The manifestation of Lacanian desire in Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Saturday

Desire, in Lacanian psychoanalytical approach, is a central idea around which all other notions revolve including object petit a, das Ding the Other and subjectivity. Employing Lacanian treatment of the symbolic order, the present paper seeks to demonstrate the object cause of desire represented in the characters of Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Saturday. The study follows the fields of interest in the characters including Briony and Cecilia in Atonement and Henry, Theo, and Daisy in Saturday. The central objective is to indicate why the subjects after the satisfaction of their needs still feel dissatisfied, empty and unfulfilled. The subjects, realizing what the Other offers is not what they actually aspire, create for themselves what Lacan called object petit a, a reminiscent of the original lost object. This psychological mechanism is demonstrated in the present analysis by investigating the events that entail the subjects to act in accordance with what the Other aspires. Upon examination of these events, it becomes clear that none of the desires, which the subjects assume as their own, is that of the subject; however, they all pertain to the Other. Unlike the function of “need”, the emergence of desire is extensively an unconscious process, and it is boldly troublous and rather impossible to put it into language. The leading characters recognize that they want something; however, they do not know what it is. Frustrated each time by the illusion of locating the truly lost object, they will thus change into desiring subjects.