Alienation,Abnormality And Ruthlessness In The Cement Garden

Through the first person perspective of young Jack,British contemporary novelist Ian McEwan's novel The Cement Garden reveals how the four children become ruthless and loveless under the influence of the cold urban environment and abnormal family,and how their psychologies get distorted and alienated gradually.Based on Lefebvre's spatial theory,this thesis explores the novel's themes as alienation,abnormality and ruthlessness on three levels,namely individual psychological space,family space and urban space.Viewing from the individual psychological space,the four children's psychological space has been alienated completely.Sister Julie inherits the spirit of the "cement",cold and arbitrary.Jack loses the normal communication skills with other people.He disgusts and even insults himself,twisted and abnormal.Sue is immersed in her own world every day without caring about anything,self-dissocial.Little Tom refuses to grow up and turns himself to be a baby,degraded actively.The alienated individual psychological space further intensifies the abnormality of family space.Family space should be a warm space to contain family ties,love and friendship,but what the four children bear from family space is indifference.The couple seems to be strangers.The children lack care and guidance from parents.And the relationships between sisters and brothers are also beyond the normal family ethics.The garden is covered by cement,so does the home.The living state in cement garden is not only the portrayal of this family,but also the epitome of lonely and desolate western modern family.The abnormal family space indicates the ruthless urban space.The garden in the novel is lifeless and wasted which is surrounded by cement instead of singing birds and sweet-scented flowers.The whole contemporary Western society likes a larger cement garden,which is shrouded in the indifferent materialism and lonely survival environment.The ruthless urban space infringes and plunders all natural factors,causing the collapse and loss of the space subjects.Under the influence of the twisted emotional ecology and morbid aesthetic orientation,the four children lose true emotions and deviate from all the code of conducts.They have become machines without any spiritual conversion,or cold “cement men” without any love.The alienated individual psychological space reflects and influences the overall family space and urban space,while at the same time the abnormal family space and cold urban space deepen the alienation of individual psychological space.The western urban culture is declining,the family is abnormal,and children's spiritual world is distorted.The family living space in the cement garden reveals the multiple dilemmas of contemporary Western society and the living conditions of urban people.