Escape From The Adult World,Quest For The Inner Child

Ian McEwan (1948-) is one of the most influential British novelists in the contemporary literature, and has been honored as the "British National Novelist". In 1987, he won the Whitbread Novel Award for The Child in Time. The Child in Time is a novel about how Stephen gets lost in grief after the kidnap of his daughter, and how he begins to escape from reality and quest for the missing child. His wife Julie escapes twice from marriage because of her loss of daughter and the estrangement from her husband. While their friend Charles Dark, who has excessively constrained his inner quest for childlike freedom and innocence, decides to completely escape from politics into the suburb and lives like a child. He finally goes into pieces and ends his own life.The self-discrepancy theory divides the self into actual self, ideal self and ought self. It argues that the discrepancies between the three self states will lead to different self-discrepancies. This thesis applies the self-discrepancy theory by Edward Tory Higgins to explore the escape, quest and return to reality in The Child in Time. Firstly, it probes into the reasons for the escape of Stephen, Julie and Charles. They escape from the adult world mentally and physically due to the self-discrepancies between their actual selves, ideal selves and ought selves. Secondly, it analyzes the purposes of their escape. They attempt to minimize their self-discrepancies and approach their ideal selves, so as to quest for the forgotten inner child goodness and innocence, and to achieve spiritual redemption in the cruel adult world. Thirdly, it discusses the result of their escape to analyze their return from the perspective of the balance of their actual selves, ideal selves and ought selves. Finally, it comes to a conclusion. The inner child is one of the undeniable existences of human nature. In the adult world full of frustration, despair, indifference, and hypocrisy, adults cannot avoid the reality and completely indulge themselves in the carefree childhood. Instead, they should overcome the childlike selfishness, take in the spiritual nutrient of childlike goodness and innocence, and properly return to the reality to assume the requested adult responsibilities in the adult world. They should keep their actual selves, ought selves and ideal selves in balance, find a "balanced point" between their ideals and the reality, and face the reality in the adult world.