describes the emotions that a story evokes in his mind, he is actually trying to increase the credibility of the story and the character, making the narratee and the implied reader understand the text better. For example, in The Philosopher, the narrator explains Doctor Parcivals background as a witness: “Doctor Parcival had been in Winesburg about five years. He came from Chicago and when he arrived was drunk and got into a fight with Albert Longworth, the baggage-man. The fight concerned a trunk and ended by the doctors being escorted to the village lockup. When he was released he rented a room above a shoe-repairing shop at the lower end of Main Street and put out the sign that announced himself as a doctor”^[1].

When the narrator gives full play to the evaluation function, commenting on the character and the story, the purpose is to refine and sublimate the theme of the text, increase the depth and thought of the text, and pass it on to the reader through the language. For example, in Adventure, the narrator concludes that many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg, from the perspective of the character, Alice Hinderman, who was hurt a lot in one relationship of love, and run naked through the streets at one night, hoping the rain would have some creative and wonderful effect on her body and also hoping to find some other lonely human and embrace him^[1].

Therefore, these five narrative functions can be combined into one, that is, communication function. The ultimate purpose of the narrator in telling the story of the grotesques in Winesburg, Ohio is to be able to communicate with the reader in a way that resonates with the reader that the grotesques were not all horrible, some were amusing, some almost beautiful.

4.Conclusion

From the narrative perspective, Sherwood AndersonsWinesburg, Ohio has a strong communication characteristic. On the one hand, through the analysis of the narrator as the “story-teller,” it can be seen that although Sherwood Andersen wrote in the flyleaf ofWinesburg, Ohio that “To the memory of my mother, Emma Smith Anderson, whose keen observations on the life about her first awoke in me the hunger to see beneath the surface of lives, this book is dedicated”, he also inherited the merit of his father Irwin Andersons storytelling. It is both the merits of his mother and his father make the great author Sherwood Anderson and his masterpieceWinesburg, Ohio. On the other hand, via the interpretation of the communication function the narrator plays in Winesburg, Ohio, it is found that the communication function of the narrator plays an active role in the narrative communication of this book.

References

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