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ANA-KARINA SCHNEIDER
Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu
Abstract
This essay is a
close reading of the representation of subjectivity in
crisis in Ian McEwan’s Atonement, focusing on three
McEwan trademark tropes: ethics, gender roles and
intertextuality. Briony Tallis, the protagonist and
intradiegetic author of the novel, catalyses a series of
competing discursive and narrative levels that thematise
trauma, fracture and the need for at onement. The
measure of the success of McEwan’s metanarrative experiment
is the extent to which the book camouflages its dependence
on recognition of traditional novelistic conventions as
conventions, rather than as faithful representations of real
life experiences. Unlike most of McEwan’s earlier fiction,
Atonement thematises moral choice and by setting it
against the backdrop of international conflict restores the
balance of gender-specific discourse, which would otherwise
incline towards a Jane Austen-inspired narrative of
domesticity and romance. Ultimately, the novel raises the
issue of the ethics of producing representations and
foregrounds the formative function of narratives in identity
negotiation.
Keywords:
Ian McEwan, Atonement, metanarrative, ethics,
identity, gender, crisis, trauma, narrative strategy |
