Dystopian Vision in Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love

This paper argues that the novel Enduring Love projects a dystopian vision through the portrayal of failed and embittered lives of major characters. The novel is about the characters’ futile search for utopian life. Joe, through scientific rationalization, Clarissa through literary imagination and love, Jed through religious belief want to live a fulfilling and blissful life but fail due to various reasons related to misplaced values and beliefs or the social realities. None of the ways they adopt, leads them to the fulfillment of utopian ideals. Success through science, religion, or imagination is just a chimera that causes people to hallucinate. The narrative of enduring love interweaves subverted utopian lives of the characters from different fields of life thereby dramatizing the idea that life is dystopian and people’s attempt to live an ideal life is only a mirage. This paper analyzes the novel Enduring Love with the help of ideas about utopia and dystopia borrowed from writers like Krishan Kumar, R. Carter, Robert C. Elliot, and others.