The Study Of The Image Of Minors In Ian McEwan's Novels

As one of the best-selling writers in England, Ian McEwan(1948-) has written numerous literary works so far. Among the abundant images of characters created by him in his works, the images of juveniles have attracted the most outstanding attention. Starting from his own acknowledgment of social situations, Ian McEwan frequently expresses his love of children's growth, his deep sorrow of the society, and his affluent contemplation of juveniles' healthy growth in the form of literature. The images of juveniles in the works by InMcEwan are rich and complicated, this article will discuss four parts of this topic, i.e., types, development, causes of formation and significance. Besides introduction and conclusion, the main body is divided into four chapters:The introduction summarizes the academic significance of topic and outlines the research situation at home and abroad.The first chapter analyzed the types of juveniles. The first section focused on analyzing the traditional images of juveniles in McEwan's works. Due to the deficiency of guides, when faced with the absence of parents, the domestic calamity and other accidents in the course of growth, adolescents will be full of confusion and fear. After the detailed consultation of documents, by taking adolescents' ways of handling the relationships with parents as the entry point, the current section classified the juveniles' images into pursuing love with trauma, treasonous and evil, fantastic and self-salvation and escaping and destroying. So based on these, the distinctive performances of juveniles in the face of crises beneath the hands of McEwan were fully analyzed. And then, the second section attached much more importance to the analysis of unconventional images of juveniles. First of all, from the perspective of inverse growth of adults, the issue of how people retain the simple childlike innocence in the world of adults in The Child in Time was thoroughly analyzed. Besides, the writer's contemplation and concern of this issue in his other works was also demonstrated. Due to the presence of metaphor, Charles Tak in The Child in Time represented not only the alienated adult, but also the child in the hearts of adults. Through these, the writer expressed his own standpoint that childhood is always destined to be terminative, it is not the ideal approach to retain childlike innocence by escaping from the world of adult but sticking to the state of children. Moreover, taking Peter in The Daydreamer as a representative, this section also analyzed the children possessing the thoughts of adults. McEwan made the flourish imagination of Peter run through the whole novel. Then, the instinct requirements of children were expressed through the communication between the adults and children both of whom were imagined. Ultimately, the happiness of adults reading children's books represented either their reflections of having lost and even almost forgotten themselves or their instinct interests of literature itself.The second chapter analyzed the development of images of juveniles. The first section laid emphasis on the juveniles' changes of appearances, behaviors and individual psychologies during their growth. And the mental and physical grief they suffered and the self-treatment of them were analyzed as well. In addition, the second section highlighted the development of group images of juveniles during the distinctive periods of writer's creation. In the earlier stage, the writer chiefly constructed individual juvenile and mainly manifested the fear and disorientation of growth. And later, the characters began to become rich, but the writer still laid mere emphasis on depicting the introversive characters. In the interim, through illustrating the development of Brioni in Atonement, the writer completely stated the awakening of individual moral consciousness and the shoulder responsibility of him on social history and others. In the present stage, taking The Children Act as mouthpiece, McEwan emphasized that the guard of child welfare could not be narrowly confined by laws in court, but must be extended to the entire social life outside the court. At this moment, the themes of juveniles' images constructed by the writer were widely expanded. And the discussion of juveniles' growth and development gradually was inclined to make the humanization detailed from the overall social background. Eventually, the third section primarily elaborated that although the individual and group juveniles experienced tremendous evolution, they still showed the consistence of loneliness and trauma in the course of growth.The third chapter majorly analyzed the causes leading to the formation of juveniles' images. The first section stated the causes of formation from the perspective of the characters' self-logic. Firstly, effects of the solitary and sealed physical space as well as the conflicting and indifferent social space on the image construction were analyzed from the angle of space environment. Secondly, the causes of formation were analyzed based on effects of trauma and fear resulting from sudden accidents on juveniles' orbits of life. As the juveniles always grew up in dysfunctional family and endured the double violent changes of both physicality and mentality, the sudden accidents in life cruelly turned their normal growth into tremendous changeover. Therefore, the trauma and fear they suffered were discussed from three aspects, such as the absence of parents' guidance, the mortal blunders and diseases of juveniles resulting from their innocence, and various era and historical reasons like wars. Additionally, the second section chiefly elaborated the effects of the writer himself on the formation of juveniles' images. In the first place, seen from the childhood experience of the writer, the effects of his displaced memory of childhood on his creation were analyzed. In the second place, the influence of literature edify that McEwan received and his life experiences on the creation of him was discussed.The fourth chapter majorly analyzed the significance of the juveniles' images. The first section focused on the literary significance, such as the contribution to English literature and the expansion of creation in the field of juveniles. And the second section laid emphasis on the significance of social education, involving the inquiry of both times and history and the consideration of children education seen from the images of juveniles by the writer.Conclusion: As a writer who are profoundly imbued with social responsibilities, Ian McEwan has introspected writers' social responsibilities and called on governments and people to attach more thorough importance to the education of juveniles. So to speak, the concern of juveniles' growth is always the topic McEwan has dedicated to.