How Does Ian Mcewan Tell the Story in Chapter 22 of Enduring Love?

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Chapter 22 begins half way through a phone call between Joe and Jed as Joe is driving back home after collecting the gun with Johnny. Joe comes back to his senses having ‘passed out for a second or two’ and the phone call continues. The chapter is arranged in a chronological order from the time of the phone call in Joe’s car to the end with only one or two flashbacks, the chronological order adds tension to the chapter giving the journey the sense of a race against time. We are informed that the journey home for Joe will be two hours including the stop that he and Johnny make in the woods to practice firing the gun. Whilst at the woods Joe picks up the gun ‘partially concealed within the folds of a torn-up old white shirt’, McEwan uses the effect of colour here, a colour that usually resembles purity and innocence but by contrast, within it containing an object resembling power and danger. The use of the white shirt reflects the loss of innocence in Joe because he wouldn’t have even thought of getting a gun before the events previous in the novel as he was so rational and convinced he could solve the problems. White can also symbolise a truce or surrender and this reflects how the events have resulted in Joe collecting this object. McEwan uses the effect of colour again on page 205 when describing the red box that Johnny picked up, this time using red as a colour foreshadowing danger. After shooting the gun Joe goes into the woods by himself. It seems that Joe’s language is more scientific in this chapter, ‘some people find their long perspective in the stars and galaxies; I prefer the earthbound scale of the biological’, this is a contrast to previous chapters as us readers have started to believe Joe is losing his rationality and thinking less scientifically. This could be because he is a fair distance away from Jed and he now has a gun therefore he feels

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