Durée Of Life

Time is a recurring topic in Ian McEwan's novels. In The Child in Time, McEwan has associated time with the characters' life journey and their destiny. By means of close reading, this thesis employs Henri Bergson's theory of durée for the analysis of time in The Child in Time. Through the investigation of two protagonists' different attitudes towards time, the thesis attempts to illustrate the determinative influence of different senses of time on the formation of the two protagonists' different personalities and courses of life.The comparison between Charles Darke's and Stephen Lewis's different attitudes towards time indicates that McEwan identifies with Stephen's sense of time. McEwan's ideal sense of time is that the past is an indispensable and unforgettable part of man's life. What man can do with the past is to extract quintessence from it for present use. Human being's major concern should be the present. It is vital for human being to seize the hour in the present to adjust his pace and have an insight into the future. Only with a balanced time sense, can the human being handle the relationship among past, present and future and have a meaningful life in the complicated modern society.This thesis is composed of six chapters. In the first chapter, Ian McEwan's The Child in Time and its relevant reviews are introduced briefly. The second chapter gives an in-depth study of Bergson's concept of durée. In Bergson's perspective, past, present and future form a unity and they are irreversible. The third chapter focuses on Charles's sense of time. He confuses past with future and ends up in failure. The fourth chapter makes an analysis of Stephen's balanced idea of druée. His catering for the perceivable present after lingering on the past endows him with a harmonious life journey. Stephen's sense of time is the reflection of McEwan's attitude towards time. In the fifth chapter, McEwan's ideal sense of time conveyed in the novel is pointed out. The last chapter is the conclusion. The conclusion is that Stephen is the spokesman of McEwan as far as sense of time is concerned. A balanced sense of time is the foundation of a harmonious life journey. Present is the pivot of the durée of life. Once time is broken and man fails to cater for the present, tragedy would become the inevitable end.