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stential process. Material processes are those in which something is done. These processes are expressed by an action verb, an actor and the goal of the action. Mental processes express such mental phenomena as “perception”, “reaction” and “cognition”. Relational processes consist of intensive, circumstance and possessive, each of which can be classified into two types: attributive and identifying. Verbal processes are those of exchanging information. Commonly used verbs are say, tell, talk, praise, boast, describe, etc. Behavioral processes refer to physiological and psychological behavior such as breathing, coughing, smiling, laughing, etc. Generally only one participant, often a human, is involved in this kind of process. Existential processes represent that something exists or happens (胡壮麟 2002: 416 - 417). The interpersonal function embodies all uses of language to express social and personal relations. This includes the various ways the speaker enters a speech situation and performs a speech act (胡壮麟 2002: 702). It refers to what the speaker does in order to address the goals of the recipient, with an important task being to establish and maintain social relations. The interpersonal function consists of two components, too. There are mood and modality. Mood shows what role addresser assigns to the addressee. Mood is made up of two parts: the “Subject” and the “Finite” element. The subject can be a noun, a noun phrase, or a clause. Finite elements are auxiliary verbs and modal verbs that express tense or modality, and they are part of the verb phrase (胡壮麟 2001: 418). The function of finite elements is to provide reference points to link the topic and context (胡壮麟, 朱永生, 张德录 1989: 110). In English, there are two reference points: the time of speaking and the judgement of the speaker. The former called primary tense, including the past tense, the present tense and the future tense. The later called modality, which specifies if the speaker is expressing his judgement or making a prediction by using modal auxiliaries such as can, may, could, might, will, should, would, must, ought to, need, has to, etc. If the speaker selects the imperative mood, he assumes the role of one givingcommands and puts the addressee in the role of one expected to obey orders. According to Halliday, there are two major speech roles: giving and demanding. When the two variables are taken together, they define the four primary speech functions of order, command, statement and question. There, in turn, are matched by a set of desired responses: accepting an offer, carrying out the command, acknowledging a statement and answering a question (胡壮麟 2001: 418 - 419). The textual function refers to the fact that language has mechanism to make any stretch of spoken or written discourses into a coherent and unified text and make a living passage different form a random list of sentences (胡壮麟 2002: 704). The textual function relates pieces of discourse and context, containing three sub-systems: theme-rhyme system, information configuration and cohesion system. This thesis analyzes the literary text mainly based on the theory of theme-rhyme system and cohesion system. A sentence can de divided into two parts: theme and rheme. Theme is a system of the clause; and it is realized by the sequence in which the elements of the clause are ordered—Theme comes first (Halliday & Hasan 2001: 308). It is defined as a function in the clause as a message together with rheme, and