‘A’ LEVEL REVISION NOTES FOR ENDURING LOVE BY IAN MCEWAN PT 2
He also speaks of 'imagining' he is 'another man Through this McEwan appears to be revealing Joe's subconscious use of poetic language and his personal connection with literature. This placing of science and literature in one character gives the reader an obvious distinction between the two.
Clarissa appears to represent 'literature' with close emotional responses such as 'pressing her face' into Joe's back and her 'tears' she introduces the idea of the emotion in literature. Not only that, it appears that she is also talented at writing as Joe remembers she had written [him] some beauties However, on both occasions that Joe lists the men involved, Parry is spoken of last placing emphasis on his importance. The little description there is of Parry comes across slightly sharp. The minor character within the chapter have very little said about them, however, from this the reader is able to understand some aspects of the characters.
McEwan opens Chapter with an almost apologetic tone. This already contrasts with the tone of the previous chapter as Joe begins to excuse his mistakes and obsession with detail before he begins. There also appears to be a sense of detachment throughout the chapter as Joe lacks any great emotional connection to what occurs. He wants me to help him. Make notes on the way in which Parry is introduced here.
There appears to be an aspect of ridiculousness to Parry just from the way he is physically described. These things cause the reader to feel threatened by Parry and start to doubt his motives. Make notes on the way in which McEwan changes the pace of the narrative throughout the chapter. Whereas the previous chapters opened with short, to the point sentences, Chapter Three opens with a long sentence thus immediately the narration appears to change. No longer in such sort, snappy sentences, the slower pace mimics the pattern of Joe and Clarissa's actions as they go through insignificant tasks such as 'clearing the table' and 'putting the luggage in the bedroom'.
However, once their 'torrent' of conversation begins the speed of the narration picks up as Joe lists things repetitively such as 'a post-mortem, a re-living, a de-briefing' and' the peripheries, the police, the ambulance men'. Clarissa's 'story' is told 'in a rush' as she uses words such as 'blundering' and 'shouting and cursing' and Joe's description of them as 'prisoners' who are 'running at the walls, beating them them back with our heads' adding to a feeling of frustration and restlessness.
By using this repetition, the dramatic adjectives and verbs and a faster rhythm McEwan creates a sense of slight panic and agitation that mirrors Joe and Clarissa's own feelings. He brings the pace slower at points, specifically in moments of intimacy between Joe and Clarissa such as when Clarissa 'raises' Joe's 'hands to her lips' and also when Joe explains about Clarissa's inability to 'bear children'.
This ease in the panic is quickly broken as Joe launches into yet more lists and repetition until they both begin to become 'immune' to the shock and the pace slows down. This mirroring of Joe and Clarissa's own feelings gives the reader insight into their thought processes and therefore provides a sense of intimacy that contrasts with the detachment of the previous chapters.
Although a only a small section at the end of the chapter, the phone call becomes the most powerful statement that Chapter Three makes. It breaks the intimacy of the previous narration and Parry's admission of 'I feel it too. This also leads to Joe's 'first serious mistake' as he lies to Clarissa insisting 'it was nothing' breaking the complete honesty they have both shared prior to this and thus this lie becomes the starting point for the breakdown of their whole relationship. Joe is highly interested in an object that magnifies things and makes them appear larger than they are, bringing things unseen into view.
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This detailed outlook can be compared t the telescopes own detailed view. There are several developments of the plot in this chapter. List the key events and comment on their impact. However, in this chapter, McEwan provides the reader with an opportunity to see the situation from different, more light-hearted perspective. The most striking feature of Parry is his uncertain nature and his uncontrolled emotion. How does McEwan begin to address the issue of power here?
Throughout the chapter McEwan presents a power struggle between Jed and Joe and presents this idea in various ways. This ease of movement gives Joe a sense of power as he takes up a much more open position whereas JEd appears more defensive. Vocally Jed and Joe also contrast signally the distinctions in their status. There are points however where Parry appears to present more of a threat to Joe and the power begins to shift into his hands. Through this McEwan portrays a switch in the power as Parry begins to hld more control over Joe.
