论文总字数：22226字

摘 要

《水泥花园》是英国作家伊万麦克尤恩的作品。这部小说讲述了一个非常特殊的家庭的故事。在这个不健全家庭中，几个处于青春期的孩子成长受到严重影响。本文简单介绍了故事的主人公：杰克、朱莉、苏、汤姆，然后分析了小说的三个主题：青春期、死亡、恐惧。最后分析了小说的叙事风格。通过分析可以看出：处于青春期的孩子们由于缺失父母的关爱、无法正确面对父母去世及以后的生活而对生活与外界社会充满恐惧，导致最后走向社会对立面的悲剧。

关键词: 成长小说；死亡；恐惧；错误的成长

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Characters in the Story 1

3. Theme of the Novel 3

3.1 Puberty 3

3.2 Death 3

3.3 Fear 4

4. Analysis of Author’s Narrative Style 5

5. Conclusion 9

Works Cited 10

1. Introduction

The Cement Garden is the story of a mother and father’s death and the children’ dysfunctional attempts to cope with their loss. The story begins with Father, Mother, and their four children, Julie, Jack, Sue and little Tom living together. Things are well, for the most part, although Jack, the narrator, is somewhat isolated from the rest of his family, feeling distant from his father and fighting with his mother and Julie, along with harassing Tom for attention from the others.

When Father dies, Mother and the children are left alone. The family is already isolated from the rest of the community; they have few friends and no one visits the house. Mother grows sick and only the children know. She tells Julie she is going to die but they hide it from Jack, Sue and Tom until it is too late for her to inform the three children. Soon the mother passed away, leaving the all four children on their own in the cold and dark cement garden or the society, here begins the story.

But this novel has its special features to be different from other bildungsroman. It is what I want to discuss.

2. Characters in the Story

The main character is Jack. He is fourteen and when his parents are both dead, he is at first very hard and keeps a big distance between him and his brother and sisters. But when his youngest sister tells him that and she tells him that he smells (he hadn’t washed himself for a while) he gets a stronger relationship with his brother and sisters. He is entering puberty and he begins to learn about love, sex, relationships and begins to act rebellious. Brother Tom, and Sisters Julie and Sue. In the end of the story, Jack and Julie commit incest .Jack tells the whole story, so it’s told in first person. We look through his eyes. This is a contemporary story. The whole story is told in chronological order. There are also some flashbacks in the book, for example when Jack thinks about the game he played with Julie and Sue when they were younger.

As the eldest child Julie becomes the family head following the mother’s death. Although she is initially more responsible and level-headed than Jack she is also much less perceptive and than him. As a surrogate mother Julie is clearly out of her depth. The focus of her attention is her demanding four year-old brother Tom, but it is her responses, not his behavior, which reflects the inner world of the children. If the grieving processes had been unsatisfactory and inadequate following the father’s death, the children secret internment of their mother becomes a grotesque parody of the closure procedures necessary for natural grief.

We cannot enter Julie’s world as we only see her through Jack’s eyes, but her mindscape is shown by her actions as the unhappy immature mother figure. It is interesting that Julie starts to dress Tom like a little girl before their mother is dead. Jack challenges Julie on thus issue and she is unsure and defensive about it. She is equally confused by her own actions when she starts to make Tom regress into babyhood because she cannot control him. The reader can see why Julie does this but she cannot. Sue, the least featured, quietest and third youngest child, is the one who wants to tell someone about their mother’s death. It is Jack and Julie, however, who warn her that such an action would mean them going into an orphanage (p.53). From this point on Julie takes over as the head of the home with very disturbing consequences.

Sue becomes even more introverted and bedroom ridden and Julie quickly tires of Tom’s demands. Tom becomes a cross between a wild child and a baby house pet. Jack withdraws further into his shadowed onanistic world. Sue retreats into her bedroom and her books whilst their mother’s corpse decomposes and Julie struggles to run the home on her own idiosyncratic terms.

Tom is the youngest child. We can the merits of Oedipus complex in him just like Jack. He likes to stay in mother’s bed. After mother dies, he wants Julie to treat him like a baby. He also starts cross-dressing and behaves like a girl .

