Theme of Isolation and Child versus Adult Feelings: Stylistic Analysis of Alice Munro’s Short Story “The Eye”

Abstract

Analysis of the stylistics features of any author has been very interesting technique to explore themes depicted by him/her. This paper examines a short story of Alice Munro titled ‘The Eye’, from stylistic perspective. ‘The Eye’ is the opening tale of the set of four stories, in a style of memoir that is titled as ‘Finale’. This set of four stories appears in her collection of short stories titled “Dear Life” (2012. ) The paper presents the stylistics analysis of the story keeping the stylistic approach in focus suggested by Leech and Short in Style in Style in Fiction (2007). The story is analyzed stylistically in terms of character and characterization, point of view and speech, thought and writing presentation. Stylistic study of any text effectively provides comprehension of the base of the text particularly and its evaluation generally (Peer 2008). In order to carry this out, the method of textual analysis of Qualitative research approach is conducted. The end of the analysis is to have a turnout of a deeper comprehension of the relationship between style and literary aesthetics in ‘The Eye’ by studying the stylistic patterns behind Munro’s narrative, in order to find out her creative approach. Paul Simpson maintains, “Stylistics serves to inquire into the language of the text and on a broader level to investigate creativity in the use of language (2004:3). The endeavor made in the paper explores that Munro has an ambivalent and complicated technique of presentation, both structurally and thematically. Here, the argument is that the stylistic analysis of the story reveals that Munro has high artistic approach towards the short story; she narrates the fiction with such an ambiguous approach that it welcomes more than one interpretations of the story.