Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan is the most famous representative of critical realist literature in contemporary Britain, with representative works such as "The First Love, the Last Ritual", "Between the Beds", "Amsterdam", "Atonement", "Saturday", "Cement Garden" and so on.
His novels focus on sensitive and dark themes such as murder, incest, eroticism, transvestism, child abuse, family breakdown, mental breakdown, violence, drug addiction, alcoholism, seduction, and chaotic ethics. The main purpose is to reflect the unforeseen crisis hidden behind people's seemingly peaceful and complacent lives. These individual crises are the epitome and manifestation of social crises. Behind the personal crisis is the social crisis.
The essence of the refraction behind the collapse of etiquette, moral decline, family disintegration, ethical disorders, violent culture, breaking through the bottom line, etc., is the huge gap between rich and poor brought about by industrialization, urbanization and modernization, unbridled indulgence, distortion of interpersonal relations, destruction of the ecological environment, and distortion of human nature. For example, "The First Love, the Last Ritual".
"The First Love, the Last Ritual"
The First Love, the Last Ritual is a collection of mcEwan's short stories and his debut novel. The novel focuses on the ethical crises of love in British society: incest, sexual abuse, patriarchal oppression, and the vulgarization of sexual art. These themes continue to play out in another of his novels, The Cement Garden.
Cement Garden
The main line of the novel "Cement Garden" is the incestuous relationship between Jack and Julie.
Jack's father died suddenly of a heart attack, and shortly after his father's death, his mother also fell ill with an unexplained illness, and her health deteriorated. In order not to let the four children be taken away by the welfare agency, the mother insisted on not going to the hospital, and after several months of delay, she died in her sleep.
Before her mother died, she told Jack and her sister Julie to take care of the house together, otherwise the government authorities would come in and take care of them. After his mother's death, Jack, his 17-year-old sister Julie and his 13-year-old sister Sue decided to cement their mother's body in a large iron cabinet in the cellar so as not to be taken over. After that, the 4 children spent some time freely and calmly in the house. It was during this time that an affair developed between Jack and Julie, and incest occurred.
Jack and Julie are in an important period of adolescent development, but in this critical period, both parents die, and they are unable to properly deal with the confusion of emotions and desires they encounter during development without the supervision and guidance of their parents and elders, allowing their free will and primitive desires to take root, which eventually leads to the tragedy of incest.
Let's look at another of McEwan's novels, The Atonement.
Atonement
The novel "Atonement" is mainly divided into three parts: the first part mainly describes the silent life. The Talis Mansion is remote and the main characters enjoy a comfortable and leisurely life away from the hustle and bustle. Only Cecilia is dissatisfied with such a life, feeling that life is too lonely and peaceful, and always wants to seek excitement and do something meaningful.
The second part mainly deals with robbie in the war and death of the Dunkirk evacuation, and is even more devastated by the war and has experienced the test of life and death.
The third part is mainly Brioni's atonement. Brioni in the hospital deals with the disabled every day and witnesses bloody deaths. Separated by reality and war, Cecilia and Roche meet, while Brioni tries to get their forgiveness.
The protagonist of the novel is Brioni. She is a person full of reverie, rich imagination, sensitive and delicate. The butler's son, Robbie Turner, was sponsored by Mr. Tallis and graduated with Brioni's sister Cecilia at Cambridge, where he graduated. The two young men had no suspicions and secretly had feelings for each other, but they had never confessed to each other.
One day, Cecilia took off her coat and jumped into the pond in front of Robbie, which was seen by Brioni. On the same day, Robbie's letter to Cecilia was relayed through Brioni. Driven by intense curiosity, Brioni peeked at the letter. Wrong, Robbie left the impression of Brionie's pornishes. It was also on this night that Brioni's cousin, Lola Quincy, who had come to live at Talis's house, was raped, and Brione arbitrarily accused Robbie of being a criminal, for which Robbie was arrested and imprisoned. But Cecilia firmly believes that Robbie is innocent, and she severes ties with her family and waits obsessively for Robbie to be cleared.
Five years later, World War II broke out, robbie, who was serving a prison sentence, joined the battle to defend the country, and Cecilia was conscripted into the army. Brioni has been living in guilt since these things, and in order to punish herself, she gave up the opportunity to study in Cambridge and joined the army medical work. She wants to apologize to Robbie and Cecilia, but the brutal war has taken Robbie and Cecilia's lives, leaving Brioni to live in deep self-blame without atonement.
Amsterdam
"Amsterdam" is about two people, Clive Lin li and Vernon Halliday. The two were good friends in college, and after work, they were both Old Lovers of Morley. The former was a musician of some prestige who was entrusted with the task of composing the Millennial Symphony, and the latter was the editor-in-chief of an influential newspaper.
The fact that they were Morley's lover did not hurt their friendship; on the contrary, the fact led them to an alliance that despised Morley's husband, and the relationship seemed to go further. However, Morley's death made Clive and Vernon feel that the world was uncertain, and the humiliation and loss of dignity that Morley had endured before his death due to the loss of physical functioning also shocked them, so the two agreed that if one of them saw that the other could not live with dignity, he was obliged to help the other end his life. In order to evade legal liability, it is possible to allow "euthanasia" to be carried out in Amsterdam.
However, as the plot progresses, clive and Vernon face the crisis and challenge of their own careers, and make a choice that makes each other's teeth cold: Clive turns a deaf ear to a rape case that occurred not far away for his own music creation, and Vernon betrays his former freedom ideals as a countercultural fighter, and publishes foreign minister Gamoni's opposite-sex dress-up photos in order to increase the sales of the newspaper he edited.
Gamoni is another of Morley's old lovers, and these photographs are Morley's work, a spiritual portrayal of Morley's pursuit of individual liberation and contempt for traditional values. Clive and Vernon had opposite views on whether the photo was published, leading to a dispute and rupture between the two. In the end, both men, believing that the other had lost their moral demure and basic human dignity, came to Amsterdam and ended each other's lives.
This story allows us to see the chaotic relationship between men and women, so, what is wrong with the world, what kind of society is this?
Story backdrop
McEwan lived after World War II, after which Britain continued to prosper, and Britain was still in the process of industrialization, urbanization, and modernization. However, at this time, after experiencing the baptism of industrial civilization, the human soul has been eroded by industrialization, urbanization and modernization. The poverty of the human spirit reveals a wasteland-like emotional world.
The collapse of etiquette, moral decline, family disintegration, ethical disorders, violent culture, and breaking the bottom line are constantly staged in industrial civilization. Behind the prosperity is the survival dilemma of human beings.
Industrialization ignores the intrinsicity of man, who becomes a victim of efficiency, a passive numb machine dominated by standard space. Industrialization and urbanization have allowed power and capital to penetrate into the blood of cities, creating a huge landscape empire. Landscapes dominate everything about people.
Behind the landscape lies the power's surveillance of the subject. Symbolic images are anti-object, domesticating the subject into passive recipients, and the cold medium is only responsible for presentation, rejecting feedback, so that any reaction of the audience becomes meaningless self-talk, and the landscape only listens to the orders of the authorities.
As the medium of the landscape uses the seemingly rich and diverse programs as bait, to attract the audience to the colorful world, and when the individual is inseparable from the media-led lifestyle, the power has secretly completed the discipline of the subject consciousness and realized the transposition of the virtual and the real.