An Ethical Critique Of The Family Quandary In Ian McEwan’s Three Novels

Ian McEwan has created numerous works which touch upon grotesqueness, amoralityand other ethical issues. His millennium works Saturday (2006), On Chesil Beach (2008)and Solar (2010) all concentrate on social reality and human existence. Each of the novelsidentifies a distinctive type of family quandary. They keenly explore ethical issues infamily and contemporary moral panics.Setting against the theoretical background of western ethical criticism and drawing onthe literary ethical criticism advanced by Chinese scholars, this thesis studies the familyquandary from the perspectives of ethical situation, ethical relation and ethical identity. It’sargued in this thesis that the different family quandaries, as consequence of chaotic ethicalsituation, problematic ethical relation or dislocated ethical identity, can only be remediedthrough restoration of communal ethos, alterity, empathy and recreation of one’s authenticself. To be specific, the ethical situation in Saturday, namely the global insecurity,domesticated violence, political disorder and corrupted social morality, has a great impacton the Perowne family, threatening its tranquility. Therefore, Saturday implicitly calls forthe restoration of communal ethos, which is one of the ways of bringing order back to thefamily. The problematic ethical relations in On Chesil Beach, including the couples’conservative attitudes toward marriage, their inability to communicate with each other andthe pathological intergenerational bonds between the young couple and their parents, leadto the newly-weds’ failure in establishing a family, implying the importance of alterity andempathy in human interaction. The family problems in Solar, mainly caused by thedislocation of the protagonist Beard’s ethical identity—he denies fatherhood and finds ithard clinging to his masculinity, result in Beard’s miseries in his late life. It’s implied in thetext that these problems might be solved if Beard can abandon his narcissistic ego andrecreate his true self. By exploring the ethical problems behind the family quandaries andsuggesting possible solutions to them, McEwan demonstrates his responsibility and socialcommitment as a writer.