Ethical Choices And Ethical Reflection In Graham Swift’s Waterland

Graham Swift is one of the most famous novelists in contemporary Britain.In addition to Last Orders,which won the Booker Prize in 1996,his novel Waterland,published in 1983,is also regarded as one of Swift’s most successful works.The novel explored history to explain what went wrong in the lives of its main characters.Since the novel was published,scholars both at home and abroad have paid extensive attention to this work,and analyzed it from different angles,such as historical research,ecocritical,narrative characteristics,trauma theory,and feminism.Although the academic circle has been involved in the ethical phenomenon in Swift’s novels,the ethical choices of the main characters in Waterland have not been profoundly analyzed.Therefore,based on the theory of Ethical Literary Criticism,this paper analyzes the ethical choices made by the main characters in the book,explores the reasons that affect the ethical choices and the ethical view of Swift demonstrated by these ethical choices.In Waterland,main characters made different ethical choices under different ethical dilemmas.Thomas chose to inflict violence on his wife after his family status changed,resulting in his wife losing consciousness for life.Ernest chose to have incest with his daughter after suffering a blow in his career,resulting in his daughter giving birth to a mentally handicapped son Dick.Being an adolescent,Mary chose to indulge in sex under the oppression of her family environment,leading to miscarriage after unmarried pregnancy.Helen sought the reconstruction of ethical identity and ethical consciousness after the incest with her father.After discovering the truth of Freddie’s death,Tom chose to reveal to his father the truth to seek redemption for himself.The imbalance of Sphinx factors and the unhealthy ethical environment are the main reasons led to different ethical choices of the characters in the novel.Different combinations and changes of animal and human factors lead to different behaviors and characteristics.Ethical environment is the general term of many factors that affect ethics,mainly referring to family ethical environment and social ethical environment.The absence of the role of mother and the estrangement between husband and wife after marriage led to a deformed family ethical environment.The oppression of women in the patriarchal society and the indifference to interpersonal relations after World War II have led to the pathological social ethical relationship.Through the analysis of the ethical choices of the characters in this novel,this paper reflects the construction of ethical order in real world.At the individual level,people need to care for each other in family and establish a harmonious husband-wife and parent-child relationship.At the social level,ethical concern care for women and the balance between economic growth and moral development are crucial to the construction of harmonious ethical order.By learning from the ethics conveyed in Swift’s Waterland,a healthier family relationship,a more harmonious social development and international order will be established.