What’s in the Nutshell?

Published in 2016, Nutshell is a novel that presents as its creative spring a somewhat curious narrator: a fetus in the belly of its mother. Thus, its author, Ian McEwan, creates his narrative based on the monologue of this fetus in its last weeks of formation, about to be born, telling the reader about his family life, the dysfunctional relationships and the murder of his father. This study seeks to understand and propose a reading of the form of the novel Nutshell, perceiving the forces of reality that (de)form the narrator and work, as well as to read the novel as a document of ways of being and being in English, globalized and contemporary society. At the same time the study observes the impacts of advanced capitalism on the formation of subjectivity of both the narrator and the other characters. For such an investigation, it will be guided by levels of analysis, which allow and call for an allegorical reading, as proposed by Fredric Jameson in Allegory and Ideology (2019). From there, the study works with an attempt to map the subjectivities that present themselves to the reader.