Contending Narratives in Ian McEwan’s Fiction
My study examines an abiding theme in Ian McEwan’s fiction–the sciences vs. the humanities–within the context of the “two cultures” debate and the extent to which McEwan’s novels can be seen as participating in the debate. One needs to refrain from the impulse of situating McEwan’s fiction as complacently resting within a “two cultures” framework, as a careful examination of his texts, which attest to their author’s refusal to take for granted scientific or any kind of doctrines, demolishes such a view. Nevertheless, this refusal is not readily apparent since it is camouflaged by the main characters’ rationalistic and scientific interpretations of events. By creating characters who are proven wrong for exclusively endorsing one side of the conflict, McEwan engages in the “two cultures” debate and challenges the significance of science in a dehumanised, globalised world. Determining whether the epistemological models of the sciences and the humanities as thematised in McEwan’s fiction can be reconciled and can converge into a “third culture”
so as to offer a comprehensive and moral outlook is the chief aim of my investigation.
Keywords: Ian McEwan, science, the humanities, morality, the “third culture.”
1. Jon Cook, Sebastian Groes, Victor Sage, “Journey without Maps: An Interview with Ian McEwan,” Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, Ed. Sebastian Groes,
London, Continuum, 2009, p. 128.
2. Dominic Head, Contemporary British Novelists: Ian McEwan, Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 2007, p. 73.
3. Ian McEwan, The Child in Time, London, Picador, 1988, p. 117.
4. Ibid., p. 44.
5. Ibid., p. 39.
6. Ibid., p. 40.
7. Ibid., pp. 44-45.
8. Ibid., p. 16.
9. Ibid., p. 14.
10. Ibid., p. 8.
11. Ibid., p. 7.
12. Ibid., p. 51.
13. Ibid., p. 94.
14. Jack Slay, Jr., “Vandalising Time: Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time,” Critique 35: 4, Summer 1994, pp. 115-1166.
15. Ian McEwan, The Child in Time, op. cit., p. 60.
16. Ibid., p. 152.
17. Ibid., p. 120.
18. Ian McEwan, “Literature, Science and Human Nature,” Human Nature: Fact and Fiction, Ed. Robin Headlam Wells and Johnjoe McFadden, London and New York, Continuum,
2006, pp. 47-48.
19. Ibid., p. 58.
20. Timothy Bewes, “What is Philosophical ‘Honesty’ in Postmodern Literature?”, New Literary History 31, p. 430.
21. Ian McEwan, Enduring Love, London, Vintage Books, 1998, pp. 14-15.
22. Ibid., p. 42.
23. Dwight Garner, “The Salon Interview: Ian McEwan”, 31 March 1998. Available at
24. http://www.salon.com/1998/03/31/cov_si_31int, last accessed: Sept. 17, 2015.
25. Ibid.
26. Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, New York, Vintage Books, 1999, p. 294.
27. Ian McEwan, “Move Over, Darwin…,” The Observer, London, 20 September 1998, p. 13.
28. Ian McEwan, “Literature, Science and Human Nature”,op. cit., p. 40.
29. Deryn Rees-Jones, “Fact and Artefact: Poetry, Science, and a Few Thoughts on Ian McEwan’s Saturday,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 30:4, Dec. 2005, p. 4.
30. Ian McEwan, Saturday, New York: Anchor Books, 2006, pp. 53-54.
31. Ibid., pp. 252-253.
32. Dominic Head, op. cit., p. 191.
33. Ian McEwan, “Faith v Fact,” The Guardian, 7 Jan. 2005.
Available at
34. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jan/07/g2, last accessed: Sept. 17, 2015.
35. Ian McEwan, Saturday, op. cit., p. 86.
36. Matthew Arnold, “Literature and Science.” Available at
37. http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~ian/arnold.htm, last accessed: Sept. 17, 2015.
38. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, The University of Chicago Press, 2003, p. 193.
39. Ian McEwan, Saturday, op. cit., p. 27.
