The Grotesque World In Ian McEwan’s Early Works

Ian McEwan has been one of the most famous writers in England from 1970s when he published his first fiction. Ian McEwan’s early works shocked readers as soon as they published, Ian McEwan used the dark themes of violence, incest, murder and so on to touch the dark side of human nature and moral taboo area, he drew the outline of a grotesque world by some unique writing approaches. The purpose of this paper is to study the grotesque world in Ian McEwan’s early works, from the perspective of grotesque aesthetics, using the related content of the grotesque theory, to research the method of writing in the world and to analyze the structure characteristics of grotesque world with the help of the content in psychoanalysis, social history and family sociology.This paper is divided into five parts, the first part is introduction, mainly to introduce the basis of questions, the research status at home and abroad, the selected topic significance and the concept of grotesque.The first chapter is a presentation of the grotesque world in Ian McEwan’s early works. This chapter mainly includes three aspects:the grotesque body, the grotesque psychology, the grotesque sex relationship and the grotesque situation. Events and description in grotesque story are closely related with human body, the body is the central image of grotesque writing; Readers always feel strange from mental patient’s peculiar psychology and abnormal behavior, resulting the sense of grotesque; The material and image of sexual behavior are grotesque by which readers have new aesthetic experience, which is mixed with scary and funny; The description of grotesque situation draw attention to readers immediately, which leads to shock,horrible and funnyThe second chapter is the writing method of Ian McEwan’s grotesque world. This chapter mainly includes three aspects:the language description to touch senses, the unique narrative techniques, the dreams and metaphor. Contrast and enhancement of color from language description bring readers visual impact, the smell in language description render reads the atmosphere of dark and horrible; Simple and restraint narrative style distant readers from the reading context, the narrative perspective of pathological person bring readers the sense of true and grotesque; The irrational and abrupt dream is abnormal and flexible, the animal metaphors which through human’s way of thinking are always mystery, which are involved in the construction of grotesque world directly.The third chapter has deep perspective on the grotesque world in Ian McEwan’s early works. This part mainly includes three aspects:society, family and individual, using the content of psychoanalysis, social history and family sociology to analyze the internal structure characteristics of grotesque world. First of all, we can feel the image of deserted and confused city and the pessimistic emotion in daily life. Secondly, the families from grotesque world are mostly defective, showing the lack of family ethics and broken family structure; At last, for one thing, the heart of individuals from the grotesque world is full of moral, nerve and realistic anxiety; for another, the person has multiple dislocation of identity, such as family identity, sex identity and age grow identity.The last chapter is the summary which tells the main content. This part explores the literary value of grotesque art, one is to cause the effect of shock and strange, the other is to arouse people to realize their profounder self. In this chapter, we will explore the origin of creation of grotesque world which McEwan is interested in, based on McEwan’s family and the influence from other early writers. At last, the paper will explore the grotesque style in McEwan’s late works, providing new trains of thought for late research.