Why And How Does The Introduction Of The Sub-Plot Link With The Novel So Far?
The introduction of the Mrs Logan sub-plot helps to emphasise and create parallels with the main story. The sub-plot appears after the argument between Clarissa and Joe. The dispute between has started to place the seeds of self-doubt and guilt in Joe’s mind and McEwan carries these feelings into the sub-plot. ‘I don’t trust myself, was what I thought. Not since my attack on Clarissa’s privacy’ McEwan uses these feelings to put across the seriousness of the ‘crack of estrangement’ between Clarissa and Joe. ‘Rational’ Joe is trying to reason with himself and create some sort of order with his guilty conscious. McEwan links these feelings with John Logan and his family. ‘What I was thinking of again as I pressed the doorbell was that stapler, and how dishonestly we can hold things together for ourselves’ This shows McEwan bringing together separate events under the same banner of guilt. ‘I had come to explain, to establish my guiltlessness, my innocence of his death’
McEwan also links Jean Logan and Joe’s meeting with the awkwardness seen in Joe and Jed’s first meeting. Jean Logan is very harsh and snaps in a way similar to Joe’s abrupt treatment of Jed. ‘I don’t know why you’ve come’ she said. ‘I hope it isn’t to satisfy your curiosity’. Her behaviour is aloof and cold towards Joe. This behaviour is similar to Joe’s first meeting with Jed as he refuses to go to a café and seems eager to remove himself from the difficult situation ‘We’ll be fine right here’, I said. ‘I don’t have a lot of time.’ However, McEwan reflects part of Jed’s character in Joe. We know that Jed is a very perceptive individual, and is meticulous when describing his environment. McEwan demonstrates this in Jed’s letter to Joe. ‘I went down the path and put out my own hand and fingered the leaves that you had touched’…….. ‘There was a glow, a kind of burning on my fingers along the edges of those wet leaves’. Jed detects tiny details like Joe fingering the leaves and reads into them. McEwan parallels this in Joe using rhetorical questions. ‘Was the brown stain on her pale blue cashmere sweater, just below her left breast, anything other than the self-neglect of the grieving?’ This illustrates Joe’s analytical character as he is inferring, from Jean Logan’s appearance, that the dirt on her jumper is a result of her grieving.
