An Interpretation Of The Cement Garden From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Ian McEwan(1948--) is one of the most prominent writers in the contemporary British literary arena. He is dubbed as “Ian Macabre” for the topics of violence, transvestism and incest which frequently appeared in his early novels. Although McEwan changes his writing style incessantly, he never gives up his exploring for ethical problems in his writing career. The Cement Garden, with abundant ethical factors in it, is his first novel, which is also the representative of his early works. However, the domestic study on this novel from the perspective of ethics is extremely scarce. Therefore, this thesis tries to explore this novel from the perspective of ethical literary criticism. By using the framework of Professor Li Dingqing, the thesis expounds the novel from three layers of relationships, namely, the human-society relationship, the human-self relationship and the human-other relationship. According to the interpretation of the three layers of relationships, the thesis delves into the moral dilemma in The Cement Garden, hoping to reveal the ethical ideas of McEwan.This thesis is made up of three parts.The first part is the introduction, which includes the current researches on McEwan and The Cement Garden both at home and abroad, the research motivation, research objectives, research methodology and the organization of this thesis.The second part is the main body of the thesis, and it includes four chapters. Chapter One primarily introduces the development, main contents and feasibility of ethical literary criticism.Chapter Two analyzes the tense relationships between human and society in The Cement Garden. In The Cement Garden, McEwan portrays the current living condition of contemporary people at great length: Driven by materialism and profit maximization, people in modern society have lost their humanity and the whole society is degrading into a wasteland without any moral principles. Besides, this is also a patriarchal society in which women are inferior to men.Chapter Three illustrates the alienated relationships between human and self. Since their parents die, the identities of Tom, Jack and Julie have changed constantly. At first, Tom lives as the identity of a girl, and eventually regresses into a baby; Jack and Julie commits incest at last. However, McEwan does not give up this society, and he sends policemen to save the children as well as the anomic and degenerated society.Chapter Four explores the estranged relationships between human and other. By depicting the unintimate relationship between Husband and Wife, the indifferent relationship between parents and their children, the distorted relationship between brothers and sisters and the nonchalant relationship between Jack’s family members and people from the outside world, McEwan presents readers an icy-cold world in which people cares for nobody but themselves. All of these show that McEwan is a great writer, and that he always bears righteousness and humanistic care in his mind.The last part is the conclusion, which makes a brief summary of the above chapters and conveys McEwan’s ethical pursuit embodied in The Cement Garden. As a writer with an extremely high sense of artistic mission and social responsibility, McEwan shows his deep concern for the maladies existing in contemporary society and the ethical crisis of contemporary people by showing readers a seemingly morbid text. The living predicament of Jack’s family reflects the living predicament of the whole society, thus, McEwan sounds a warning for the whole human society.