Macabre Elements in Select novels of Ian McEw...

Macabre Elements in Select novels of Ian McEwan

Author Name : Deepati Pant, Dr. Kavita Pant

ABSTRACT

Ian McEwan,contemporary British novelist has reframed literary boundaries by instilling controversial and macabre elements in his works. His name has become an innovative term for brilliance in British literary tradition. McEwan, started his career writing gothic short stories. First Love Last Rites (1975) The Cement Garden(1978) and The Comfort of Strangers(1981)have earned for him nick name of literary psychopath. His works brilliantly explore the current of guilt, shame and anger. On the pages, McEwan's characters are darker and bleak as they like to clingto hidden desires that are beyond the spectrum of socially acceptable behaviour.Ian McEwan has abundantly used the macabre elements in his works. In some of his works these elements appear in the form of incest, adultery, pornography, paedophilia, murder and rape. In this paper macabre elements appear in the form of incest and adultery.Macabre elements which McEwan portrays with profound complexity are adultery and incest. Along with it other disturbing elements especially teenage incest and controversial topics also find expression inTheCement Garden(1978) and Nutshell (2016).He tries to register his inclination towards the themes that are beyond socially acceptable norms. Through this paper I would like to foreground macabre elements in his novels:The Cement Garden(1978) and Nutshell (2016).

Key words: - Incest, adultery, sadomasochism, sadism, macabre elements, Hampstead novel, gothic, infantilism, morbidity, madness, sex, behaviour, paedophilia,abrupt, lust.