Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Anglistisches Seminar
Sommersemester ... 2007
PS II: „Exploring Modernist Aesthetics“
30.09.07

Modernist aspects
in Ian McEwan’s “Saturday”

Julia Lingenfelser

Contents

1. Introduction ... 3

2. Modernist aspects ... 4

2.1 The nature of time ... 4
2.1.1 Narrative time ... 4
2.1.2 Perowne’s dependency on time ... 7
2.1.3 the significance of the moment ... 8

2.2. Consciousness ... 9
2.2.1 The protagonist’s perception of reality ... 10
2.2.2 Perowne’s self-reflection ... 11

3. Conclusion ... 12

4. Bibliography ... 14

1. Introduction

The disastrous attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York City on September 11, 2001 produced worldwide significant public response.

Along with Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), Frederic Beigbeder’s Windows on the World (2006), Philip Beard’s Dear Zoe (2006) and Deborah Eisenberg’s Twilight of the Superheroes (2006), Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday, published in 2005, was one of the first fictionalizations of the attacks.

Since it received rave reviews and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Saturday can be regarded as a unique contribution to post-9/11 fiction yet published. It will always shape the way future writers and historians will interpret the event.

McEwan has tackled the issue by conveying the effects of 9/11 on Henry Perowne, the protagonist of the novel.

What is outstanding at this juncture compared to other contributions to 9/11-fiction is McEwan’s inimitable style of writing: Saturday, like some of the author’s former works, is affected by the recourse to a modernist notation. The book reads like a modern variation on Virginia Woolf′s Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Many themes and motives in McEwan’s work seem to be based on the classic novel.

The very modernist elements are supposed to form the subject of this paper. In the first section of the main part, the issue of time and its significance within the novel will be addressed by examining the narrative structure and presenting the importance of the moment with the help of some examples drawn from the text.

In the second section, the focus will be directed on the issue of consciousness with special regard to the 47-year-old neurosurgeon Henry Perowne.

The aim of this paper, however, is not to provide an overview of all modernist aspects that can be found in McEwan’s novel, but to point out two major modernist concepts which considerably contribute to the character of Saturday: the nature of time and consciousness. A further concern will be the attempt to find out why Ian McEwan chose modernist techniques in order to respond to the challenge of writing against the background of such an obscure, sad and touching topic.

Since the novel is still very young, there are limitations in the state of research. The paper will therefore mainly be based on the analysis of the primary literature.

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