Author: V. Sarad Deepak, Prof. P. Kusuma Harinath

Abstract: Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden (1978) endures as a pivotal contribution to contemporary British literature, distinguished for its audacious engagement with themes of adolescence, trauma, familial disintegration, and social alienation. This expanded study reinterprets the novel with a heightened scholarly lens, interrogating its historical underpinnings, narrative design, symbolic richness, and psychoanalytic density. Through an interdisciplinary framework encompassing gender theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies, the analysis positions the novel as both an intimate portrait of familial collapse and an emblematic commentary on the fragmentation of modern society.

Keywords: Familial Disintegration, Social Alienation, Psychoanalytic Criticism. Gender Identity, Symbolism and Narrative Form

Article Info: Received: 03 Dec 2025; Received in revised form: 30 Dec 2025; Accepted: 03 Jan 2026; Available online: 08 Jan 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.111.3