Keats to Fanny Brawne that Clarissa has been unsuccessfully trying to track
down: “a cry of undying love not touched by despair” (238).
These layered responses create a very effective ending for McEwan’s
novel because they reimmerse the audience in the mimetic component of
the novel even as that reimmersion extends his thematic exploration of the
vexed relation of love and logic. Yes, Jed’s lyric effusions powerfully capture
his seemingly unending delusion. But they simultaneously capture the purity
and intensity of wholly other-directed love. Yes, they capture that purity and
intensity, but are such purity and intensity sustainable over time only for the
deeply delusional? McEwan does not answer that question directly, but his
novel invites his audience to contemplate it.
CONCLUSION
This attention to the interpretive, affective, and ethical dimensions of rhetori-
cal readers’ responses to the two Appendices—and especially to their interac-
tions with Joe’s narrative and with each other—suggests that McEwan has used
them to add considerable value to his novel. His strategy of double indirec-
tion works to considerably deepen his rhetorical readers’ engagement with
multiple dimensions of his communication, and especially the engagement
with his thematic exploration of the vexed and varied relations between love
and logic. That deeper engagement significantly enhances the ethical and aes-
thetic achievement of the novel, our sense that the quality of life we live while
engaged in McEwan’s communication rewards the time and thought that com-
munication invites us to invest.
256 • CHAPTER 1 3