Traumatized Perception of the Self and Time in Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden and The Child in Time

Year 2022, , 21 - 40, 23.05.2022

Nilay Erdem Ayyıldız

https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2021-918400

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to decipher the relationship between trauma and the differentiating perception of the self and time by discussing varying post-traumatic responses of the traumatized characters in Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden (1978) and The Child in Time (1987). To this end, the study applies trauma theory to examine the traumatized characters’ altered perception of temporality and the self, and to discuss to what extent the characters in the novels can overcome the impacts of the traumatic experiences they have. The two novels revolve around traumatized victims that lose the conscious perception of the self and temporality in reality after the traumatic experience. The Cement Garden depicts the post-traumatic challenges of four siblings, called Jack, Julie, Tom and Sue after their mother’s death. The Child in Time unveils Stephen and Julie’s process of working through their ordeal after the disappearance of their little daughter, Kate in parallel to Stephen’s friend Charles’s acting out his traumatic childhood by regressing to his boyhood. The critical approach to the characters’ response to their traumas concludes that trauma disrupts people’s perception of time and the self, leading either to tragedy when they lose the balance between their defense mechanisms and the trauma reality, or to awakening to their renewed life when they reconcile with their trauma reality.

Keywords

Trauma, Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden, The Child in Time, temporality

References

• Balkaya, M. A. (2014). Reading ‘A Little Cloud’ again: A psychoanalytic perspective. The Journal of International Social Research, 7(30), 55-60. google scholar
• Baxter, J. (2013). Surrealist encounters in Ian McEwan’s early work. In S. Gross (Ed.), Ian McEwan: Contemporary critical perspectives (pp. 13-26). New York: Bloomsbury. google scholar
• Begley, A. (2010). The art of fiction CLXXIII: Ian McEwan. In R. Roberts (Ed.), Conversations with Ian McEwan (pp. 89-107). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. google scholar
• Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed experience: trauma, narrative and history. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. google scholar
• Caruth, C. (1995). Introduction. In C. Caruth (Ed.), Trauma: Explorations in memory (pp. 3-13). Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. google scholar
• Chalupsky, P. (2006). Atonement - continuity and change in lan McEwan’s works. In S. Bubı'kova & O. Roebuck (Eds.), Continuity and change in culture and literature (pp. 1-10). Pardubice: Univerzita Pardubice. google scholar
• Courtney, H. (2013). Narrative temporality and slowed scene: The interaction of event and thought representation in Ian McEwan’s fiction, Narrative 21(2), 180-197. google scholar
• Ehlers, A., & Clark, D. M. (2000). A cognitive model of posttraumatic stress disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38, 319-345. google scholar
• Etkind, A. (2015). Post-Stalinist Russia: Memory and mourning. In S. Kattago (Ed.), The Ashgate research companion to memory studies (pp. 251-265). England and Burlington: Ashgate. google scholar
• Felman, S., & Laub, D. (1992). Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history. New York: Routledge. google scholar
• Figley, C. (Ed.). (1985). Trauma and its wake. Vol I, Bristol: Brunner & Maxil. google scholar
• Freud, S. (1959). Beyond the pleasure principle. J. Strachey (Trans. and Ed). New York: Bantam Books. google scholar
• Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. In J. Strachey (Trans.). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the history of the psycho-analytic movement, papers on metapsychology and other works (pp. 243-258). London: The Hogarth Press. google scholar
• Freud, S. (2001). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols). J. Strachey, A. Freud, A. Strachey & A. Tyson (Eds. and Trans.). London: Vintage. google scholar
• Freud, S., & Breuer, J. (2001). On the psychical mechanism of hysterical phenomena: Preliminary communication. google scholar
• (1893) In J. Strachey, A. Freud, A. Strachey & A. Tyson (Eds. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. 1893-1895 (pp. 1-18). London: Vintage, 2001. google scholar
• Freud, S., & Breuer, J. (2008). Studies in hysteria (1895). N. Luckhurst (Trans.). London: Penguin Classics. google scholar
• Head, D. (2007). Ian McEwan. Manchester: Manchester University Press. google scholar
• Herman, J. L. (1994). Trauma and recovery. From domestic abuse to political terror. London: HarperCollins. google scholar
• Janoff-Bulman, R. (2002). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York: The Free Press. google scholar
• Kattago, S. (2015). Introduction: Memory studies and its companions. In S. Kattago (Ed.), The Ashgate research companion to memory studies (pp. 1-23). England and Burlington: Ashgate. google scholar
• LaCapra, D. (2004). History in transit: Experience, identity, critical theory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. google scholar
• LaCapra, D. (2001). Writing history, writing trauma. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. google scholar
• Leys, R. (2000). Trauma: A genealogy. Chicago: Chicago University Press. google scholar
• Luckhurst, R. (2008). The trauma question. New York: Routledge. google scholar
• Malcolm, D. (2002). Understanding Ian McEwan. Colombia: University of South Carolina. google scholar
• McEwan, I. (2010). The cement garden. London: Vintage Books. Epub. http://library.lol/main/42D1A49232C 716855A82DCAACDDA86E3. google scholar
• McEwan, I. (1992). The child in time. London: Vintage Books. google scholar
• Moreno, M. M. A. & Coelho, N. E. Jr. (2013). Trauma, memory, and corporeal acts: A dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi, International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 22(1), 17-25. DOI:10.1080/0803706X.2011.65216. google scholar
• Morrison, J. (2003). Contemporary fiction. London and New York: Routledge. google scholar
• Onega, S., & Ganteau, J. M. (2011). Introduction. In S. Onega & J. M. Ganteau (Eds.), Ethics and trauma in contemporary British fiction (pp. 7-20). New York: Rodopi. google scholar
• Pozorski, A. L. (2006). An interview with trauma pioneer Cathy Caruth. Connecticut Review 28(1), 77-84. google scholar
• Rieker, P. P., & Carmen, E. (H.). (1986). The victim-to-patient process: The disconfirmation and transformation of abuse. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 56(3), 360-370. https://doi.Org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1986.tb03469.x google scholar
• Seaboyer, J. (2005). Ian McEwan: Contemporary realism and the novel of ideas in the contemporary British novel since 1980. In J. Acheson & S. C. E. Ross (Eds.), The contemporary British novel (pp. 23-35). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. google scholar
• Sistani, R. R. (2014). Psychological tensions and conflicts of characters’ interactions in Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences. 118, 450-456. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.02.061. google scholar
• Slay, J. J. (1991). A prevailing ordinariness: Society and interpersonal relationships in the fiction of Ian McEwan. University of Tennessee. Ann Arbor: UMI. google scholar
• Teo, Y. (2014). Kazuo Ishiguro and memory. London: Palgrave Macmillan. google scholar
• Tota, A. L. & Hagen, T. (2016). Introduction: memory work—naming pasts, transforming futures. In A. L. Tota & T. Hagen (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of memory studies (pp. 1-7). Oxon: Routledge. google scholar
• Whitehead, A. (2009). Memory. London and New York: Routledge. google scholar
• Whitehead, A. (2004). Trauma fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. google scholar
• Williams, C. (1996). Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden and the tradition of the child/adolescent as “I-Narrator”. Antagonish Review. 211-223. google scholar
• Wilson, J. P. (2004). PTSD and complex PTSD. In J. P. Wilson & T. M. Keane (Eds.). Assessing psychological trauma and PTSD (pp. 1-38). New York & London: The Guilford Press. google scholar