Introduction
The appearance of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man signified a higher degree of maturity of African American literature in the spring of 1952. After the publication of this novel, Ellison became one of the key writers in America. His only novel as well as his masterpeice has brought him a high reputation and has made him become the writer in America who gained the most awards.
Inspired by T.S.Elliot’s Waste Land and later encouraged by Richard Wright, Ellison began his writing career. With a major concern of the relationship between African American culture and European American culture, or, in a simple way, between the culture of the black and the white, Ellison absorbed the folk traditions of African American culture and finished his masterpiece, Invisible Man, which was broadly acknowldged as an incomparable modern epic of the black, surpassed any other books of this kind.
In Invisible Man, Ellison employs a particular perspective—first person narration to unfold his story. Through the eyes of an anonymous narrator, Ellison expresses what he wants to say freely and thoroughly. In this way, while reading the book, readers will have the feeling of listening to a black man who is dictating his life experience. They will have a vivid picture of American society at that time, and get a clear mind of the relationship between the black and the white, the inner world and the outside world, the invisibility and the visibility, which are the important themes of this great epic. Moreover, it inspires readers to more thinking about themselves. That is the very reason why this novel can achieve such a great success.
M.A.K. Halliday plays an important role in the establishment of systemic-functional grammar, which attempts to explain the linguistic structure and linguistic phenomena by
Reference to the notion that language plays a certain role in our lives, that it is required to serve certain universal types of demand, i.e., the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual function, through which language can link itself with the situation (胡壮麟 2002: 523). In all, systemic-functional grammar offers an effective way to analyze different texts by encoding different usage of words, sentences, clauses, phrases, etc. Besides, it gives a way to interpret different texts for its particular purpose.
In this
thesis, the author attempts to use Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar to analyze the functions of the first person narration in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
This thesis has three parts. The first part describes the main contents of Invisible Man, including its main plot and narrative features. The second part previews the theoretic framework of Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar and the three metafunctions, followed by some important theories concerning the three metafunctions: transitivity, mood, modality, theme-rheme progression and cohesion. The third part analyzes the functions, namely the transitivity system, mood structure and modality, theme-rheme progression and cohesion of the first person narration in Invisible Man.
I About Invisible Man
Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, which has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. Rich in symbolism and metaphor, virtuosic in its use of multiple styles and tones, and steeps in the black experience in America and the human struggle for individuality (Ward & Brian 2
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