The Construction of Character Image in The Waves: An Analysis Based on Literary Pragmatics

This thesis provides modern and contemporary fiction writers with creative writing perspectives by investigating into the compositional methods applied by Virginia Woolf in The Waves and analysing excerpt samples with literary pragmatics. The author’s wording “blurs” the appearances of the six main characters within the novel, her writing background and the audience’s reading context. Meanwhile, she “magnifies” the six main characters’ languages and behaviours. Moreover, both approaches cover multi-dimensional characterization and contribute to narrowing the gap between the author’s characters and the audience, which facilitates the latter to become empathetically engaged and further their relationships with these fictional figures more effectively.