Jack, in spite of his animosity towards his father, shares certain qualities with him. He is keen about the idea of spreading concrete over the garden and while mixing the cement with water he seems to feel affinity for his father: “I was pleased that we knew so exactly what we were doing and what the other was thinking that we did not need to speak. For once I felt at ease with him.” (McEwan 1997: 17). Malcolm stresses certain traits or features which he considers aspects of the male sphere. Jack is “ugly, selfish, potentially and actually violent, constantly masturbating” (Malcolm 2002: 58). There is another male character who shares the supposedly male needs to dominate and to be in control, namely Julie’s boyfriend Derek. The reader must notice the rivalry between him and Jack resulting from the fact they both want to take on the traditional man’s role of the head of the family. Although Julie soon penetrates Derek’s intention to become “one of the family, . big smart daddy” (McEwan 1997: 134), she actually grows disgusted with him when she finds out he lives as his mother’s fair-haired boy. It seems Julie conforms to the stereotype of the dominant role of men. When Derek turns out to be unable to play this role, he loses Julie’s respect immediately. The role of women is equally well defined. Again, the Mother is the archetype of a female. She is submissive, gentle and quiet. In spite of the family’s struggle to make ends meet, she does not have a job and devotes all her time to housework and the care of the children. She always backs up her husband in front of the children, even if she does not share his view. From the beginning of the novel, the male and female worlds are separated. The characters sometimes solve serious matters regarding gender. While discussing Tom’s desire to look like a girl, Jack tells Julie that their brother would look stupid. Julie’s passionate reaction has wider implications in terms of gender relations: You think it’s humiliating to look like a girl, because you think it’s humiliating to be a girl. . . . Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s okay to be a boy, for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading. (McEwan 1997: 47 - 48) The narrator also concentrates on the contradictoriness of the two worlds. He describes Julie’s behaviour after Father’s death: “She wore make-up and had all kinds of secrets. . . . She had long conversations with mother in the kitchen that would break off if Tom, Sue or I came in suddenly.” (McEwan 1997: 29 – 30). Similarly, after Mother’s death, Julie and Sue have secret conversation in the kitchen. This dissonance between the two worlds may be related to another set of images explored by Malcolm, that of exclusion and inclusion. He argues that exclusion prevails both within the family and in its relations with the outside world. The parents never get any visitors, the children never bring friends. There are no neighbors, the Father even plans to build a high wall to isolate the family completely. He is also isolated in his own family. His children either fear him or despise him. Jack also frequently feels isolated, when he cannot take part in his sisters’ conversations (Malcolm 2002: 61). The narrative style can hardly be called experimental. It seems quite straightforward and realistic, there are no abrupt twists in the chronological order or form. Yet the narration embodies passages which may surprise the reader as they somehow do not fit the alleged language of the narrator. The novel is written as a first-person narration. Jack, a protagonist, tells the story of himself and his family from his point of view. The narrator’s language seems mostly laconic, unadorned, detached. Jack tends to use casual vocabulary and very simple sentences. These characteristics help to portray Jack as an apathetic and bored teenager with little interest in what is happening around him. His life appears to be empty, he does not care about personal hygiene, school is just a nuisance, and he has no friends. Although the novel appears to be a very personal narration, the reader cannot resist a feeling of distance between the narrator and the events in the book. Malcolm considers Jack an “unreliable narrator” and emphasis “the strangely detached focus of the narration” (Malcolm 2002: 48). There is no doubt that Jack’s accounts of the events in the story and his own emotional state are somehow mechanical. He describes many extreme situations with coolness and emotional aloofness. The tenuity of the passage about his father’s death evokes the style of an official report: My father was lying face down on the ground, his head resting on the newly spread concrete. The smoothing plank was in his hand. I approached slowly, knowing I had to run for help. . . . The radio was playing in the kitchen. I went back outside after the ambulance had left to look at our path. I did not have a thought in my head as I picked up the plank and carefully smoothed away his impression in the soft, fresh concrete. (McEwan 1997: 18 – 19) Williams partly explains this emotional emptiness by the problem of “how to convey with maximum authenticity the thoughts and sensations of a mind that has not yet achieved full maturity”. He uses Charlotte Brontë’s argument that “Children can feel, but they cannot analysis their feelings” (Williams 1996: 216). This view, however, is at least disputable. Lack of order, alienation, insufficient communication and lack of the security of a loving family life must necessarily cause psychological flatness. Jack grows emotionally stale and numb, he is somehow paralysed. Although Jack has no control over his emotional development and the character is flattened, the reader might feel something more in the background. This should be emphasised as a typically postmodernist feature. Nothing is stated directly. There are only implications and glimpses for the reader to make sense of. On the other hand, Malcolm draws attention to a postmodernist feature in the narrator’s language. He points out stylistic deviations from the simple language of a teenager – frequent examples of complicated structures and sophisticated vocabulary such as “weary admonition”. He considers these stylistic elements to be a self-referential device which makes the narration an example of metafiction(Malcolm 2002: 50 – 51). Genre mixture features markedly in this novel. Malcolm considers the book a “psychological study of adolescence” with many elements of the Gothic and the urban horror (Malcolm 2002: 51 – 52). There are psychological motifs such as adolescent resistance to a parent verging on malice, feelings of shame and guilt, incestuous desire, which mingle with the Gothic features. The decadent lifestyle of the forlorn siblings in the neglected house, the decaying body of their deceased mother buried in the cellar and its smell spreading round the house create a typically Gothic mood. The descriptions of the settings contribute to the gloomy atmosphere. The family’s house “was old and large. It was built to look like a castle, with thick walls, squat windows above the front door” (McEwan 1997: 23). Not only the house but also the surroundings are dismal places. In the fourth chapter Jack describes one of the abandoned prefabs in the neighborhood: Most houses were crammed with immovable objects in their proper places . . . But in this burned-out place there was no order, everything had gone. . . . There was a mattress in one room, buckled between the blackened, broken joists. The wall was crumbling away round the window, and the ceiling had fallen in without quite reaching the ground. . . . I thought of my own bedroom, of Julie’s, my mother’s, all rooms that would one day collapse. (McEwan 1997: 40 – 41) There are no explicit references to specific times or places, the family does not have a surname, Mother and Father are never identified by their names. The protagonists are trapped in a timeless atmosphere. The characters linger on in the stiffness of their days while the house is slowly decaying: The days were too long, it was too hot, the house seemed to have fallen asleep. We did not even sit outside because the wind was blowing a fine black dust from the direction of the tower blocks and the main roads behind them. And even while it was hot, the sun never quite broke through a high, yellowish cloud . . . (McEwan 1997: 71) I masturbated each morning and afternoon, and drifted through the house, from one room to another, sometimes surprised to find myself in my bedroom, lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, when I had intended to go out into the garden. . . . I stood in the centre of my room listening to the very distant, constant sound of traffic. Then I listened to the voices of children playing in the street. The two sounds merged and seemed to press down on the top of my head. I lay on the bed again and this time I closed my eyes. When a fly walked across my face I was determined not to move. I could not bear to remain on the bed, and yet any activity I thought of disgusted me in advance. (McEwan 1997: 74) The environment is very symptomatic. No one notices that the children are absolutely forlorn. No one cares about the welfare of others. The description of the complete loss of order and social responsibility gives the impression of admonitory reproach and social criticism. |
