Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing process of this thesis. A sincere acknowledgment should be shown to my Professor Zhang Xiaoli whose guidance I have benefited from greatly.31106
Secondly, I am particularly indebted to the headmaster, Cai Jun, and the teachers in Shengchang Primary School, in the town of Jiangdu, Yangzhou, Jangsu Province. Before I started my thesis, I had taught in the primary school as a volunteer for three months. During that period, Mr. Cai and all the teachers gave me a lot of help to take an investigation concerning the situation and information of the children in the school. Thanks to their help, I have got lots of detailed data to prepare for the thesis.
Last but not least, I would like to show my appreciation to my beloved parents for giving me so much love and support during the time of writing this thesis.
Abstract
Child is a recurring topic in Ian McEwan's novels. In The Child in Time, McEwan has associated time with the characters' life journey and their destiny. By means of deep reading, the author has intensively analyzed various kinds of features of children and adults in The Child in Time. Through the investigation of two protagonists' different attitudes towards life and the sufferance of many children in this book, the thesis attempts to point out the importance of childhood and different childhood does make a difference to every adult.
 The comparison between Charles Dance's and Stephen Lewis's different attitudes towards time and life has indicated that McEwan’s sense of time identifies with Stephen's sense of time. McEwan's ideal sense of time is that the past is an indispensable and unforgettable part of man's life. What man can do with the past is to extract quintessence from it for present use. Human being's major concern should be the present. It is vital for human being to seize the hour at present to adjust his pace and have an insight into the spokesman of McEwan as far as sense of time is concerned. A balanced sense of time is the foundation of a harmonious life journey. The sense of time is a clue of this novel.
As well, time means the experience of childhood. Maybe, the experience of childhood could fade out, as time goes by. However, it is always hiding in man’s subconsciousness and infiltrates in people’s character slowly. The experience of childhood can gradually become an important part of life.
The present study falls into six chapters. Following the first chapter of introduction and the second chapter of literature review, the third chapter mainly narrates some positive children images in The Child in Time and its influence on children in this novel. The researcher shows many plots in this novel in order to describe children’s purity, kindness and simplicity. All those images can improve a truth that man’s nature at birth is good. Only different environment and bad education can change everything. It is also an excellent comparison to the two protagonists’ adult chaos life.The fourth chapter explores the two protagonists’ nature and their life journey. In Charles’s childhood, he is treated as an adult thus he behaves like a real adult. While when he is regarded as a adult by families and colleagues around him, he acts like a child: living in a tree and treating his wife as mother. The reason is that Charles’s mother died in his childhood. He is lack of maternal love, thus tragedy is the inevitable end. As for Stephen, in the beginning, he is immersed in the pain of the lost of his daughter. When he meets other kids on the way of searching for his daughter, he always can find some similarities between his daughter and other kids. He assertively thinks those kids as his lost daughter. It is easy to tell that Stephen’s life is messed up. Since he heard that his wife deliver a baby, he gradually realizes the importance to face his present situation so that he may have the strength to get back to normal life.The fifth chapter mainly shows the practical significance of childhood. The sixth chapter is a summary of the whole thesis. Through the analysis of two protagonists’ childhood , the researcher formally highlights the theme: childhood is very important. 《时间中的孩子》中儿童意象的诠释:http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_27149.html