| Ian Mc Ewan(1948-)is one of the most influential writers in the current British literary world,and is known as the “national writer”.In the early stage,his writing style was gloomy and horrible,which was jokingly called “Ian Macabre”.In the middle and late phase,his writing style turned to the concern of social problems and the exploration of human nature.The creation of Machines Like Me based on the frailty of human nature and it contains rich ethical values.It is created by Ian Mc Ewan,who is devoted to exploring science in his writing.Also,Mc Ewan went deep into the characters from a unique perspective,and he paid close attention to the ethical predicament faced by the artificial humans who always stick to the moral principles in human society.On the basis of close reading of the text,with the theory of literary ethical criticism,this paper analyzes the different ethical predicaments faced by the main characters in Machines Like Me,and discusses the causes and ethical choices.Through analysis,the author summarizes the moral values contained in the novel,which reflects the Mc Ewan’s moral thinking of human society.The emergence of ethical predicaments is closely related to changes of ethical identity.The failure of ethical identity construction and the dislocation of ethical identity of humans,and the failure of artificial humans’ self-identity are the manifestations of ethical predicaments.At the same time,the reasons behind the ethical predicaments are also worth to explore further.First is the relationship between humans and artificial humans has been ever changed since ancient times.From the fully controlled master servant relationship to the incompletely controllable relationship,human beings gradually have a deep fear of artificial humans.Second is that artificial humans who have been set as moral supremacy are always at the edge of society.In the process of trying to centralize,they fail to become an ethical subject but have downtime.When humans and artificial humans are deeply trapped in ethical predicaments,they are forced to make different ethical choices.Artificial humans always adhere to morality and truth,regardless of their feelings with human beings and result in the deterioration of relationship between them.In this process,human beings gradually dissipated their free will and gradually returned to rational will,and finally made the ethical choice of reconciliation with artificial humans.Human beings have gradually reached the maturity and perfection of morality in the process of ethical choices.Ian Mc Ewan pays close attention to human nature with his keen eyes.He takes the ethical predicament of artificial humans faced in human society as a mirror to reflect the greed,desire,deception and lies of human beings.The ethical choice of reconciliation between humans and artificial humans reflects Mc Ewan’s optimistic attitude towards harmonious human-machine relationship.Only by deeply reflecting on “how to be human” can we make it possible for human and artificial human to coexist harmoniously in the future. |
PDF Full Text Request