Will the real Dolly please stand up : En narratologisk analys av Amanda Svenssons Hey Dolly

Sammanfattning:

This essay is a study of the Swedish author Amanda Svensson’s novel Hey Dolly (2008). The aim of the study is to investigate the conflict that occurs in the storytelling because of the untruthful narrator Dolly. Using the terms story and discourse, from a method of narratology by Maria Nikolajeva, the purpose is to analyze how the narrator manipulates the reader’s comprehension of what is real and not in the text. The term story represents the reality while discourse embodies the fantasy world, and by separating the two from each other and then comparing them the conflict clarifies as well as the understanding of Dolly.

The results of the analysis show that there are several differences between the story and the discourse which various situations illustrate. It also becomes clear that Dolly only focalizes herself and thereby manages to control the reader’s perspective of the told story. But in the dialogue with other persons in the text it reveals that she is not being truthful. The conclusion is that Dolly lives her dream life through the fantasy and that the discourse is a way to defend her against situations she finds too hard to handle.