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Last Thoughts on Saturday by Ian Mcewan

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Last thoughts on Saturday

Last thoughts on “Saturday”

In preparation for the exam, clarify your thoughts on the following:

• “SATURDAY” AS A POST MODERN NOVEL (see notes)
Intertextuality and multiple perspectives are some of the main features of postmodern novels. The epigraph to “Saturday” (from Saul Bellow’s Herzog) introduces not only the concept of the accumulative interplay of text but also the complex nature of what is to be part of a complex world constantly bombarded and buffeted – “what it is to be a man, in a city, in a century, in transition, in a mass … brother to the rest”. This is a suitable introduction to what the reader is going to experience as he/she undertakes to spend a day with Henry Perowne. It will be a day that: challenges a linear / cohesive / ordained / harmonious / organized concept of time provides multiple perspectives offers a sense of indeterminacy is concerned with metafiction – writing about writing, the reliableness of this is particularly concerned with reference to other texts and art forms is concerned with the randomness of experience

• WHY SATURDAY?
What are the implications of the novel being set over 24 hours on a Saturday?
Why this particular Saturday? 15 Feb 2003
What do the events of this particular day in Perowne’s life symbolize and represent?
Is it being Saturday, more significant for Henry Perowne as a 49yr old male, neurosurgeon than for any of the other characters of the novel.
Is it a suitable title for the concerns of the novel.

• HOW IS A SATURDAY RELEVANT TO THE QUESTIONS OF HAPPINESS? And how does this link with the lyrics of Theo’s song - “You can be happy if you dare…” – is Perowne happy? Does the novel offer a “happy” ending? Is it possible to be happy, on this “darkling plain”? Is happiness a given – or is it risky? Are the character’s always clear about what makes life

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