Abstract
Ian McEwan’s novel Enduring Love foregrounds the protagonists’ failed construction of romantic love and illustrates the fragility of Joe and Clarissa’s love on the one hand and the destructive forces of Jed’s homosexual love for Joe on the other hand. In the light of Patrick Hogan’s componential statement on romantic love, this paper seeks to clarify how the sexual desire system, reward system, and attachment system participate in the collapse of Joe and Clarissa’s love as well as to make out why the love of Jed to Joe can be overwhelming and out-of-control. Through a nuanced analysis of ordinary love and its distorted opposite presented in Enduring Love, it can be discovered that love is a complicated construction on both sides and the destruction of love can be boiled down to the lack of empathy, in this way McEwan makes prominent the imperative of practicing empathetic understanding with each other when confronted with unidentifiable risks.
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