The Matrix of Postmodern Fragmentation in Ian McEwan’s Atonement

Postmodernist writers are known for their experimentation with modernist techniques, and among the ones that they expanded on and played with is the technique of fragmentation. McEwan instills the implementation of that concept in his work Atonement (2002). Thus, the text will be approached in this paper by highlighting and analyzing the utilization of fragmentation by the author. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine how the author used fragmentation so as to express his ideas, in addition to seeing how he dealt with temporal linearity (forward/backward techniques) and spatial linearity, plot structure, episodic structure, events, etc. The significance of this study lies in the contribution the paper shall make to the body of English literature by providing a critical input to the literary data related to McEwan’s narrative. The results revealed that McEwan has employed fragmentation almost throughout the text in a manner that makes the readers confused and perplexed in understanding the text smoothly because of distorting and fragmenting his narrative through the above-mentioned list