THE METAMODERN ETHICAL DIMENSION OF IAN MCEWAN’S NOVEL “ATONEMENT”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of Ian McEwan’s novel “Atonement” (2001) in the context of metamodern aesthetics. The aim of the research is to study the narrative strategies of the text and to identify their role in shaping the ethical dimension of the work. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that, despite a significant body of scientific works dedicated to the novel, its metamodern potential remains underexplored in favor of predominantly postmodernist interpretations.The main result of the research is the conclusion that the narrative structure of «Atonement» is built as the reader’s journey through three literary paradigms: modernism, postmodernism, and metamodernism. Each of the four parts of the novel plays its role in this transition. The first part, with its modernist techniques of stream of consciousness and multiperspectivity, demonstrates how Briony’s childish imagination constructs reality, leading to tragic consequences. The second and third parts, unfolding against the backdrop of historical catastrophes, combine psychological depth with reflection on the impossibility of fully reproducing traumatic experience. The final part of the novel, by revealing the truth about the manipulation of truth, becomes an act of metamodern sincerity – a conscious ethical gesture aimed to restore moral order within the text. McEwan has been shown to use postmodern techniques (presence of an unreliable narrator, metatextuality, self-reflection) not to deconstruct truth, but to reconstruct it ethically. A key feature of the novel is identified as oscillation – a fluctuation between the ironic self-awareness of the text and its sincere striving for atonement and responsibility. Thus, the novel “Atonement” is interpreted not merely as an example of historiographic metafiction, but as an early and vivid example of metamodern writing that combines critical reflection and ethical sensitivity. This makes it possible to clarify the place of the work in the literary process and consider it as an important source for studying the genesis of the metamodern paradigm in the literature of the beginning of the 21st century.