Narrative ethics and narrative judgment in Donna Tartt's The Little Friend

Abstract

This dissertation conducts a narrative ethical analysis of Donna Tartt's comparatively under-examined novel, The Little Friend (2002), through the theoretical lens of James Phelan's rhetorical theory of narrative. It posits that Tartt's novel is an ideal subject for such an inquiry, weaving intricate storytelling with significant personal and social themes that warrant deep scholarly attention. The study's primary analytical framework employs Phelan's distinction between the 'ethics of the told' (the narrative's content) and the 'ethics of the telling' (the narrative's construction), utilizing his Six Theses About Narrative Judgments as the central methodological tool to interrogate the text. The analysis is also structured around the four primary 'agents' of narrative communication as found in Chatman's Narrative Communication Diagram (1978:151): the implied author, the narrator, the narratee, and the implied reader. Each of these agents is examined in direct relation to a core theme within the novel (race, coming-of-age, religion, and class, respectively) to demonstrate how narrative form and aesthetics are inextricably linked to ethical positioning. The dissertation's core argument is that Tartt strategically subverts the conventions of both the Southern Gothic and mystery genres not as a mere stylistic exercise, but as a sophisticated rhetorical strategy designed to guide the reader's interpretive, ethical, and aesthetic judgments. This subversion functions, through various character perspectives, to expose and critique the interlocking systems of social, racial, and moral corruption endemic to the American South. Ultimately, the study concludes that the novel's most significant rhetorical act is its deliberate refusal to solve the central murder mystery in service of broader social commentary. This calculated lack of closure is identified as the key to compelling the reader to redirect judgment from a single, identifiable perpetrator to the dysfunctional and decaying social ecosystem that makes such tragedies possible and their resolutions elusive.