The Identity Crisis Of Juveniles In Ian McEwan’s Novels

Ian McEwan is one of the most outstanding English novelists in modern times.He is one of the best contemporary novelists.McEwan’s works have a wide range of themes.The themes of his works involve personal growth,gender relationships,politics,technology and so on.Among them,McEwan has paid much attention to the growth of juveniles.More than thirty years,he keeps paying attention and writing on the problems of the growth and identity of the juveniles,using his novels to present the various identity crises that minors may encounter during their growth.This paper takes ethical criticism and textual reading as the main research methods to analyze the juveniles’ identity construction in McEwan’s different periods of creation as well as to futher explore the transformation of McEwan’s creative thoughts,thus,revealing the ardent pursuit of children’s well-being of McEwan.Besides the introduction and the conclusion,the main body of this paper consists of three chapters.The introduction mainly accounts for McEwan’s works,the review of the research status of McEwan’s novels at home and abroad,the definitions of relevant concepts in this paper,and the research significance of this article.The first chapter is about the types and manifestations of the multiple identity crisis of minors written by McEwan.The first is the family identity crisis of the minors.It shows that the minors confused his own ethical identity,mistakenly identified himself as the "father" or "mother" in the family;secondly,the social identity crisis of the minors showed that the minors can not correctly recognize their identity in the society,they may cause a mixture of individual gender identity and were confused of the identity between the baby and the adult;finally,the religious identity crisis of the minors showed that the minors is unable to make a choice between the religious believers and unbelievers.The second chapter is the causes of the minors’ identity crisis.First of all,from the internal point of view,the combination and change of the minors’ Sphinx factor will exert a great influence on their character and behaviorl;secondly,from the external point of view,it is the influence of the ethical environment of minors,which is manifested by the absence of family ethics and the wasteland of social ethics.The third chapter mainly discusses the minors,identity construction and its enlightenment.The first is the minors’ identity construction in the crisis,including the malformation identity construction,the failure of identity construction and the possible successful identity construction;secondly,the ethical enlightenment of the minors’ identity crisis.The first is to explore the true meaning of "children’s well-being":firstly,the minors need to construct their inner harmony,learn to construct the normal relationship between themselves and others,learn to know the relationship between themselves and society,and the relationship between the self and the religion.the second is that the adults play a decisive role in the growth of children.The third,the law is an important guarantee for protecting the rights and interests of the minors.Second,the adults need to face the crises of the adult world.Behind the the minors’ identity crisis,there is the adult’s occupational crisis and psychological crisis.The fifth part is the conclusion.This part summarizes the ethical value and significance of McEwan’s works on the identity crisis of minors,explores the transformation of McEwan’s creative thought in the process of creation,and provides new trains of thought for late research.The enthusiastic attention to the minors’ identity crisis displayed by McEwan’s works shows his conscience as a writer.The discussion on identity crisis of the minors is not only a concern for the moral development of the minors at present time,but also a serious reflection on the present situation of human ethics.It also expresses the concern for the future ethic development of human under the background of the modern times.