Ironies In Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the only work by Ian Mc Ewan to have won the Booker Prize.The story follows several members of the British intelligentsia,entrapped in intricate interpersonal relationships and a complicated post-modern social environment,as they go move towards their tragic ending.Compared with the wealth of research on Mc Ewan’s other works,studies on Amsterdam remain scarce.It is often regarded as inferior to other Booker-winners,considered too tightly woven,plot driven and built on crude humour.In fact,the novella is a triumphantly ironic work,reflecting the author’s superb ironic narrative ability and ironic view of society.In this thesis,irony is explored in a rhetorical and metaphysical perspective.Firstly,verbal irony expands Mc Ewan’s characters;dramatic irony offers readers alternating burdensome and pleasant responses to the story;situational irony furthers the development of plot.By applying different forms of irony as a rhetorical device,the author constructs recurring ironic images,allowing readers to perceive the complex interrelationships and absurdity of the intelligentsia’s fate.Secondly,adhering to the concept of“General Irony”,by discussing the British intelligentsia’s ethical dilemma,the legalization of euthanasia and the narrator’s identity in his work,this thesis explores contradictory and absurd essence of contemporary society and human life reflected in Amsterdam.Trough the analysis,the conclusion is drew that Amsterdam is a triumphantly ironic work,embodying Mc Ewan’s unique ironic style of narration and exposing his full understanding of the complexity and absurdity of survival...