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摘要《只爱陌生人》是英国作家伊恩•麦克尤恩的作品。该小说讲述了一个发生在四个人之间极为不正常的迷恋和谋杀的故事。四位主人公之间的关系也是充满了病态、不合伦常。本论文意在探讨这四人间有悖常理的迷恋关系背后所含有的伦理困境。在分析中，四位主人公的关系会被分成三组：罗伯特和卡洛琳之间的施虐-受虐迷恋；罗伯特和科林之间的同性迷恋，以及玛丽和科林之间对于纯粹肉体关系的迷恋。本文会通过对这三组迷恋关系的分析给出对于在这些病态的关系背后所存在的伦理困境的思考。33863
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关键词 伊恩•麦克尤恩 伦理困境 虐恋关系 病态
毕业论文 外 文 摘 要
Title The Ethical Dilemma behind the Infatuation – A Brief Analysis of Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers
Abstract
The novel The Comfort of Strangers written by Ian McEwan tells a story of extremely abnormal love and killing between two couples. The relationships between the four characters are morbid and unethical. This paper will discuss the ethical dilemma behind the abnormal infatuation and the relations within the four characters will be pided into three pairs – Robert and Caroline, Robert and Colin and Mary and Colin: Robert and Caroline is a couple who enjoys the sadomasochism. Robert and Colin share a kind of homosexual infatuation. Mary and Colin are lovers who simply seek for pure physical satisfaction in the sexual relationships. The ethical dilemma behind these morbid relationships will be discussed through the analysis of the three pairs.
Keywords Ian McEwan ethical dilemma sadomasochism morbidity
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Analysis of Robert and Caroline: a Sadomasochism Infatuation 5
2.1 Robert – A Sadist 5
2.2 Caroline – A Masochist 6
3 The Analysis of Robert and Colin: a Homosexual Infatuation 8
3.1 The Reason Robert Chooses Colin 8
3.2 The Reason Colin is Willingly Controlled by Robert 9
4 The Analysis of Mary and Colin: a Pure Physical Infatuation 11
4.1 The Reason of Mary and Colin’s Indulgence in Physical Hedonia 11
4.2 The Role Mary Plays in the Realtionship 12
Conclusion 14
Acknowledgements 16
References 17
1 Introduction
Ian Russell McEwan, is a British writer who has lived by his writing for almost a quarter of a century. He is now seen as one of the most significant British writers since the 1970s. On 21 June 1948，McEwan was born in Aldershot, a town near Hampshire. His childhood was spent at the British military bases and abroad in East Asia because his father was a major in British army. He returned to England with his family until he was twelve. McEwan received his degree in English literature in University of Sussex in 1970. Later, he took part in a creative writing course in the University of East Anglia and received his master degree there. In 1975, McEwan published his first work - a collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites, some of the stories were his writings written during his master degree course. This maiden work had helped him earn the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976. His novel Amsterdam has earned him the Man Booker Prize in 1998. In 2008, the film Atonement based on his novel under the same title has won the Golden Globe Award.
Ian McEwan occupies a central role in a new wave of British novelists whose mature writing began to emerge in the Thatcher era. He stands alongside with those writers who fashioned an ethical vision for the ‘post-consensus’ period, for example, Martin Amis and Kazuo Ishiguro (Head, 2007). He shows his contemporaries’ concern with history in his works and they also focus on the world in a rather different way (Malcolm, 2002). The behaviours of his characters may be violent, disgusting or even morbid, yet it is just through this kind of morbidity that McEwan has pulled on the alarm of ethical introspection of the entire society. In his early works, he has earned the nickname of “Ian the Macabre” for his straight presentation of morbid and shocking sexual relationships in these novels. However, these novels are not wholly without a sense of history and wider society (Malcolm, 2002). The pondering of humanity behind these abnormal scenes is just where his works distinct from those “penny dreadful” stories. The horrible scenes of unethical and abnormal behaviours show that McEwan’s hard work in digging into humanity through them. McEwan has always been trying to rebuild the connection of novel with moral sense, using a kind of ambiguous attitude in the ethical judgment on those immoral activities appeared in his novels: ‘all you can do is describe it and describe the dilemma, never really resolved in this book and I don't see how it can be resolved’ (Lynn, 2007, p.40). This kind of ambiguity somehow forces his readers to think about the complex intentions which may affect their own ethical judgment, then, introspection will be followed (Winch, 1979). And this is what makes him a successful and significant figure in contemporary literature.