Growing In Traumas-the Images Of Children In Ian Mcewan’s Major Novels

Ian McEwan is one of the best contemporary English writers since the1970s, whoseworks have received both popular and critical acclaim and earn him almost all significantawards including the Man Booker Prize. He has been continually evolving in his literarycourse yet what remains constant, as Peter Childs observes, is his interest in depicting theindividual’s reactions to moments of crisis as well as the tender and brutal interpersonalrelations (Childs,2005:6). In McEwan’s representative works in three different periods,The Cement Garden, The Child in Time and Atonement, all children characters invariablyencounter some traumatic events which lead to disastrous damages to their life, yet theirresponses towards trauma are different. This dissertation attempts to identify the trauma ineach fiction and analyze the characters’ different responses to their traumas, hoping toreveal the continuity as well as evolvement in McEwan’s view on trauma and the image ofchildren.The present dissertation, on the basis of Cathy Caruth’s theory of trauma in literatureand Judith Herman’s recovery theory of trauma, defines “trauma” as an overwhelmingexperience of sudden or catastrophic events which inflict severe pain on the victims inmind and their responses to the events that are belated, intrusive and usually repetitive.Based on such a definition, the dissertation discusses traumas in McEwan’s major works aswell as the characters’ different responses to their trauma. The author of the dissertationbelieves that trauma in these three novels can be recognized as trauma of death, trauma ofloss and trauma of crime respectively and the children characters’ responses to their traumaundergo a process from perversity, envision to confrontation, indicating that McEwan’sview on children and trauma evolves from immaturity to maturity. To justify such opinions,the dissertation examines the image of children in trauma as well as their responses.