Author(s)

Xinying Chen ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Hefei University of Technology (Xuancheng Campus), Hefei, Anhui, 242000, China

Corresponding Author

Xinying Chen

ABSTRACT

Guided by the theory of illness writing and Susan Sontag’s viewpoints in her work Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, this paper explores the relationships between illness and existence predicament, between illness and gender anxiety, as well as between illness and moral dilemma through the delicate arrangement of plot and characters, elaborating on the metaphorical meaning of illness and the complexity of illness functioning on the main characters which accounts for their severe existential angst, intense gender anxiety. Pathological symptoms and morbid psychology of main characters reveal their distorted individual values and innuendo the social moral degradation from the perspective of moral criticism, thus offering a brand-new angle to studies on Ian McEwan's novel Amsterdam.

KEYWORDS

Ian McEwan, Amsterdam, illness writing, Illness as Metaphor, moral criticism

CITE THIS PAPER

Xinying Chen, Illness Writing and Moral Criticism in Ian McEwan's Amsterdam. Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2024) Vol. 7: 96-105. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2024.070314.

REFERENCES

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