This study analyzes James Joyce`s ¡°Clay¡± focusing on its main narrative technique, Free Indirect Discourse (FID). FID is one of the main narrative forms of expression used by modernist novelists. It is a syntactic combination of direct discourse (DD) and indirect discourse (ID), using the third-person pronoun and past tense with deictics indicating the present. It mixes a character`s speech and the narrator`s comments. In the presentation of the character`s thought, the mixing and merging of the two voices, or to put in another way, the double narrative strategy, can create the quality of double consciousness. In ¡°Clay,¡± FID mirrors the narrational manipulation employed by the main character Maria. She uses the ¡°narration under a blindfold¡± to hide and wash her hopeless, inescapable reality of life in paralyzed Dublin. As the story goes on, we come to sense that something wrong, some serious fallacy, is involved in her attempt to embellish her own life and environment. Finally, we experience an awakening, the epiphany of the truth about her situation: she has no way out of her paralyzed reality, and the ¡°narration under a blindfold¡± is the only way for her to maintain the dignity as a human being. |