Enduring Love by Ian McEwan essays

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan essays In his novel, 'Enduring Love,' Ian McEwan presents to the audience a character which goes by the name of 'Jed Parry.' Parry's character has an incredibly important role in the book and develops a very obsessive love with the book's narrator, Joe Rose. Throughout the book, Parry's love is presented in many ways, which include being irrational, delusional, random and, like the title, enduring. McEwan does this by using different narrative techniques, structure, punctuation, imagery and sentence structure. A way that McEwan presents Parry's love is by using narrative techniques. Being a theme of the book, narratives and points of view play an important role in the novel and tell us a lot about characters true feeling and motivations. By using love letters to Joe, McEwan can give the reader an insight into Parry's true feelings of affection towards him. An example of this is the letter from chapter sixteen, "My love for you is hard and fierce, it won't take no for an answer, and it's moving steadily towards you, coming to claim you and deliver you. In other words, my love – which is also God's love – is your fate." (Page 136) By using the words "my love," it is made obvious that Parry is referring to himself, and therefore giving his perspective of the way that he feels. This is an effective way for McEwan to present his love because this narrative offers first-hand information that has not been clouded by another characters judgment of it. For example, if Joe were to describe Parry's love for him, his paranoia would cause him to over exaggerate it, thus causing it to be incorrect. By using the way that the novel is structured, McEwan can effectively present Parry's love. A way that he does this is by giving constant hints of Parry's feelings, as well as entwining the letters into the narratives. For example, this is shown when Joe shows Clarissa one of Parry's first letters, "She put down the page she had been hol...