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16strictly analytical and contextual interpretations of numerous novels compiled into thematic chapters. The bibliographic material is amazingly rich and varied. This fact enhances the reliability of the commentaries provided, provokes further research and connects the book to other important resources.
As of the present moment, I can confirm the practicability and theoretical usefulness of Dr. May's book. It appeared to be a good support in the preparation of the text of my post-doctoral thesis, as well as research papers and PHD dissertations on such aspects of contemporary literature as the work of Iris Murdoch, Julian Barnes, Angela Carter and Graham Swift.
Книга Уильяма Мэя Послевоенная литература, 1950-1990
(York Notes Companion)
Марина Рагачевская
Минский государственный лингвистический университет, доцент Республика Беларусь, Минск, 2200016 ул. Захарова, 21; [email protected]
Дается рецензия на учебное пособие английского литературоведа. Анализируется структура пособия, его содержательные особенности; рассматривается методология автора книги.
Ключевые слова: Уилл Мэй; британская литература; роман; поэзия; Мёрдок; Барнс; Грэм Свифт
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SECTION 8 STUDENT ESSAYS
УДК 821.111-4
We receive essays chosen by teachers from many universities. Each member of the Editorial Board reads all the essays and recommends three for publication. Usually we publish the three essays with the most votes. On this occasion, for third place two essays tied, so we have published both of them. If your students were unsuccessful, you can
® Yulia Tyukalova, A.Maiboroda, Albina Mukhametshina, Darya Pestova, 2012
console yourselves because almost every submitted essay received at least one vote. For further information about the qualities we are looking for in a student essay please see the End Notes.
Yulia Tyukalova 5th-year student Perm State University
Classical-Tragedy- in-a-Modern-View
Atonement is a novel about human fate, about men, human character, vices and virtues.
Atonement is a novel about peace and war, about history interfered into human life, about historical events that have torn design of human life, about events that are beyond ordinary people control and therefore are nothing more than severe test or trial for their character.
Atonement is a novel about crime born and matured in an immature childish mind, about crime committed by a teenager and an adult, about crime that destroyed life of grown-ups.
Atonement is a novel about guilt that has never been admitted by the villain, that has never been exposed, about guilt recognition of which came rather late, about sense of guilt that a man has been bearing all his life, about guilt that has never been atoned.
Atonement is a novel about the novel, about fiction and true life, about verge between truth and plot, about imagination and memory. Atonement is a novel made of so many abouts, but delicately and exquisitely woven by the author in a true classical tragedy. Here we have a tragic protagonist, some tragic victims, a tragic situation, but what about its end?
In accordance with the genre, tragic hero Briony Tallis is neither a villain, nor a model of perfection. Ian McEwan depicts a 13-year-old girl who comes from a wealthy family of a renowned descent. Briony could resemble any reader in her passion for tidiness, secrets or perception of the world in its miniature.
Then what makes a protagonist be a tragic one? Certainly, some merits, as well as some weakness. McEwan endows Briony with the gift that is close to him, for sure, that is a bright imagination and vivid curiosity worth young writer. What exactly makes the story be a tragedy is a disastrous error or flaw of the protagonist that not
only brings sufferings to the hero but also makes those who surround him be tragic victims.
According to the genre the tragic protagonist is obsessed by some idea and on its way to realize it the protagonist encounters some obstacles, limits that force him to make unwitting contribution to the tragic situation. So Briony aspires to be a writer, she's no longer satisfied with her childish fairy-tales, but craves for a true novel. How could Briony who's ignorant of intricacy and twists and turns of adult life be able to write a novel? The only way for her is to observe behavior of her elder brother Leon and elder sister Cecilia, close friend Robbie, her cousin Lola and Leon's friend Paul Marshall, her parents and then to write down their actions and try to interpret or understand psychology of grown-ups by a childish mind.
McEwan endows Briony with a great gift, astonishing power that is to some extent equal to the power of the Almighty. Briony is able to create a new world, another reality just by means of her mind. Unfortunately, her mind and imagination turn to be not a power, but a kind of weakness for a 13-year-old girl. That's what makes Briony be a tragic protagonist. It's a tragedy for Briony to have a creative mind but be unable to interpret deeds of grown-ups. It's a tragedy to strive for something but be unable to realize it.
The only thing Briony can do is to wait until her right age, experience or background of the novel come to her. Certainly, ambitious Briony and her curious mind can't wait; she has to interfere into adult life as its full member. Such interference of an immature and unexperienced childish mind into adult life makes the tragic end of the novel be inevitable. For sure, a girl who's unaware of sexual attraction, display of feelings, lovemaking takes Robbie's behavior for assaults of sexual maniac who deserves a severe kind of punishment.
Here we come to the question: what can be more dangerous than an imagination broken loose? - just a child broken loose of its imagination and trying to explain something that is far beyond her youth. Firm and blind belief in her mind and ability to explain the events that Briony witnessed makes her take Robbie for the rapist of Lola, impels her to give evidence against Robbie and Cecilia into tragic victims and their love into a tragic one.