3. Theme of the Novel

3.1 Puberty

Just like any other bildungsroman, the main characters are the growing up boys and girls. Julie is the oldest of all, the Jack and Sue. Little Tom is still a little boy. They are undergoing a major change in the body. And their life is limited to two stages-home and school. So I put my attention to two points: Physical development and the relationship in school.

Physical maturity is the most obvious feature in the adolescence, which leads to Sexual consciousness. It is a theme shared by all bildungsroman. This novel also made a lot of description about it. We can see it clearly in Jack. When father fell and died in the garden, he firstly tasted feelings of masturbation. Pleasure and guilty feeling mixed together, which became the most unforgettable memory in his adolescence and influenced him forever. Julie starts to show impressive female charm. Her body is like a lithium flower to young Jack. When she made Jack put on sunscreen for her in the garden, Jack has been attracted. In mother’s birthday night, she performed handstand to raise the mood. Jack then saw something of privacy and became lost in thought. It is not a coincidence that Jack and Julie have sex in the end.

Puberty is the process of learning the change of body and sex. The children need the guidance of parents. But in the novel the parents can give no help. The father is disliked and mother can’t actually do anything. What is more, they died soon after the story begins. It is the first reason the children can never grow like any other common child.

3.2 Death

The whole story is shrouded in the dark atmosphere of death in the beginning; a young boy lost his father when he first learned change in his body. It makes me feel gloomy and cruel. We can see the theme of death from two aspects. First point is the early death of the parents, second point is the breath of death around the house and the society author described.

We know the death of father from Jack’s mouth. A young boy undertook his father. It almost feels like he killed his own father. Like Freud said, Jack killed his father, but he can’t replace him and handle his death. It became a scar in his heart. All children dislike father. He was indifferent and cruel. They like to make fun of him together. But his death makes the family in a big trouble. They were never rich, and mother is sick in bed. She can do nothing to support the family.

When father died, the family lost the economical source, Jack and Tom lost the man who should help them go through the adolescence .Maybe the author thinks the shock is not enough, the sick mother died soon. Unlike the father, all children like mother. Julie and Sue imitated her. Jack and Tom love her more. It is Freud’s Oedipus complex. Boys always want to rely on the mother when they have sexual consciousness. But it is a pity that mother can’t help more. She told Jack masturbation will make him bleed. It is not a good guidance to a growing-up boy. After all, she died after a warm family party.

To the children, mother’s death is unacceptable. The mortality of life is so sharp for them to know. Now they not only lost the economy source, but also lost the last one who can care and guide them. The children clumsily tried to protect the house and get mother back. So the most terrible scene in the novel appeared. They used the remaining cement that father bought to seal mother down in the basement.

From the author’s description we can find that this family has no neighbor or relatives to visit. The environment of the city is dark gloomy. Nature is replaced by cold cement world. Like the father planned, he wanted to seal the activity and nature in this house. He almost succeeded.

3.3 Fear

Fear is the third theme that I want to discuss. The author is famous for making shocking plot and scaring descriptions. In this novel, he also showed this talent to us. We can analysis this mostly from Jack’s unreliable narration.

Because he lost father’s guidance and mother’s care, Jack started being lost in a absent-minded status. He can’t control his masturbation, he refused to clean himself and go out of his room. The death of mother means a lot to him. He does not know his body, so he can’t behave normally. He is covered with the fear of death. All the four children can’t understand the mother’s death. It is a horrible thing that they live in the house, eating and drinking. In the mean time, mother’s body decayed in the basement. They also fear the outside world. The world may take away everything anytime from them. For Jack, he never stopped missing mother even mistook a stranger for her. For Tom, he started to dress like a girl and relied on Julie like mother. Julie found Derek to rely on, but the man from outside world found their secret and destroyed it. In the end, Jack and Julie hold each other in their arms; the incest became the last comfort.

