Modified Omniscient Narrative and Temporal Structure in Seize the Day

Abstract

Impressing people with the profundity of its content and scope, Saul Bellow’s fiction is often the embodiment of alienation, meaning of life, men’s quest for spiritual discernment, and the possibilities of human awakening. Though the content and form have both shown their distinguishing excellence in his novella Seize the Day, it is always Bellow’s theme that is under vast investigation, while the other charming feature of this story – its way of narration is not often discussed. This paper aims to analyze the narrative of Seize the Day from the perspective of narratology, figuring out how omniscient narrative and temporal structure are disposed to convey remarkable characteristics to Seize the Day. In general, this story is narrated by an omniscient third-person narrator, but the narrative voice is not an exclusive one all the time. Besides, the focalization of the omniscient narrator shifts whenever necessary, which devotes to exposing the instabilities of characters and events in the story. As to the temporal structure, variations existing in order, duration and frequency generate rhetorical effects in the story and make the structure of Seize the Day coordinate smoothly the interlaced temporal references, leading further instabilities and tensions to the movement of the narrative. In Seize the Day, Saul Bellow has showed a mastery of narrative voice, focalization and temporal structure, and demonstrated how incredible the narrative techniques can be in transferring a modified omniscient narrative and the temporal manipulation of acceleration and deceleration into a dynamic narrative progression, which offers readers the option to consider the possibilities of development, motivation and resolution in the entire narrative of the story.