2 - Moral Dilemmas

Summary

This chapter explores Ian McEwan’s stature as a contemporary British moral novelist by focusing on acute ethical dilemmas in five of his best-known works from the past thirty years: The Child in Time, Black Dogs, Enduring Love, Atonement and Saturday. Beginning with the dramatic episode of a tragic balloon accident in Enduring Love, the chapter analyzes discrete scenes of intense ethical conflict in each text, in which characters are torn between altruism and self-interest. These scenes are interpreted in the context of McEwan’s distinctly self-conscious aesthetic, which makes use of complex and highly ironic relationships between the narrator and the reader. By examining ethical representations in light of McEwan’s sophisticated narrative technique, the chapter argues that McEwan has helped to revive the moral novel for a new generation and has taken his place in the lineage of great moral writers in Britain reaching back to Daniel Defoe.