After reading and analyzing two of Ian McEwan’s literary works, “Saturday” and “Solar”, you can tell that McEwan frequently writes about characters who lead successful lives. Although the characters in the two books are successful in the sense of profession, and money, it appears as if they both have troubled personal lives. I think that Ian McEwan might not have such an exciting and interesting personal life, so he enjoys writing about characters that do. McEwan’s use of characterization makes it clear that these characters, for the most part, are satisfied with their professional achievements, and are actually quite confident in their abilities to use the knowledge they’ve acquired over the years. Not only do these characters face issues in their personal lives, it seems like they, in one way or another, aren’t okay with things going on in the world. In McEwan’s book “Saturday”, the main character Henry Perowne, who is a successful surgeon living in Great Britain. Perowne is very content with his job as a surgeon, and a successful one at that, however, the story encompasses a day in his life where he encounters a significant problem in his personal life that puts his whole family at risk. McEwan’s book “Solar” is also about a character living in Great Britain. The character, Michael Beard, a successful physicist who’s personal life is as stable as the weather in Central New York.
Henry Perowne, the protagonist of Ian McEwan’s book “Saturday” is a successful surgeon with a relatively stable family life. He has a wife, two living parents, and two children. This story takes place in 2003 when the war with Iraq hadn’t started yet, but was imminent. Henry’s day starts as he’s driving to his weekly squash match, however, he gets ...
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Paul hasn’t written in a long time because he’s been busy with soccer games, football games, school, and cross-curricular projects. During that time, his father is now firmly in command as the Director of Civil Engineering for Tangerine County, and his mother now the head of the Architectural Committee, a block captain for the Neighborhood Watch patrol, and mostly like to be the successor to Mr. Costello as president of the Homeowners’ Association. His brother, Erik, has now become a local hero as the placekicker for Lake Windsor High Seagulls.
A tension so vividly present in the event that it makes McEwan's job painless. However, with his subtle pauses and reflections, diminishing the tension frustrating the reader, he maintains this tension throughout; from 'the sunlight...to the radiating power of Jed Parry's love and pity'. We keenly await the conclusion of the events, and the denouement of Joe and Jed's relationship.
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
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Redemption is a big part of every person. It's in stories with rising and falling action, in the music industry with the success of bands and the unavoidable destruction of them, and most importantly in people because we all make mistakes and most of us learn from them. Redemption is what made these two stories successful. Without characters redeeming themselves both A Visit from the Goon Squad and Almost Famous wouldn't have been as successful as they were and the viewer would have hated all each and every character. The stories would just be of characters who make big mistakes but never fix them; of characters who never really become anyone because the viewer would never really become sympathetic. In this claim there are several characters who could be reviewed to show how being vindicating makes them successful but for the purposes of this paper we will just be looking at Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad characters Bennie and Sasha, and Crowe's Almost Famous characters Penny and William.
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The world McEwan sets up his characters in has several circumstances, created by expectations of feminism and masculinity, which ultimately creates Briony’s ability to make the decisions she does. The first of these being Robbie’s presence in the Tallis home. Jack Tallis “did not have it in him to turn out a young women and her child,” which goes back to the trait in masculinity of being superior and the provider identified earlier (82). Had he not seen the situation as a woman being unable to provide for her son, simply because of an absent male figure, Robbie would never have been taken under Jack’s wing and never would have had the opportunity to fall in love with Cecilia. Not only that, but by sequence of events, Briony would never have had the chance to accuse him, had Jack Tallis’s masculine nature not surfaced and shaped the events by bringing Robbie into their
James Joyce created a collection of short stories in Dubliners describing the time and place he grew up in. At the time it was written, Joyce intends to portray to the people of Dublin the problems with the Irish lifestyles. Many of these stories share a reoccurring theme of a character’s desire to escape his or her responsibilities in regards to his relationship with his, job, money situation, and social status; this theme is most prevalent in After the Race, Counterparts, and The Dead.
May, C. E. (2012). Critical Survey of Short Fiction: World Writers (4th ed.). Ipswich: Salem Press.
In James Joyce’s “Counterparts,” Farrington, a troubled man stuck in a monotonous job as a text copier, attempts to mitigate his overwhelming stress, only to find himself further demeaned and frustrated. The prison of routine is presented as a major theme, and the plot consists of three main settings that create the comparable catalysts for Farrington’s building anger and torment. Throughout each part of the plot, Joyce’s narration clearly implicates future events, particularly within the office scene. Although the motifs and recurring elements in the office setting reinforce the theme, they are also used to foreshadow impending events and conflicts that unfold to tell Farrington’s grim tale.
Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle G. Labor, Lee Morgan. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 2nd Edition. Oxford, 1979. 162-165.