The Analysis Of Ethics In Saturday By The Utilization Of Narratology

For his outstanding achievements in recent years, Ian McEwan is featured as The50greatest British writers since1945by The Times in2008. From then on, Ian McEwan and hiswork began to show great influence in the world.Among his works, roughly from the1980s, McEwan makes a considerable change fromhis previously disturbing themes and marches towards the broader social and political oneswhich determine normal people s way of living. In addition, his writing skills also becomemore and more sophisticated, which can be best illustrated in his book Saturday. For its socialand humane factors such as ethics, love and conflict, Saturday stands in the spotlight of theBritish literary circle since its appearance, attracting the eyes from all around the world. Allof these factors make Saturday representative and appropriate as the analyzed sample of thisthesis.By focusing at the home and abroad studies of Saturday, it is not difficult to find thatthough the research on it is in full wing, it still bears some characteristics of unify. There ishardly a scientific and systematic linguistic theoretical framework in those studies as theirsupporting point. As a new hotspot in novel analysis, ethics appears more and morefrequently in critics circle. What s more, from the novel criticism to text analysis, narratologycan never be neglected for its theoretical property and feasibility. As a result, the analysis ofethics by the application of narratology is supposed to make the whole thesis more systematic,profound and theoretical.In this thesis, the theoretical framework is built up by the introduction of focalizationand chronotope in three aspects: definition, development and types. Then, the narrativecharacters of Ian McEwan s Saturday are analyzed as regards to the aspects of focalizationand chronotope. After that, the theoretical and practical feasibilities of the ethical analysis bythe utilization of narrative devices are illustrated. Based on the organic unification ofnarratology and ethics, four aspects of ethics including fidelity, beauty, otherness and innatevirtue are dissected in Ian McEwan s Saturday by the utilization Gérard Genette s division offocalization and chronotope. After the analyzing part, which is also the main body of the whole thesis, the author s writing intention is given out as to the political, family, gender andother realistic issues besides the ethical factors. In the conclusion part, a whole summarize ofthe thesis is made, including the significance and limitation of the thesis.Through the analysis of ethics in Saturday by the utilization of narratology, this thesis issupposed to make an innovative study of Ian McEwan s Saturday to a certain degree by thecombination of narratology and ethics.