This paper explores the adolescent identity crisis experienced by the siblings in Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden against the backdrop of a dysfunctional family, with a focus on the impacts of parental illness, death and inharmonious family power relations. Grounded in Erik H. Erikson’s identity development theory, the study analyzes the formative causes of the dysfunctional family: the father’s patriarchal dominance destroys the intimate spousal relationship, leads to emotional alienation among family members, and the father fails to act as a positive role model for the adolescent son Jack; the parent’s subsequent illness and death further exacerbate the family’s dysfunction, leaving the children in a traumatic state of isolation without effective emotional support and guidance. Trapped in the closed and dysfunctional family system, 14-year-old Jack and 18-year-old Julie suffer severe identity crisis amid physical and psychological adolescent development. Lacking identification with peers and external role models, they descend into emotional loneliness and moral disorientation, even resorting to incestuous union as a distorted defensive response to fend off external threats. This narrative of adolescent identity crisis in a modern alienated society reflects McEwan’s profound reflection on dysfunctional families and the spiritual predicament of modern people as well as his deep concern for the emotional challenges faced by adolescents in the modern wasteland far from God.
Luo Yuan (Mon,) studied this question.