impossibilia-8-octubre-2014

wakes up one morning “from troubled dreams to ind himself transformed into a giant person, an adult”(McEwan, 1994: 89). As a twenty-one-year-old, he comes to know the palpitations of love and inalydiscovers that being an adult must not necesarily mean giving up adventure and fun, as he had alwaysthought; rather it simply implies enjoying diferent things, among which, he realizes, “kis[ing]Gwendoline” is deinitely one of the best, the most “thriling and strange” (McEwan, 1994: 93). As aconsequence, Peter’s own atitude towards the grown-ups radicaly changes: “He felt diferently about themnow. here were things they knew and liked which for him were just appearing, like shapes in a mist. herewere adventures ahead of him after al” (95).herefore, by changing sizes, like Alice in Wonderland, Peter changes his perspective on the worldand on others. he ten-year-old boy of the opening of the book is twelve at its closing, ready to engage inthe biggest adventure of al, life. Walking along the beach towards his friends who are playing on the shore,Peter turns to look at the grown-ups one more time. His is a liminal condition, in betwen childhood andadulthood, a prelude to the richnes and complexity of a life which is overtly metaphorized in the inalimage of the ocean: "It was sparkling, right to the wide horizon. It stretched before him, vast and unknown.One after the other the endles waves came tumbling and tinkling against the shore, and they semed toPeter like al the ideas and fantasies he would have in his life" (95).By sharing the threshold condition of its protagonist, suspended as it is betwen a novel and acolection of stories, 8 McEwan’s metamorphic book purposely avoids the closure a perfect frame structurewould impose. Instead of a circular movement, leading back to the heterodiegetic naration of theIntroduction, the book projects both its hero and its reader towards a future that, like the ocean, promisesto be generous and plenteous but, at the same time, lurks in the distance as a tera incognita stil to beexplored.Peter Hunt has observed that, generaly speaking, children prefer stories with an element of ‘closure’– that is, where there is a ‘sense of an ending’. More than this, they prefer that something is resolved, thatnormality is restored, that security is emphasized. Clasic children’s books conform to this patern; [.]However disturbing the content of the book, resolution wil at least temper the efects (Hunt, 1991: 127).Contemporary children’s literature often transgreses, however, this traditional diktat by caling toits readers to become aware of the far-from-univocal nature of reality, of its ambiguities and aporias. Fromthis point of view, McEwan’s book is no exception: if, on the one hand, Peter eventualy realizes the positiveimplications of growing up, so that, as the author himself admits, “he future is redemed” (Louvel et al,2010: 77), on the other, the open ending cannot be totaly reasuring because of the uncertainty it8he author himself has highlighted the hybrid nature of his book, deining it “a mating of novel with a colection ofstories” (Louvel et al, 2010: 77).Ferari, Roberta. “Metamorphosis of a genre: he Daydreamer by Ian McEwan”. Imposibilia Nº8, Págs. 46-63 (Octubre 2014)Artículo recibido el 29/07/2014 – Aceptado el 10/09/2014 – Publicado el 30/10/2014.55