On "Loneliness" In Ian McEwan’s Novels

In UK, Ian McEwan has been one of the most eminent contemporary writers. He won the Booker Prize with Amsterdam in1998.The majority of his novels are mainly concerned with the dark side of humanity. Sex, murder, violence and incest are usually the themes he is interested in. However, we can often sense a bit of loneliness in McEwan’s novels, such as the substantial description of sex in "First Rites, Last Love" gave us a picture of a group of lonely adults who were morally lost and degenerated on the way of self-realization. In the Cement Garden, the four sisters and brothers hid the corpse of their mother in the cellar and cut all the contacts with outside world and lived in an isolated house like a waste island immersing them in endless loneliness.The intended area of this research is to analyze the "loneliness" manifested in Ian McEwan’s several novels:"First Rites, Last Love","The Cement Garden","The comfort of strangers’" and "Atonement". The protagonists experienced the sense of loneliness on the way to seek the meaning of their existences. During this process the impact that loneliness exerted to the author, protagonists and readers is extraordinary. Lacking communication and love from family, and under the pressure brought by the sternly modernization society, the protagonists in the novels have been seeking recognition of identity in life with their own ways. They are suffering from serious emotional loneliness, but without correct and proper guiding from family and society, leading to them morally lost and degenerated, and finally caused irreversible tragedies.This thesis is divided into three chapters to elaborate the impact and source of loneliness, with references of three principles of existentialism put forward by Jean-Paul Sartre:"existence precedes essence","anguished life and absurd world","freedom of choice", to expound the inevitable appearance of loneliness on the way of seeking the significance of existing. By the way of depicting lonely characters, Ian McEwan is also in the hope of getting attention from people on loneliness and notifies the importance of the effect exerted by loneliness. Meanwhile, as life is not perfect, "loneliness" is inevitable but if it is properly recognized, the tragedies could be altered.