Narrative Analysis On Ethical Predicaments In Ian McEwan’s Solar

British national writer Ian McEwan closely clings to realistic themes with ambitionextending to more grand social and political areas. His long novel Solar published in2010catering to the disappointment after the2009Copenhagen Climate Summit sets the realglobal warming as the background and integrates his2005Arctic expedition, complexscientific terms and the seemingly real Nobel Prize awards to urge people to introspect theecological issues like environmental destruction and energy exhaustion. Moreover, as acontinuation of McEwan’s meticulous description of details, he amplifies human flaws in theprotagonist Michael Beard and it is the first time for him to satire Beard’s ethicalpredicaments and the ugly faces of the interest-oriented elite group represented by Beard inthe comic way. Solar taking climate changes as its theme on macro level and revealinghumanity relentless on micro, attracts many scholars to focus their interests on the directionsof introspection of ecology, environment and energy and criticism of evilness of humannature.What is worth mentioning is that Solar is also a long novel that fully exposes the currentelites who are trapped in multiple ethical predicaments, conveys McEwan’s awareness andthoughts about ethical issues and is attached with significance of ethical education. However,it is a pity that the researches on its ethical predicaments are still sporadic. Thus, this thesistries to select two core events in Michael Beard’s marital, ecological, academic, parent-childand female ethics respectively as the research text materials and carries out from the narrativetechniques of focalization, FID, unreliable narration and narrative judgments to deeplyanalyze and uncover Beard’s behaviors in fear of undertaking ethical identities andresponsibilities and judgments with double standards, to reflect Beard’s ethical predicamentsin marital, ecological, academic, parent-child and female aspects, and to expose modernpeople’s ethical flaws caused by benefit, pressure and social environment.After the analysis of the text materials, this thesis reveals that the usages of narrativetechniques of focalization, FID, unreliable narration and narrative judgments have certain features and consistence when Ian McEwan depicts Beard’s ethical predicaments. As themain focal character, most of Beard’s focalization is expressed in FID with strong subjectivity.Meanwhile, Beard’s focalization and FID often deviate from normal ethical standards, andbecome the proofs of his unreliability and mistaken narrative judgments.In addition, this thesis also finds the combinations of narrative techniques vary withethical types to highlight the differences and characteristics of ethical predicaments. Forexample, Beard’s focalization in his marital and academic problems is obvious self-defense;he is the reliable spokesman of McEwan on the disorder in the boot room and the relationshipof human and nature; he takes an irrelevant observer’s focalization to report his parents’irresponsible way of raising child; his ignorance of humanity and female exposes that hisnarrative judgments are groundless. This thesis makes narrative analysis on ethicalpredicaments proves that narrative techniques are powerful research tools to unfold ethicalphenomena and to interpret ethical judgments, and it also advances people’s attention toethical issues and introspection of the reality and be conductive to the further study of ethicalissues in McEwan’s other works.