These tragic elements don't make a novel be a tragedy. All those
details should be interwoven in a classical plot that [according to Aristotle's) consists of 3 major elements:
• suffering/calamity
• reversal/peripeteia
• recognition
Atonement isn't deprived of them. Here we have a crime committed by Pall Marshall, a fatal mistake of 13-year-old Briony. This crime separated those who have just found love, turned the innocent who's saved twins into a prisoner, made a young girl be haunted by the sense of guilt the rest of her life. In accordance with the genre sufferings of characters seem disproportionate to their culpability. It's a feature of tragedy that tragic victims or bearers of minor guilt suffer much and inequity is particularly profound for them. We see physical and spiritual pain of Robbie (imprisonment, war, parting with Cecilia, death), tortures of Cecilia (repudiation of her family, parting with Robbie, work in hospital, death of her lover and her own death). On the contrary, we know nothing about Paul Marshall and Lola's sufferings. Moreover, they outlive tragic victims for more than 50 years.
One more feature of tragic sufferings is a motif of exile. Briony as well as ancient protagonist Oedipus isolated herself from her society intentionally becomes outcast and fugitive from her family.
What is much more important for the tragic plot is the function of tragic sufferings. Sufferings are to reveal human nature, character, unveil human capacities and prove forth human potentialities. The best proof of it is Robbie's behaviour and state of his mind when he was fighting in France.
McEwan shows us that even prison and the horrors of war didn't make Robbie brutal, war didn't break him. We see that Robbie feels shame for the British Army retreat; he feels responsibility for death of the woman and her son, whom he tried to save; he blames himself for those he killed and left to die. Moreover, Robbie finds strength to resist his wish to humiliate and hurt the Welshman and saves him from enraged soldiers.
Tragedy as a genre makes sufferings redemptive; it brings out tragic protagonist learning process. This experience of sufferings (exile from home, sense of guilt, severe work regulations in hospital,
blind obedience to the authority of Sister Drummond, pain and death of wounded soldiers, compassion to them) makes Briony learn a true and cruel adult life. These sufferings bring to her the thing she needed at the age of 13; that's nothing but experience that she has to reveal in her novels.
Sufferings are redemptive, because it forces Briony to accept responsibility for her childish mistake, impels her to seek for Cecilia and Robbie's forgiveness. The point is to show how difficult for the tragic protagonist to come to the acceptance of its guilt. The tragic suffering proves a disproportion between human acts and their consequences, but imposes responsibility nevertheless.
The second element of tragedy is reversal that means a situation which seems to developing in one way and then suddenly reverses to another. Here we see that at the age of 13 Briony accuses Robbie, gives false evidence and contributes to his imprisonment. But then recognition comes to Briony at the age of 18. Therefore she's ready to change her testimony and wishes to find forgiveness of tragic victims and peace in her soul.
The reversal gives us a tiny hope for a happy end, but tragedy itself makes the catastrophic end inevitable. It's up to tragedy to depict human limitations of the protagonist. These limitations are complex and have natural, moral and social basements.
Natural limitation means that the protagonist is unable to turn time back; 5 years of suffering are over and even frank admission of an error as well as a change of testimony can't heal spiritual and physical scars of tragic victims. Moral limitation tells that Paul Marshall is a true villain, but he's married his victim and therefore seems to be innocent from juridical point of view. Social obstacle is that Briony can't tell true names in her novel at least until death of chocolate millionaire and his wife; it would sound ridiculous to accuse him of a sexual assault of his wife.
The most powerful obstacle on the way to the happy end is some operating forces which are beyond of tragic protagonist control. In the novel it's the Second World War that exercises a role of impersonal and merciless power that kills Robbie and Cecilia and makes change of evidence unnecessary.
The third element of tragic plot is that the tragic protagonist need not die at the end but must undergo some change in fortune. We see
how a 13-year-old immature girl craving for writing becomes a 77-year-old experienced and outstanding novelist.
The third element presupposes that the tragic protagonist achieves recognition of his error; here some change from the state of ignorance to awareness of guilt that should be atoned happens to him. Tragedy aims to depict how that very tragic hero achieves atonement of its guilt by the end of his story.
It seems to me that McEwan's tragedy can't be called for sure a classical one, because of its "hanging end”. It means that the question of Briony's atonement remains unanswered.
Briony understands that it was she, but not the war, who killed happiness of Cecilia and Robbie, that's why she decides to make them happy at least in her fiction. Here we come to the confrontation of memory of true events that fall into oblivion with the death of its witness and a novel that always remains alive as a masterpiece of a great author.
Briony resolves this confrontation in favour of immortal fiction in order to achieve her atonement before readers, to deserve forgiveness of tragic victims. But the question of atonement is still unanswered, because Briony would never forgive herself even in her novel.
Here we come to the idea that this classical plot but "hanging end” make the novel of Ian McEwan be a Classical-Tragedy-in-a-Modern-View.
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A.V.Mayboroda 5th-year student Belgorod State University
The Subjunctive Mood approach to Ian MacEwan's Atonement
Atonement by Ian McEwan is a very ambiguous novel which gives a very profound space for readers to deliberate about. This is one of most thought- provoking features of the post-modern literature. The author leaves a lot to think up and complete. To be precise, this is so called 'Subjunctive mood' in post-modern literature. What could happen if many other things hadn't happened? And why do we consider Briony the only guilty one?
