Passionate reading of a child character and its consequences in Ian McEwan’s "The Cement Garden"

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the influence of obsessive and passionate reading(s) of child character(s) in Ian Ewan’s novel „The Cement Garden”. It scrutinizes how reading habits of the children are regarded as their self-defence mechanism against the authority of the adults, as well as it may also underline that obsessive readings may cause disillusionment and mislead the children through catastrophic events. To be able to investigate the statement, orphan siblings, who create their nuclear family with the help of their experiencing fiction they read, and far away from the adult dominant world, will be discussed. Yet their temporary solution to survive ends with inevitable obedience to the institutionalised adult world. In other words, their act of passionate reading can provide them better conditions in the short-run since the adult oppression is inescapable.