The Voice of the Unheard: Ian McEwan s Nutshell as Cultural Criticism
Makaleler > Tam Makale · 2019
Yazarlar: Funda CİVELEKOĞLU
Mediterranean Journal of Humanities, ESCI İndekslerine Giren Dergi, Uluslararası, TR Dizin (Ulakbim), 2019, cilt 9, ss 103-111
Özet
IanMcEwan"s 2016 novel, Nutshell portrays an unusual narration in the voice of a foetus.The novel can be regarded as a postmodern reception of Shakespeare"s Hamlet as is claimed by both reviewers and McEwan himself.Yet, McEwan has accomplished more than reviving Gertrude and Claudius of Hamlet, operating on Shakespearean poetics, and working with many other extratextual materials.While presenting intertextual playfulness, the novel also demonstrates the characteristics of psychological thriller and murder fiction and various treatises on art and literature.These meditations are quite noteworthy in that McEwan pushes the very limits of literary devices; that is to say, he integrates fiction and nonfiction into his novel.The story is told from the point of view of an unborn baby and is based on his impressions of what he hears and feels.The narrator is at a point between reliability and unreliability in that he sometimes vocalizes childish anxieties while observing the bitter aspects of the life he is part of and makes grave interpretations.Hence, Ian McEwan clarifies the fact that seeing cannot be the only source of true knowledge.Then, one can conclude that he is making a criticism of the enlightenment by allowing the reader to empathize with the experiences of a foetus and accentuating the significance of senses other than the eye.This article intends to show how Ian McEwan utilises postmodern literary devices to examine dualities, such as truthfalsehood, realityillusion, artlife, innocenceguilt, goodevil, Eros -Thanatos, as instruments to question the so-called persistence of classicism.