4. Analysis of Author’s Narrative Style

Jack, in spite of his animosity towards his father, shares certain qualities with him. He is keen about the idea of spreading concrete over the garden and while mixing the cement with water he seems to feel affinity for his father: “I was pleased that we knew so exactly what we were doing and what the other was thinking that we did not need to speak. For once I felt at ease with him.” (McEwan 1997: 17). Malcolm stresses certain traits or features which he considers aspects of the male sphere. Jack is “ugly, selfish, potentially and actually violent, constantly masturbating” (Malcolm 2002: 58). There is another male character who shares the supposedly male needs to dominate and to be in control, namely Julie’s boyfriend Derek. The reader must notice the rivalry between him and Jack resulting from the fact they both want to take on the traditional man’s role of the head of the family. Although Julie soon penetrates Derek’s intention to become “one of the family, . big smart daddy” (McEwan 1997: 134), she actually grows disgusted with him when she finds out he lives as his mother’s fair-haired boy. It seems Julie conforms to the stereotype of the dominant role of men. When Derek turns out to be unable to play this role, he loses Julie’s respect immediately. The role of women is equally well defined. Again, the Mother is the archetype of a female. She is submissive, gentle and quiet. In spite of the family’s struggle to make ends meet, she does not have a job and devotes all her time to housework and the care of the children. She always backs up her husband in front of the children, even if she does not share his view. From the beginning of the novel, the male and female worlds are separated. The characters sometimes solve serious matters regarding gender. While discussing Tom’s desire to look like a girl, Jack tells Julie that their brother would look stupid. Julie’s passionate reaction has wider implications in terms of gender relations:

You think it’s humiliating to look like a girl, because you think it’s humiliating to be a girl. Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s okay to be a boy, for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading. (McEwan 1997: 47 - 48)

The narrator also concentrates on the contradictoriness of the two worlds. He describes Julie’s behaviour after Father’s death: “She wore make-up and had all kinds of secrets. She had long conversations with mother in the kitchen that would break off if Tom, Sue or I came in suddenly.” (McEwan 1997: 29 – 30). Similarly, after Mother’s death, Julie and Sue have secret conversation in the kitchen. This dissonance between the two worlds may be related to another set of images explored by Malcolm, that of exclusion and inclusion. He argues that exclusion prevails both within the family and in its relations with the outside world. The parents never get any visitors, the children never bring friends. There are no neighbors, the Father even plans to build a high wall to isolate the family completely. He is also isolated in his own family. His children either fear him or despise him. Jack also frequently feels isolated, when he cannot take part in his sisters’ conversations (Malcolm 2002: 61).

The narrative style can hardly be called experimental. It seems quite straightforward and realistic, there are no abrupt twists in the chronological order or form. Yet the narration embodies passages which may surprise the reader as they somehow do not fit the alleged language of the narrator. The novel is written as a first-person narration. Jack, a protagonist, tells the story of himself and his family from his point of view. The narrator’s language seems mostly laconic, unadorned, detached. Jack tends to use casual vocabulary and very simple sentences. These characteristics help to portray Jack as an apathetic and bored teenager with little interest in what is happening around him. His life appears to be empty, he does not care about personal hygiene, school is just a nuisance, and he has no friends. Although the novel appears to be a very personal narration, the reader cannot resist a feeling of distance between the narrator and the events in the book. Malcolm considers Jack an “unreliable narrator” and emphasis “the strangely detached focus of the narration” (Malcolm 2002: 48). There is no doubt that Jack’s accounts of the events in the story and his own emotional state are somehow mechanical. He describes many extreme situations with coolness and emotional aloofness. The tenuity of the passage about his father’s death evokes the style of an official report:

My father was lying face down on the ground, his head resting on the newly spread concrete. The smoothing plank was in his hand. I approached slowly, knowing I had to run for help. The radio was playing in the kitchen. I went back outside after the ambulance had left to look at our path. I did not have a thought in my head as I picked up the plank and carefully smoothed away his impression in the soft, fresh concrete. (McEwan 1997: 18 – 19)

Williams partly explains this emotional emptiness by the problem of “how to convey with maximum authenticity the thoughts and sensations of a mind that has not yet achieved full maturity”. He uses Charlotte Brontë’s argument that “Children can feel, but they cannot analysis their feelings” (Williams 1996: 216). This view, however, is at least disputable. Lack of order, alienation, insufficient communication and lack of the security of a loving family life must necessarily cause psychological flatness. Jack grows emotionally stale and numb, he is somehow paralysed. Although Jack has no control over his emotional development and the character is flattened, the reader might feel something more in the background. This should be emphasised as a typically postmodernist feature. Nothing is stated directly. There are only implications and glimpses for the reader to make sense of. On the other hand, Malcolm draws attention to a postmodernist feature in the narrator’s language. He points out stylistic deviations from the simple language of a teenager – frequent examples of complicated structures and sophisticated vocabulary such as “weary admonition”. He considers these stylistic elements to be a self-referential device which makes the narration an example of metafiction (Malcolm 2002: 50 – 51).