Make notes on the way in which McEwan develops the idea of stalking in this chapter. The idea of a dog portrays Parry with an invasive devotion that also appears to penetrate the house. That he would vanish because I was thinking about something else? Joe appears to view Clarissa in this chapter with a degree of scorn and as a kind of opponent.
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Or that God reaches down and tickles them? What impact does the change in narrative perspective have on your understanding of both Joe and Clarissa here? Why may McEwan have made this change? This also gives the reader a chance to see Joe from an outsiders perspective and presents a different slant on his character. How does McEwan make use of features associated with the narrative and style of the thriller genre here? By building tension gradually McEwan creates a great amount of apprehension an suspense true to the thriller genre.
Comment on the importance of the significance of the curtain and the idea of signals to the novel as a whole. This also continues the theme of the unknown as Joe desperately tries to make some connection between these two symbols and searches through the fog of his brain to understand their meaning. Jed's intensity, conviction and language style mirror Joe's somewhat. These characteristics reveal the similarities between the two men and the connection, not in love but certainly in personality, that they share.
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At this stage, midway through the narrative, McEwan reminds us of the incident that begins the story. What impact does this have on our engagement with both character and plot? This also develops the theme of time as the reader is presented with this brief repetition of events, providing a familiarity. How does McEwan present the growing rift between Clarissa and Joe in this chapter? Explain the ways in which McEwan utilises the construct of the self-aware narrator here. Make notes on the way McEwan uses the character of Jean Logan to represent ideas about deception, betrayal and relationships.
God help me, but I will.
How does the introduction of yet another perspective affect the development of the narrative? This casts a different light on these situations, it shows the massive jumps that are being made in order to reach a conclusion and also the ease that it can be done with. This also reveals a contradiction in Joe as he completely denies the existence of God and yet uses religious references here. This could either reveal his underlying reliance on religion as when he spoke in Chapter twelve of a 'godly presence' or his diminishment of it as he sees these 'station of the cross' as inconsequential except to b used as a metaphor.
This use of language could also reveal Parry's impact on Joe as he begins to adopt symbols associated with Parry's beliefs when previously he would have seen such language as idealistic and romantic and thus it may represent the great effect Parry is having on Joe. Make notes on the way that McEwan develops the character of Jed in this chapter.
How is our engagement with him altered?
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Jed appears more threatening and possessive at this point as is clear from the way he speaks to Joe and Joe's reactions. Jed also appears possessive and asserts his own power, he tells Joe he's 'got [his] books' a sign of is possession of who Joe is and he insists there's 'nothing [Joe] can do' and that it's 'going to go' his way. Parry also comes across as irrational and , unreasonable and ridiculous as he reacts to Joe's threats to 'call the police' 'as though he'd heard [Joe] inviting him in for a a drink' and Joe begins to see his reactions as 'mad' and refers to his 'derangement' as Jed insists Joe doesn't 'have to wrap it up in code' believing that his every word is 'a rallying cry to love'.
Overall McEwan's presentation of Jed in this chapter disconnects the reader from him as he becomes manipulative and threatening and the reader's sympathy for him is weakened. The reader is also led to question his sanity and this again distances him from the reader as they doubt his logicality and how sound he is mentally.
From this the reader is made aware of the great amount of confusion that de Clerambault brings upon the sufferer and those who interact with him. Our hesitation only endures a fraction of a second. A good man, chastened, he gets his life and his girl back at the end, and even acts as the sleuth in a sub-plot, solving a mystery involving John Logan, the man killed in the ballooning accident. The final shot reveals the sinister Parry confined to a mental hospital. Readers and critics of the novel have largely replicated this interpretation of the tale, as the contributions to this volume make clear.
This sympathy is demonstrated perhaps most obviously in the way in which readers — including professional critics and students — commonly refer to the characters: Palgrave, , pp. Adam Mars-Jones, reviewing the novel, points out that Rose tells an ostentatious lie to the police following the shooting in the restaurant.
