An Analysis Of The Death Theme In Ian McEwan’s Novels

With his own special humor, Ian McEwan is active in British and the worldliterature. He is widely noticed and adored by the critics as well as thereaders. At the same time, his works have been accepted and understood byan increasing number of readers.Ian McEwan’s works are characterized by complicated and diverse subjects.He is entitled “Ian Macabre” as his early works involved some sensitivesubjects such as incest, violence, murder. However, his later works wereevidently different from the early ones, which mainly demonstrated the softsentiment, from describing the dark side of human nature to showing theextensive social life, from merely describing psychology to combining thepsychology with the social reality. By integrating realism and modernism,McEwan shows the living status and mental state of modern people, from whichreaders can realize their own living status and have the reflection on theirsoul, which can account for the popularity of McEwan’s works around theworld.McEwan once was scoffed by the western critics due to his enthusiasm in writingdeath. However, describing death is only a cutting point into life and a mirrorthat he hangs to concern the living condition of humans rather than thefundamental writing purpose of McEwan. Consequently, this thesis aims tomake a theoretical discussion on death writing in McEwan’s novels.The thesis consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion.In the introduction, the thesis makes a brief introduction to McEwan and presents the previous research on McEwan’s works at home and abroad.The body is divided into three chapters. To begin with, based on the texts,the first chapter generalizes the characteristics of the death theme inMcEwan’s novels. More specifically, when writing death, McEwan took deathas a background of the whole novel. Moreover, he returned to the death asit actually was. In other words, McEwan abandoned the characteristics intraditional western literature that described the process of death and thepsychological activities and directly returned to the death phenomenon itself.Then, in the second chapter, the thesis analyzes the reasons for McEwan towrite death in his works. Precisely, the thesis addresses the reasons fromthree respects: the author’s own life experience, the death in reality andthe literature tradition. Last, the third chapter analyzes the function ofdeath theme in McEwan’s novels. To be more specific, the thesis deals withit from three aspects: showing loneliness against death, describing sexstimulated by death and revealing atonement waken by death.The conclusion summarizes the full thesis.