MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature CHARACTERS’ TRANSFORMATIONS IN IAN McEWAN’S WORKS Diploma Thesis Brno 2007 Written by: Bc. Šárka Smejkalová Supervisor: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, PhD. Declaration I declare that I have compiled this diploma thesis by myself and that I have used only the sources listed in the bibliography. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Šárka Smejkalová 2 Acknowledgment I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Lucie Podroužková PhD., for her kind support, patience and help. The thesis would have been unlikely to arise without her guidance and encouragement. 3 Table of Content Introduction .................................................................................................... 5 1. Ian McEwan, “The Odd One Out”............................................................... 7 2. The Cement Garden ..................................................................................... 11 3. The Innocent ................................................................................................. 28 4. Amsterdam .................................................................................................... 42 Conclusion...................................................................................................... 55 List of Sources................................................................................................ 57 Resumé ……………………………………………………………………... 60 4 Introduction This diploma thesis is focused on one of the most prolific contemporary British novelist and short story writer, Ian McEwan. As the title of the thesis suggests, it targets the characters’ transformations and all the events that influence the fables’ behavior. For this, I have chosen three of the many McEwan’s novels, The Cement Garden (1978), The Innocent (1990) and the 1998 Booker Prize for Fiction winning, Amsterdam (1998) . McEwan’s writing style and interesting unconventional topics of the books cause that he is popular not only among readers but also among critics. In the course of his career, which started in 1975 by publishing his first short stories collection First Loves, Last Rites , he has won many literary prices. Many times, he has proved his unexceptionable writing craftsmanship which makes the reader think, feel sorrow about the characters, get angry at all the circumstances or dream about them. He is not only the great storyteller but also a unique observer. He suitably describes all the things and events that surround the characters, he mentions all the sounds and feelings and depicts every single detail. He is able to take down both losses and victories, amusing events as well as demanding life phases, and still he is able to entertain. He uses not only an ironic or sarcastic language but also beautiful poetic expressions. His writing style gives rise to the feeling that the reader often does not think about the character as about a “convectional use of words” (http://en.wikipedia.org), therefore none existing, but, due to the fact that the author makes them sound really authentic, they might be imagined as real people. In his novels he mainly focuses on white people, particularly British citizens, but sometimes he mentions some other nationalities, such as Germans, Americans, Irishmen or Russians. The register used in his books differs according to social classes appearing in his stories. Reading McEwan’s books, we have an excellent opportunity to discover the secrets of the characters’ psyche, their thoughts and deeds. Despite the fact that all his books are full of demanding moral topics, McEwan does not tend to moralize. At first he allows the reader to absorb the atmosphere of the story and then he leaves upon him or her to judge. Even if all the three novels this thesis focuses to differ with their background share demanding topics such as death, murder, incest, solitude and relationships among people. Despite all these heavy themes: “his prose is controlled, careful, and powerfully concise; 5 he is eloquent on the subjects of sex and sexuality; he has a strong head for the narrative possibilities of science; his novels are no longer than is necessary.” (http://www.believermag.com/). 6 1. Ian McEwan, “The Odd One Out” Ian McEwan was born on 21 June in 1948 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He was considered to be the only child, till an unknown man who traced back in the family history discovered that he is McEwan’s brother. Dave Sharp, the bricklayer, is six ears older then McEwan and “was given away at Reading station by his mother, Rose McEwan, nee Wort. She became pregnant from a wartime affair with David McEwan, and gave the child away before her husband returned. When he was killed, Rose married Mr McEwan, and they raised Ian only 15 miles from Mr Sharp's new home.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk) Because of his father who worked as an officer in the army, young Ian lived in many different countries, such as the Far East, North Africa and Germany, which could be the inspiration for his novel The Innocent many years later. After he returned to England he attended Sussex University, which was followed by MA Creative Writing course at the University of East Anglia. He was one of the first students of this course established by Malcolm Bradbury and Augus Wilson. The university itself became popular because of this course and also because of McEwan, after he became an eminent writer. Ian McEwan has been married twice. With his first wife he has two sons, his second wife, Annalena McAffe works as an editor for the Guardian’s Review section. It is interesting that a family does not act an important role in his fiction. The first collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites , was published in 1975 and was followed by the other collection called In Between the Sheets (1978). After these the first novel The Cement Garden (1978) was written. Following postmodern literary principles: McEwan’s early pieces were notorious for their dark themes and perverse, even gothic, material. Controversy surrounding the extreme subject matter of the first four works [the fourth piece in the raw is The Comfort of Strangers , 1981] , which are concerned with paedophilia, murder, incest and violence, was exacerbated by their troubling narrative framework, the way in which conventional moral perspectives are disrupted or overturned, the reader frequently drawn into prurient involvement with the characters. McEwan’s perpetrator-narrators draw us into complicity with their crimes, whilst his victims seem strangely collusive in their own exploitation and destruction. (http://www.contemporarywriters.com/) 7 In the course of his writing career McEwan has found many readers, and it is the same until these days, who either admire him, or, hate him and call him disgusting, even perverse. From the very beginning of his writing, McEwan has been the author who talks to his readers using his unique, individual language. He also mentions those aspects of British society which were never mentioned in literature before, the “reversed side” of Great Britain’s life. McEwan belongs to the group of authors who bring not only new aspects of reality, but also new artistic advancement. (Hilský, p.139) According to Zadie Smith Ian McEwan should be called “the odd man out” as “he was not like Amis and he was not like Rushdie or Barnes or Ishiguro or Kureishi or any of the other English and quasi-English men.”(http://www.believermag.com/). Kiernan Ryan’s phrase, ‘the art of unease’ (http://www.contemporarywriters.com/) should probably be the most exact comparison which conveys the core of McEwan’s writing style. Besides writing short stories and novels, he also focuses on other genres, such as librettos. His libretto Or Shall We Die? for an oratorio set to music by Michael Berkeley also solves some demanding topics. In his review Christopher Hitchens comments on it and also on McEwan’s previous work: The "first" McEwan was (and is) a thoughtful child of the sixties, somewhat hippie-like in many ways, yet tense and gaunt and ironic behind his granny glasses. Much preoccupied with war and power and hierarchy, he helped to map the "alternative" ethos of those who could at least imagine a world without exploitation or bigotry or sexual jealousy. The summa of this Green and quasi-feminist outlook was to be found in the libretto he wrote for the composer Michael Berkeley, whose oratorio Or Shall We Die? provided a highly sensitive register of the anti-nuclear angst that accompanied the Euromissile debate of the mid1980s. (http://www.theatlantic.com) Not only librettos but also drama, screenplays and contributions to OUP as a literary critic accompany his profession. It is worth mentioning his novels which are not to be discussed in this thesis, e.g. The Child in Time , 1987, Black Dogs, 1992, The Daydreamer , 1994, The Short Stories, 1995, Enduring Love , 1997, Atonement , 2001, Saturday, 2005, On Chesil Beach , 2007 (http://www.contemporarywriters.com/). Even if the works differ in the topic, they are similar due to the masterly used language and the novelist’s ability to describe all the events by his own “sharplysmooth” style that gives them semblance of obviosity and 8 commonness. In Zadie Smith’s words: “he is not a dilettante of even a natural, neither a fabulist nor a show-off. He is rather an artisan, always hard at work; refining, improving, engaged by and interested in every step in the process, like a scientist setting up a lab experiment.” (http://www.believermag.com/).