Ian McEwan, born June 21, 1948 to his parents David McEwan and Rose Lilian Violet who lived in Aldershot England and is known for dark humored novels and writings including: First Love and In Between the Sheets but is most famous for his novel Atonement, which is the novel I will be talking about in relation to his life. His father was a sergeant major in the British Army during the Cold War, so as a child he moved around a lot. His mother who had been married twice had a child with the man she was married to before his father but tragically he died at a young age on the forever remembered D-Day. His mother also had another child with Ian’s father out of wedlock, she had cheated on the man she was married to with Ian’s dad and to cover the scandal they put that child up for adoption, leaving Ian as an only child. Ian’s father and mother had him after she was divorced but as a young child he remembers many instances with alcohol and abuse with his father. “In one interview, the author remembers attempting to intervene in such abuse; he was prevented from doing so by his mother who insisted it was not his place to get involved.” (GradeSaver) McEwan’s mothers had also suffered from vascular dementia and so had Briony, the main character in Atonement. (GradeSaver).
I think that it is safe to say the Ian did not live an easy life and to be honest you can see so many similarities in the book with his life. I think you can understand why people believe that his humor is so dark, he lived such a hard life that probably twisted his sense of humor or made him so numb to those things that he is able to use it and find it humorous. So much of his life is reflected in the book Atonement, even one of his characters had suffered from the same thing that his mother had. An example of how this reflects his life is the constant thought of violence in this book, like the rape of Lola that Briony had witnessed, Ian had seen his mother being abused by his father quite a few times when he was younger. Also Briony mistaking Robbie as a sexual predator and throughout the book she tries to keep Robbie away from her sister, at one point she mistakes them making love as Robbie raping her older sister Cecilia and Briony also serves as a nurse in the war as well. In the book there is the military aspect throughout the book, just like in Ian’s life, his father was in the British military and so was Robbie after he got out of jail after being accused of raping Lola and Cecilia. You can really see McEwan’s dark humor come out when Lola, Briony’s cousin marries her actual rapist, Paul Marshall, to me that is just twisted. How can someone marry a person who forced themselves onto you? How would you even be able to look them in the face again, let alone look at their face every day for the rest of your life? Personally I know I wouldn’t be able to. Maybe McEwan felt guilty for standing by while watching his mother get abused and not be able to help protect his mother from his father even though there he wouldn’t have been able to do anything as a young child and he portrays that guilt through Briony’s eyes when she feels the extreme guilt for accusing Robbie when she was a young child.
The central question I am going to incorporate in this review is the question “Why should we care about what happens in the rest of the world?” and my answer is so that the horrible things that happened in the book don’t happen to people around the world, and so that we don’t repeat history and make the same mistakes. The horrible events that take place in the book should not be repeated, even though it probably does happen around the world if we care enough the events similar will not or do not have to occur as much
I think that the themes that occur throughout the book are themes of Ian McEwan’s life as a young child. I think that he wrote this book about himself, I believe it is kind of like a hidden biography and that some of the characters feelings are his feelings or at least were his feelings when he was growing up. There are so many similarities between the book and Ian’s personal life. The things that happen in the book probably happened every day for him when he was growing up, because he lived such a disturbing life as a child. These tragic things may even seem normal to him and that is why his humor is so dark and why his writings all reflect that. I believe that most of his writings are reflecting what he feels inside and that is how he deals with his feelings is by writing, maybe all of his work is a way for him to let go of what had happened to him in the past.
Work Cited
1. “Ian McEwan” http://www.gradesaver.com/author/ian-mcewan/ Grade Saver, February 25, 2013
2. “Ian McEwan” http://www.biography.com/people/ian-mcewan-40564 The Biography Channel Website February 25, 2013
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