An Ethical Study On Ian McEwan’s First Collection Of Short Stories——First Love, Last Rites

Ian McEwan is one of the most influential writers in the twentieth century of Britain. His first piece of work First Love, Last Rites was published in1975. It won the Somerset Maugham Award in the following year. Since then McEwan has always been the subject of attention to the scholars and critics. This collection of short stories depicts a dark scary world with incest, murder, sexual perversion, etc. For his exploration of such gloomy themes, McEwan was dubbed as "Ian Macabre". However, the attention to this collection seems to be mainly about its thrilling themes, without realizing the ethical problems that it reveals beyond such gloomy themes. Adopting the approach of ethical literary criticism, this paper aims at exploring human survival predicament and ethical problems that McEwan describes in the eight stories of this collection.This thesis consists of five partsThe first chapter provides a brief introduction of Ian McEwan, the collection First Love, Last Rites and the literary review of this book. In addition, it also briefly introduces the realistic significance as well as researching approach of this paper.The second chapter mainly discusses the family ethical problems reflected in this collection. In three stories, McEwan depicts a variety of ethical issues as the incest between brother and sister, the murder of the husband to the wife, sexual abuse of the aunt as a surrogate mother to her nephew, etc. There is a dominant factor for all these ethical events,that is male hegemony. Through the three stories. McEwan reflected his opposition to traditional male hegemony.The third chapter illustrates the social ethical issues examined in this collection. In the modern society of capitalist industrial civilization, there is distrust and indifference between people. The relationship between individuals and the society is alienated. Besides,individual desire comes into a conflict with social ethical norms. One’s behavior of breaking away from social ethical codes is understandable when his basic need to survival is not satisfied. Therefore, we should pay attention to and stand by individual’s appropriate needs rather than the paradigm of social ethical norms.Chapter four analyzes the eco-ethical crisis in this collection. By portraying a series of eco-ethical problems, including man’s maltreating of animals, deterioration of human’s survival environment and the imbalance of spiritual ethics, McEwan expresses his opposition to animal maltreatment and his concern for the ecological crisis.Chapter five is the conclusion of the research. In this collection, Ian McEwan examines three dimensions of the family, social as well ecological ethics of the modern British society and points out its imbalanced situation. Behind the thrilling themes of the eight stories, McEwan reveals the ethical problems and existential predicament of people in the twentieth century. Modern people are facing an ethical crisis, including the imbalance of ecology brought by industrial revolution. the alienated relationship among individuals, between individuals and the society, and the spiritual loneness and nihility. It is more than a collection of horrible stories in that it reflects on the living predicament of human beings and reveals as well as criticizes the reality.