| Ian Mc Ewan is recognized as one of the most important novelists and play writers in contemporary English literature. The themes of his novels are unique because of his sensitivity and original understanding of some crucial historical, political and social issues. His early fictions focus on childhood, adolescence and initiation, accompanied with the description of Gothic psychology and the dark side of society, such as death, violence and sexual deviance, which are controversial and earn him the nickname "Ian Mac Abre". To some extent he exposes the dark side of human nature and subverts the ethics of the middle class. In 1980 s, his writings are more mature.We can notice that throughout all his works, ethics have long been his major concern, which makes readers gain ethic power from his language.Atonement was a novel published in 2001, which was nominated by the Booker Prize finalist and was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It can be viewed as the signal of his writing art maturity. Since the publication, especially after the successfully on-play of the movie Atonement, more and more critics have analyzed and interpreted the novel from different perspectives. After reading the various critical reviews mentioned in previous part, it is not difficult to find that few critics concentrated on the depiction of Briony’s ethical dilemma which I think can be a more detailed angle in the interpretation of Atonement.Based on a relatively detailed analysis, this study endeavors to make an exploration of the ethical dilemmas that the novel’s narrator Briony faces, including the different ethical environment from complicated situation of her family relation, career experience to love imagination.Having different identity in the three situations, Briony plays her roles and what she has done influenced others’ fate, on her family members especially her older sister Cecilia, with her coworkers in hospital and with her imaginary lover Robbie. Readers may have a better understanding of Briony’s road to salvation through her ethical dilemma, with her every step of her choice.This thesis includes three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion. The first part includes a brief introduction to Ian Mc Ewan and his novel Atonement. It also includes an introduction of the literature review of Atonement as well as the relative theory of ethical literary criticism abroad and at home, and the purpose and structure of the thesis are also put in this part. As the main part of the thesis, the second part analyzes the three ethical dilemmas of Briony and her choice. Three chapters are included in this part.Each chapter respectively analyzes one of the ethical dilemmas Briony faces. Briony, both the protagonist and also the narrator of the novel, is the only adolescent child and the truly beloved one by everyone especially her mother and sister in the family.Her mind is full of all kinds of fantasies and precocious thinking of adult and love, which leads to her misunderstanding of the flirtation happened in the garden fountain between Cecilia and Robbie and her false accusation against Robbie of his undoing crime.Her precocious imagination changes all their lives, including herself.Because of her wrong choice when she faces the family and love dilemma, she forces herself to live in the guilty when she works as a nurse in wartime and a writer and traps in the ethical dilemma built by herself. Throughout the last part of the novel, we know the happy-ending of Cecilia and Robbie is made up by Briony the writer, from which we realize she leads her hole life in getting out of the ethical dilemma and searching for atonement. |
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