Genre mixture features markedly in this novel. Malcolm considers the book a “psychological study of adolescence” with many elements of the Gothic and the urban horror (Malcolm 2002: 51 – 52). There are psychological motifs such as adolescent resistance to a parent verging on malice, feelings of shame and guilt, incestuous desire, which mingle with the Gothic features. The decadent lifestyle of the forlorn siblings in the neglected house, the decaying body of their deceased mother buried in the cellar and its smell spreading round the house create a typically Gothic mood. The descriptions of the settings contribute to the gloomy atmosphere. The family’s house “was old and large. It was built to look like a castle, with thick walls, squat windows above the front door” (McEwan 1997: 23). Not only the house but also the surroundings are dismal places. In the fourth chapter Jack describes one of the abandoned prefabs in the neighborhood:

Most houses were crammed with immovable objects in their proper places. But in this burned-out place there was no order, everything had gone. There was a mattress in one room, buckled between the blackened, broken joists. The wall was crumbling away round the window, and the ceiling had fallen in without quite reaching the ground. I thought of my own bedroom, of Julie’s, my mother’s, all rooms that would one day collapse. (McEwan 1997: 40 – 41)

There are no explicit references to specific times or places, the family does not have a surname, Mother and Father are never identified by their names. The protagonists are trapped in a timeless atmosphere. The characters linger on in the stiffness of their days while the house is slowly decaying:

The days were too long, it was too hot, the house seemed to have fallen asleep. We did not even sit outside because the wind was blowing a fine black dust from the direction of the tower blocks and the main roads behind them. And even while it was hot, the sun never quite broke through a high, yellowish cloud. (McEwan 1997: 71)

I masturbated each morning and afternoon, and drifted through the house, from one room to another, sometimes surprised to find myself in my bedroom, lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, when I had intended to go out into the garden. I stood in the centre of my room listening to the very distant, constant sound of traffic. Then I listened to the voices of children playing in the street. The two sounds merged and seemed to press down on the top of my head. I lay on the bed again and this time I closed my eyes. When a fly walked across my face I was determined not to move. I could not bear to remain on the bed, and yet any activity I thought of disgusted me in advance. (McEwan 1997: 74)

The environment is very symptomatic. No one notices that the children are absolutely forlorn. No one cares about the welfare of others. The description of the complete loss of order and social responsibility gives the impression of admonitory reproach and social criticism.

5. Conclusion

We all witness the sad ending of the story. Jack and Julie commit incest. The children all turned away from the society forever. Unlike other ordinary bildungsroman we know, they can’t enjoy a happy childhood and integrate into the society. The father shut the door to the outside world and the leaving of mother make them lose the only one who can help them out of the darkness. Because the world is a cold one covered with cement, all innocent and warm things will be eliminated. I feel sorry for their fate. The author showed us a dark world to let us the light of humanity. It is indeed a unique story.

Works Cited

[1] John Haffenden， Novelists in Interview. London: Methuen，1985.

[2]Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modern British Novel 1878 -2001. London: Penguin, 2001.

[3]弗洛伊德.《性爱与文明》.合肥：安徽文艺出版社，1987.

[4]何其方.《被遗弃的小宇宙 --- lt;水泥花园gt;中杰克的弗洛伊德式解读》.牡丹江大学学报，2010（8）：71-72.

[5]刘春芳.《lt;水泥花园gt;中的水泥花园意象研究》.天津大学学报社会科学版，2013（1）：71-76.

[6]麦克尤恩著，冯涛译.《水泥花园》.上海：上海译文出版社，2011年.

[7]王悦，徐靖焱.《麦克尤恩lt;水泥花园gt;中的不可靠叙述》.三峡论坛，2011（3）:21-25.

[8]曾丽，岳跃振.《成长的矛盾独立欲与依附感---析lt;水泥花园gt;》.中外企业家，2011（7）:279-280.

[9]张和龙.《成长的迷误 --- 评麦克尤恩的长篇小说lt;水泥花园gt;》.三峡论坛，2011（3）：40-46.

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