A Study Of The Cement Garden From The Perspective Of James Phelan’s Narrative Ethics

The Cement Garden,written by British novelist Ian Mc Ewan,takes the adolescents as the protagonists and presents the adolescents’ ethical problems through Jack’s narration.Guided by James Phelan’s narrative ethics theory,this thesis mainly analyzes the ethics of “the told”,the ethics of “the telling”,and the ethics of “the reading”.It reveals the adolescents’ ethical issues and shows Mc Ewan’s concern for adolescents.The body of the thesis is divided into three parts.The first part studies the family ethical relationships of “the told” at the story level,including the marital relationship,the parent-child relationship,and the siblings’ relationship.It reveals the characters’ ethical problems.The second part explores the ethical orientations of “the telling” towards the characters’ ethical problems at the discourse level.It includes the implied author and the narrator.The third part analyzes different audiences’ ethical evaluations of the characters,the implied author,and the narrator at the reading level.Through analyzing the ethical relationships of “the told”,the ethical orientations of“the telling”,and the ethical evaluations of “the reading”,this thesis explores Mc Ewan’s narrative techniques and ethical intentions,showing adolescents’ ethical problems that they may suffer from during the process of their growth,and revealing Mc Ewan’s concerns for the adolescents in abnormal family ethical relationships.