Multiple Narratives, Dialogism and the Voice to the Marginalized People in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

Abstract

This thesis entitled “ Multiple Narratives, Dialogism and the Voice to the Marginalized People in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy” deals with multiple internal focalizers’ perspective and Bakhtinian dialogism in order to portray the third person heterodiegetic narrator and other focalizers such as Jacob Vaarks, Lina, Rebekka, Sorrow, Willard and Scully and finally Florens’s mother with their multiple voices of exploitation, domination, violence, social and racial injustice, gender discrimination inflicted upon them. The shifting of multiple voices of different characters correspond to their alienated condition to give them solace and make them able to confront against their problems. The narrative begins with first person, main character Florens’s alienated story, often repeating, then she loses her narrative and switches to the third person Heterodiegetic narrator who being outside the story, narrates the story of different characters from the several characters’ perspectives. The implications of multiple narrative techniques along with multiple voices to represent the multiplicity, unfinazability and indeterminacy of multiple characters, coming from the diversified background in order to reflect the diversity of the social experiences, ways of speaking, multiple consciousness, conceptualizations and values which is the phenomenon of Bakhtinian dialogism.