Abstract
This study explores discursive manipulation strategies in Donna Tartt’s novel “The Goldfinch”, focusing on how the first-person narrative perspective functions as a mechanism of evaluative framing and reader positioning. Conducted within the framework of critical discourse analysis, the research addresses the problem of implicit influence in literary discourse, which operates not through overt persuasion but through discursively constructed patterns of interpretation embedded in narrative structure. The study aims to identify and classify discursive manipulation strategies realized through perspective control, lexical choices, and symbolic structuring within the narrator’s discourse. The methodological approach is based on critical discourse analysis, complemented by interpretive textual analysis of selected narrative fragments. The findings demonstrate that manipulative influence in the novel is realized through systematic strategies such as concealment of motives, frame substitution, evaluative recontextualization, emotional appeals, symbolic anchoring, metaphorization, euphemization, and irony. These strategies function not as isolated rhetorical devices but as interconnected mechanisms of narrative control that guide the reader’s moral and interpretative alignment. The study contributes to literary discourse analysis by proposing a coherent classification of narrative manipulation strategies within a discourse-analytical framework. Its significance lies in clarifying how literary discourse constructs cognitive and emotional positioning through perspective management, thereby refining analytical tools for the study of implicit influence in contemporary narrative fiction.