The Growth Tragedy In The Cement Wasteland

Ian McEwan is one of the most acclaimed writers in British contemporary literature.Whether in art,moral or intellectual,he shows his unparalleled talent and he has superior.McEwan has been gaining various reputations as well as criticism for his particular writing style and skill.His works involves novel,drama,children's literature as well as opera and so on.In particular,his novels have been of great concern to the critics,and once he was the winner of the Booker Prize.However,because of the theme of his works,especially his early novels which are concerned with murder,violence,incest and so on,there is a lot of controversy besides the complement,and due to this,his early works are labeled as “the art of unease” and he himself is also nicknamed “Ian Macabre”.This thesis will talk about his first novel The Cement Garden,and through the analysis of the growing problems of the four children,expose the formation as well as the causes of the children's perverted psyches.The theory adopted in this paper is the psychoanalytical theory.Through textual analysis the manifestations,causes and the results of the perverted psyches will be discussed,so as to warn people to pay more attention to the children's psychic education.Besides the introduction and the conclusion,this thesis consists of four chapters.The introductory section includes a brief introduction to Ian McEwan and his main literary achievements.It also provides a summary and literary review of The Cement Garden.Published in 1978,the novel presents the readers an astonished story about four children who grow distortedly after they become orphans,and the tragic ending of the incestuous relationship between the elder sister and brother.The first chapter focuses on a brief introduction of the novel as well as the theory that is adopted in this thesis,i.e.the psychoanalysis theory.The Cement Garden is McEwan's first novel which tells a story of four children who live isolatedly by themselves after their parents both died.At the very beginning of the story,the father dies of heart attack,and then the mother also falls ill seriously and dies later.The four children become orphans.In order to avoid the little brother and sister being adopted and maintain the unity of the family,the elder daughter and son become the mother and father of this family.They decide to seal their mother's body with the cement left by their father so as to hide the truth of their mother's death.And in order to keep the outsides away from the family the two elder siblings chose to sink to the incestuous relationship.The youngest son,six-year-old Tom transfers his Oedipus complex to his sister Julie after his mother dies.Among the four children,only Sue is a relatively normal child who engages herself in diaries and reading.Here the author implies the readers that there is still hope for the tragedy and that is reading.Reading makes people live a normal life and people are supposed to get the habit of reading back.The second chapter is concerned with the presentation of the growing tragedy of the four children who live in the cement garden,such as the transvestism and the Oedipus complex.Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing,which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex.The Oedipus complex concentrates upon a boy's desire to sexually possess his mother.The third chapter focuses on the causes that lead to the tragedy,which involve two aspects: the objective and the subjective.The former one includes the social and family environment;the latter mainly involves the children's psychological problems which will be analyzed from the personality defect and children's sexual psychology.The fourth chapter is devoted to the tragic results of the four children's growing tragedy,including the incestuous relationship and the hiding of the mother's body,etc.After the death of their mother,the children choose to hide the truth of their mother's death and sealed their mother's body with cement.Also,in order to maintain the unity of the family,the elder daughter and son bear the role of parents and the shocking incest was triggered.The conclusion points out the significance of this thesis and reveals the fact that personality defects,environment and the psychological problems will affect the healthy growth of children,and thus warns people to strengthen the education of children's growth and the implementation of psychological guidance.