Enduring Love: Joe Rose

997 Words2 Pages

In Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, Joe Rose's psychological state understates his insanity. Throughout the novel, Joe Rose, the main character, misinterprets the events occurring right in front of his eyes to make his account more interesting. His tone reveals that he faces difficulty expressing himself in social situations. Although Rose's different view may be the result of a personal problem, his narration leave the reader wondering if his unreliability was caused by a deeper mental illness. Through postmodernity, events in the story and character interaction, Joe shows symptoms of a newly-developed disorder more specifically of: schizophrenia.
Enduring Love took place in between the 1980s and 1990s during a postmodern era. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, postmodernism is "a philosophical movement [that] is largely a reaction against the philosophical assumptions, values, and intellectual worldview of the modern period of Western." Postmodernism plays a major role in figuring out Rose's character since he is mainly influenced by postmodernist ideas. The belief centers around the idea that the explanation to reality cannot be fully understood by any means of knowledge. Barry Lewis says
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"The postmodernist writer distrusts the wholeness and completion associated with traditional stories and prefers to deal with other ways of structuring narrative." In other words, the narration by Joe Rose becomes the powerful distortion in the novel "distracting" the reader from the plot of the story.
Rose's neo-Darwinist view on Logan's death reveals that the event does not possess significance to him. "Mostly, we are good when it makes sense" Joe refers "good" as when ever a society chooses it in a logical situation. D...

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...mer 2007): 93-124. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 269. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
Sayers, Valerie. "Up, Up and Away." Commonweal 125.9 (8 May 1998): 24-26. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 169. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
Smith, Michael, . N.p.. Web. 21 Oct 2013. http://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/guide/schizophrenia-overview-facts
Swale, Jill. "Losing grip: Jill Swale considers Ian McEwan's Enduring Love as an expression of postmodern confusion and uncertainty." The English Review 15.3 (2005): 18+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
"McEwan Enduring Love and Postmodernity." Information System of Masaryk University. Web. 21 Oct 2013. http://is.muni.cz/th/64771/ff_m/McEwan_Enduring_Love_and_Postmodernity.txt>.

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