Reading the Intersection of History, Memory and Local Narratives to Resist Grand Narratives in Ian McEwan’s Atonement

It is not easy to separate a text from the context in which it has been written and the context in which it is being read. The Second World War along with the escalating industrial and technological developments primarily mark the context of Contemporary British Fiction. The kind of transformation that the post-war and the post-industrial situation had brought about in the everyday life undoubtedly led to responses that were critical of such changes and transformations. Thinkers like Nietzsche, Derrida and Foucault questioned the very idea of reality and challenged the structural hierarchy of the past. The conventional and foundational truths and legitimacy of life regarding belief, faith, language, history, art, truth etc. were distorted and questioning the politics of representation started to gain prominence. In literature as well, through various experimentations in terms of parody, pastiche, magic realism, unconventional narrative structure and memory, local narratives were prioritized to resist the universal grand narratives. Thus, political and historical givens started to be revisited through various agencies and methods. It must be noted that contemporary/postmodern British writers very often prioritized local narratives as against grand narratives. The merging of history, memory and local narratives as often seen in Contemporary British Fiction brings out plurality of meanings and different versions of reality. The present paper is an attempt to read Ian McEwan’s bestselling novel Atonement (2001) as a narrative that amalgamates history, memory and local narrative thereby prioritizing individual experiences of passion, guilt and atonement as against the sole grand narratives of patriotism and nationalism. Keywords: Ian McEwan, history, memory, local narrative, resistance, grand narrative, contemporary British fiction, postmodernism