“The Non-heroic Hero” in Ian McEwan’s Novel Lessons: the Dialectics of Success and Failure?

Abstract

The article analyzes Ian McEwan's novel Lessons (2022) from the perspective of the hero's problem. It is interpreted as a genre synthesis of the novel of biography, the novel of education (Bildungsroman), the novel of ordeal, and the novel-lyrical confession of the hero, a representative of the British post-war generation, presented through indirect speech, which allows the reader to be simultaneously immersed in the process of self-discovery and self-assessment of the hero, while maintaining the author's ironic distance. The article demonstrates how the writer intertwines biographical time, the private time of the hero, and historical time, the epoch-making breath of the XX century. It shows how the author uses the plot and narrative to demonstrate the dialectic of the heroic and the non-heroic as one of the fundamental characteristics of the life and fate of the post-war generation.