Ian McEwan

Shakespeare's Macbeth is meant to trace the detrimental effects of rampant ambition and greed, whereas King Lear is intended to show how good intentions and generosity can reveal the true nature of humans and lead to madness. The themes are best shown through Shakespeare's use of the motif of clothing. Through the motif of clothing, corruption and treachery are shown to run rampant in Macbeth. After receiving the Thane of Cawdor’s robes and title which had been stained by Cawdor’s treachery,…

The representation of Goneril and Regan in King Lear and, Ginny and Rose in A Thousand Acres showcases a direct parallel to the image that women can not handle having a high position in the patriarchy. In King Lear their father was depicted as a powerful man who gave up all his power to his daughters. Once Lear had given them half of his lands, they start to turn their backs on their father; from refusing to shelter him to stripping away the hundred men he had left to abandoning him in the…

Even though he loves dinosaurs, he wants to make a profit off of making a dinosaur park. Eventually Hammond, the owner of InGen, finds a scientist who knows how to clone dinosaurs. This ends up forming a park that Dr. Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm, are all sent to located in Costa Rica for the company InGen. InGen wants them to help determine if the park is safe or not. This movie shows the consequences of humans trying to toy with science and…

Yet, because of Kent’s success in appearing as an honest and loyal man to the King, he forgoes further questioning. Other than one curious question but another presumably lower ranking man, Kent’s telling of events is unquestioned by Lear. In these moments Kent’s true ability as a dissembler is clearly shown. So although at face failure Kent appears to be completely loyal to Lear, he is in fact serving some other purpose. One that increase the instability between the royal family and…

Lear’s trust in his other two daughters, Goneril and Regan is shattered when Regan tells him that he will have to dismiss fifty soldiers if he is to stay with her. In response, Lear says, “But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter-/Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh/Which I needs must call mine” (2.4.220-222). His contempt and his discovery of their intentions that were hidden behind their “love” for him are shown. Here, Lear’s blind trust that he placed in his daughters shows his…

The first act promptly begins with Lear’s surprising announcement about relinquishing his power to his three daughters. He pledges “our largest bounty may extend” (1.1.57) to whomever loves him the most. Beginning with Lear’s major discourse throughout the play, we get the sense that power is the dominant force that's at the centre of this family. Lear states first “to shake all cares and business from our [Lear’s] age”(1.1.41) and then taking that boundless power to his children, where he can…

In the inquest of Ian Tomlinson’s death the police officer claimed that his actions were in self-defence and he genuinely believed that the victim, who was walking away with his hands in pockets, was posing “risk or unknown risk” (IPCC, 2010, p. 104), by displaying hostility…

experience. In this way, stories impede readers’ abilities to gain an understanding of others. Ian McEwan’s Atonement illustrates the idea that stories, limited by language along with the reader-writer relationship, demote…

How easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong. (McEwan, 2002, p. 37) In Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, the reader is introduced to Briony Tallis, a young girl who is in the stage between childhood and adulthood, who in a hot summer day in 1935 makes a mistake that will forever shape her life and those closest to her. After witnessing several events she does not understand and seeing her cousin being sexually assaulted, Briony accuses Robbie, her father’s protégé, of rape. With these…

The aim of this research is to introduce the concept of irony and hyperreality in the metafictional novel entitled Atonement (2001) by contemporary British novelist Ian Russell McEwan. Irony is a rhetorical device, an act of speech and a textual effect produced when “the said and the unsaid together make up the third meaning – the ironic meaning,” (Linda Hutcheon, 1994: 60). Various types of irony can be observed in Atonement due to its the complex narrative perspectives and its nature i.e. a…