Perverted Psyches And Tragic Growth Of Children In The Cement Garden

Ian Russell McEwan is generally regarded as one of the best contemporary novelist and screenwriter. At the first moment of his literary career, McEwan has been receiving all kinds of reputations as well as criticism. His early works is labeled by Kiernan Ryan"the art of unease"and he himself is also nicknamed"Ian Macabre". What gives him such"fame"is his first several works, First Love, Last Rites, The Cement Garden, and The Comfort of Strangers, etc. These works received great controversy for their dark themes and perverted relationships between characters: murder, incest, dismemberment, sado-masochism, cross-dressing, violence, etc.The Cement Garden is about a regression story of the four children after their parents' death. This thesis will take the perspective of children's growth to analyze the novel, and through careful texual analysis the growing-up problems are discussed from the psychoanalysis aspects. The thesis is constituted by three chapters. Chapter one gives an overall introduction to the bleak environment (both inside and outside the cement garden) of the family. Chapter two discusses the perverted psyches of the four orphans and the problems they encounter during their growth. In this chapter their psychological regression will be discussed. Chapter three is devoted to the discussion of the tragic growth of the four orphans: hiding the mother's body and incestuous relationship, etc.The thesis finally concludes that the children's tragic growth is the outcome of many factors such as environmental factors, educational factors and the children's own psychological regression. And the adolescence problems depicted in the novel are not just fictional; they have realistic meaning and can shed some light on the education of the children in our society.