During the novel ‘The Child in Time’, the main character Stephen experiences a great deal of loss and/or grief. When one experiences grief, they experience it by going through five stages. These stages are as follows, (not necessarily in chronological order), disbelief, yearning, anger, depression and acceptance. With these two points in mind, I shall be producing an essay that examines how Stephen experiences these five stages through times in the novel.
Disbelief, this is defined as the inability or refusal to accept that something is true or real. Stephen under goes this first stage of grief during a very imagery rich part, in the beginning of the novel. He loses Kate in the supermarket and when he goes home to tell Julie, he cannot believe that it has actually happened, he is still in shock. From this we are able to establish that Stephen is about to embark on the long journey through grief. I find it interesting that McEwan situates Stephen undertaking disbelief towards the start of the novel. I feel that he is foreshadowing to the readers that Stephen is going to be a character, which leads a rocky life, through loss of many things.
Yearning, the word portrays Stephen’s craving for something in the novel consummately. I would describe yearning as having an intense feeling of longing for something. That ‘something’ for Stephen is two very important people in his life, Kate and Julie. We know that Stephen longs for his daughter. There is no specific reference needed from the passage to back up that point. Upon reading the novel in depth, we find out that Stephen lives in poor accommodation, as a shut in. He watches mindless programmes on the television and sips away on alcohol, compulsively, daily. We diminish from this that he is a broken man.
Stephen in a sense also longs for his wife Julie. Think about it... she is the bearer of his daughter he is naturally going to feel distraught by the fact that he cannot see her in the same way he once did, with tenderness and purity. As a man, he is going to long for the woman he loved sexually and emotionally also. However, he envisions Julie, as ‘dead’ to him, demonstrated on page 21, “their old intimacy, their habitual assumption that they were on the same side, was dead”. Any man would yearn for that.
Stephen as a person is not naturally angry, we learn this about from the way he actually goes about dealing with the loss of his wife and daughter. He is not the type of man who will go to his home and punch holes in the walls or shout out at the top of his voice. Instead he takes to alcohol to fill the hole in his heart created from the loss of his wife and mainly daughter, Kate. However, as the novel progresses page by page, chapter by chapter we come across Stephen being in a scary situation. He undergoes a car crash and during this time, we start to sense that he is able to express the emotion of anger once more. This is evident on page 105, it states, “Stephen snapped the notebook shut and stood...He opened the boot and rummaged irritably until he found the jack,” Interestingly we see Stephen is able to take control of a situation and is showing signs that he is starting to become stronger.
Depression, a condition of mental disturbance, typically with lack of energy and difficulty in maintaining concentration or interest in life, it is evident in Stephen. The lack of energy is demonstrated when he sits in his apartment in his underwear and drinks away at his alcohol. The difficulty in maintaining concentration or interest in his life is shown when he goes into his trances during times of boredom. It is also evident through his displaced memories, for instance the time when he was on the back of a bike with his father on the way to the bell pub. Stephen as a person matches the very definition of depression with harmony. Only when Stephen finally starts to become more active in his lifestyle that he is able to overcome his depression and starts to engage the acceptance of grief.
An uplifting point in the novel is when Stephen finally accepts the fact he has lost Kate and needs to move on with his life. This is evident all over page 168. However for me the most important and emotionally connective statement on this page is as follows, “He wrote an affectionate, undemanding postcard to Julie, telling her that he had thought about her on Kate’s birthday.” What this sentence shows is that Stephen has finally come to terms with the fact that he needs to accept that Kate is not coming back and that instead, he must attempt to re-build the shattered foundations that are only just holding Julie and himself together.
In conclusion, the five stages of grief link to the novel in harmony. From what I have explored, we can clearly see that all of them are portrayed through Stephen at some given point in time. I am glad to see that he is able to come to the stage of acceptance and that hopefully, as I progress further into the novel, we can see Stephen and Julie back together and perhaps find Kate, or even start a new family by having a new child.