Global Disasters and Personal Responses in Ian McEwan’s Solar

Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010) is centered around a Nobel Laureate Professor of Physics whose peak of academic achievement is thirty years behind him, who is trying to retrieve his reputation by proposing replacement of coal and fossil fuel use by solar power and a planet whose heyday as a nurturing haven for human species is but a fantasy. The protagonist’s inability to change and grow from the overfed child of his mother to a nurturing adult is intertwined with his indifference to the destiny of the planet and the looming tragedy that awaits it, as a result of global warming with its undeniable current impact on human lives. His conspicuous consumption of romantic entanglements also mirrors the daily routines of billions of human beings in overconsumption of commodities and non-renewable planetary resources. His one original contribution is his almost instinctive response to another major factor in climate change: overpopulation. I will focus on the parallels between the psychoanalytic repercussions in the protagonist’s personal life and our failure to maintain foresight for imminent antropogenic disasters as human species as well as overpopulation as a neglected cause for such disasters, even in Solar, since the solution to overpopulation involves a counterintutive measure: not to have children