Like many famed satirists before him, Ian McEwan makes use in his 2010 novel Solar of Milton’s monumental epic, Paradise Lost. In addition to allusions to the poem itself, McEwan creates a landscape that evokes the one endured by Satan and his cronies post-fall. Additionally, he fabricates a main character, the Nobel-prize winning physicist, Michael Beard, with a voracious appetite reminiscent of the Vice figure in medieval morality plays and a Satan-sized ego, a man who describes himself as “[the] ethereal Beard of planetary renown” (13).
The decision to deploy Paradise Lost in his novel not only enables McEwan to signal his satiric intent but also helps him to reveal the subjects of his satire. In part, McEwan uses Paradise Lost in order to expose humanity’s hubris in confidently believing that it can dope out the mysteries of the universe and solve its myriad problems, problems it has, in large part, effected. Like Satan before him, Michael Beard refuses to give God too much credit for His works. McEwan hints that Beard’s dismissive attitude in the face of mystery may stem from the physicist’s attitude towards art. Beard has read Paradise Lost but has done so only as a means of advancement and, McEwan hints, has failed to grasp the work’s import (230). Beard’s assessment of society’s great artistic achievements as little more than entertainment reveals another element of McEwan’s satire. The novelist uses Solar to illustrate the danger inherent in the current trend of diminishing the importance of the humanities, depicting a world made off-kilter by science’s hegemony.
About the presenterMary Behrman
Mary Behrman received her PhD in English from Emory University in 2004, where she wrote her dissertation, “Chaucer, Gower and the Vox Populi: Interpretation and the Common Profit in The Canterbury Tales and Confessio Amantis,” under the direction of John Bugge. She has had articles published in journals including The Chaucer Review and The Henry James Review. One of her essays, “The Waiting Game: Medieval Allusions and the Lethal Nature of Passivitiy in Ian McEwan’s Atonement,” appeared in the Winter 2010 volume of Studies in the Novel and stemmed from an essay first presented at MAPACA’s 2008 conference in Niagara Falls. Currently, Ms. Behrman teaches English courses at Kennesaw State University and serves as MAPACA’s president and the Co-Chair of the Medieval/Renaissance Area.