THE COMPLEX WORLD OF STORYTELLING- AN ANALYSIS OF IAN MCEWAN'S NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE IN ANTONEMENT

Abstract

            Ian McEwan is a versatile creative artist; most widely read and critically acclaimed as a contemporary postmodern British writer. Over the last forty five years he has produced various genres in English literature viz. novels, short stories, collections, novellas, children books, film adaptation, screen plays, drama, an oratorio, libretto, interviews and lectures. Perhaps he has produced various genres but his richness, diversity, core of style, techniques, subject, and narration mode could be found primarily in his novels. His works explore various and multiples themes, morality, responsibility, history, sexuality, imagination and consciousness. Even though his primary themes focus on fundamental subjects, viz. childhood, moral, ethical issues, sex, children and parents relationship and children / adulthood relationships. Being a postmodernist writer, his narrative techniques and styles are all inclusive; he includes unreliable narrator, first and third person narrative, multiple – perspective narration, fragmentation, parody, unexpected final twists, playfulness, intertextuality, autobiographies and metafiction. He has produced multiple genres and forms, viz. gothic story, dystopia, spy thriller, satire, romance, psycho-thriller, parable, war narrative, postmodernist narrative and ecological fiction. This Paper is an attempt to analyse the narrative style of McEwan in his Atonement as a metafiction which blends realism and modernism.