An Alternative World-view: Ian McEwan’s Nutshell

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to explore the alternative modes of representing Shakespeare’s Hamlet in McEwan’s novel Nutshell and to determine the purpose of including Shakespearean references in the latter. We shall explore Harold Bloom’s views on the anxiety of influence as opposed to Julia Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality and Linda Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation, in which intertextuality is used to present previous literary works solely as material for constructing a new postmodern literary framework. By analyzing intertextual relationships, this paper shows that Nutshell is a postmodern adaptation of Hamlet. The very form of narration chosen by McEwan, namely that of an unborn fetus, raises the question of the reliability of the narrator. The main source of unreliability, apart from the age and limited viewpoint of the narrator, is the wide spectrum of genres displayed in the novel, varying from a psychological thriller, to a murder mystery to a fantasy novel. The novel may thus be seen as a postmodern alternative in two manners: as a rewriting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with the aim of presenting contemporary readers with an alternative to a well-known story and as a utilization of an alternative narrative technique that culminates in a questionably reliable narrator.