Revision:Enduring Love Revision
To introduce at this late stage an unreliable narrator is perverse: Responses to the novel thus consistently follow the line reproduced in the film adaptation: University of South Carolina Press, These judgments categorically exclude precisely the analysis of unreliability that Enduring Love demands. Rose is a narrator explicitly concerned with the unreliability of narrative, continually fretting at the difficulties he has in telling his own story. Only a few pages before the dessert deceit Rose tells a lie in his first interview with the Police.
Not constituting actual lying, this type of ambiguity should perhaps be characterized as discrepant unreliability, since it is impossible to ascertain any specific intention or motivation.
Combined with the particularly confused chronology of this section of the book, the reference to signals reminds us that we are faced with a narrator who is also a primary agent in the action. Surprisingly, our narrator does not draw our attention to his extensive use of these sophisticated devices. The accumulation of such moments, such signals, even troubles Rose. These types of unreliability are, perhaps, not particularly grievous matters. This refers to the many occasions when Rose fails to notice, remember or understand events around him, a fact to which he consistently draws attention.
Neatly, we should note, this statement avoids the issue of whether Parry was there or not. It is not even clear when Rose pulls the trigger of his own gun during the shooting at the climax of the novel Ch. He struggles to bring to mind the name of the Victorian picture he associates with Jean Logan Ch. Intriguingly, the narrative is also studded with incidental references to failures of sight and perception, from the anecdote about the initial shortcomings of the Hubble Telescope Ch.
Malcolm, in particular, examines how the text self-consciously draws attention to its status as a narrative, how Rose reiterates his subjection to the demands of form, structure and organisation in telling his story. I can spin a decent narrative out of the stumblings, back-trackings and random successes that lie 11 Malcolm, p.
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The balloon accident is narrated in a number of different ways, with Rose maintaining a commentary on the different versions: An article on which Rose is working allows him to reflect on the negative impact of narrative form on the structure of scientific knowledge: Rose is demonstrably a man of broad literary culture. His implication in the problems of narration even becomes a source of physically painful anxiety.
See the essay by Randall in this volume. Such forces place an additional burden of interpretation on the reader, who must decide how far credibility can be stretched, whether these elements are sufficient cause to wreck entirely our trust in the narrator. Rose habitually organizes and manipulates the environment around him.
We see repeated evidence of this trait. Controlling unreliability reproduces this behaviour at the level of the imparting of information about the course of the action, and of active orchestration of events themselves. In fact, Rose manipulates the other characters in such a way as to achieve an elegantly patterned conclusion, the closing picnic which constitutes the final chapter and brings resolution to the different strands of the narrative.
The different ways in which Rose overtly controls the story — both what happens and the way it is told — are closely connected with the further category concerned with elements of style and form, uncanny unreliability. Enduring Love is particularly marked by the prominence in the narrative of geometric motifs and images, which generate patterns in and from the material of the story.
The initial conditions, the force and the direction of the force, define all consequent pathways, all the angles of collision and return, and the glow of the overhead light bathes the field, the baize and all its moving bodies, in reassuring clarity. I think that while we were still converging, we were in a state of mathematical grace.
A near-perfect circle centred on his button nose and encompassed the white dome of his baldness and the curve of his fattened chin. Emotional states are repeatedly defined in relation to space and geometry. There is, needless to say, nothing particularly unusual, or uncanny, about this stylistic tendency taken on its own terms.
Enduring Love has precisely two hundred and forty-four pages. Even more oddly, or uncannily, the story strains to contain the number of characters, or references to people, whose first names begin with J. The only significant father in the text — John Logan — is killed in the opening scene, though technically he is dead before Rose begins his story, and it is his death — the death of a Father — which is the prime origin or cause of the whole narrative. Clarissa Mellon is an orphan Ch. The boy in the balloon is out with his grandfather Ch. The pattern is not limited merely to characters.
Rose speculates as to whether his own behaviour during the accident might have been different had he been the father of the boy in the balloon Ch. He even daydreams about being a surrogate in the role at the Logan house Ch. This may offer us licence to treat the article, and indeed this 15 See http: The problem with a shift of responsibility for these elements of the text from narrator to author, however, is that it is ultimately arbitrary: