Return to search

Deprivation of Closure in McEwan's Atonement : Unreliability and Metafiction as Underlying Causes

The aim of this bachelor’s thesis is to discuss, and attempt to confirm, that Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) lacks closure. Since the novel has an unreliable narrator who offers her readers several credible endings to her narrative, and who also acts as the fictitious author of the story, unreliability and metafiction are claimed to be the main underlying causes of this deprivation of closure. The discussion in the first section of the analysis is based on the plot development depicted in Gustav Freytag’s Pyramid, and the second part is focused on Victoria Orlowski’s four metafictional characteristics denoting ways in which writers of metafiction transgress narrative levels. The claim is concluded to be partly fulfilled, since Atonement is regarded as lacking closure in terms of narrative structure but not in a philosophical and moral sense.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-16866
Date January 2012
CreatorsSjöberg, Rebecka
PublisherLinnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk och litteratur, SOL
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Page generated in 0.0021 seconds