Fictional Minds in On Chesil Beach: An Anti-mimetic Theory of Characterisation

Ian McEwan’s narrative method in On Chesil Beach provides a stereoscopic system of character construction. On the one hand, it is quite possible to view the two major characters of the novel (Edward and Florence) with conventional methods of character analysis. On the other hand, the work depicts its major characters in a way that we can view them as fictional mind rather than flesh-and-blood people according to Allen Palmer’s notion of Fictional Minds. Focusing on youth and desire, McEwan illuminates how the motivations, intentions and feelings of each character would be on the wrong track with other people and in some cases even with the society. The notion of Fictional Minds, however, belongs to the field of cognitive narratology which tries to reconsider the problematic concept of character in the light of new sciences which were not available to the classical narratologists. Furthermore, the theory of Fictional Minds is interrelated to some other narratological concepts such as speech category approach and embedded narratives. The examination of this relationship can shed light on different aspects of mind and justifies a coherent theory of mind through which we can see the above-mentioned characters developing as mental projections rather than life-like real people.