POSTCOLONIAL MELANCHOLIA IN IAN McEWAN'S "SATURDAY"

The author of several significant books on race in the UK, including There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack, The Black Atlantic, and Against Race, Gilroy now charges that the life of England "has been dominated by an inability even to face, never mind actually mourn, the profound change in circumstances and moods that actually followed the end of empire and consequent loss of imperial prestige." Rather than utilizing literary tradition to encourage the perception of sameness or to promote the idea, proposed by Gilroy, that "the recognition of mutual worth, dignity, and essential similarity imposes restrictions on how we can behave if we wish to act justly" (4), McEwan defaults to a literary deception, a trick played on the unsuspecting.12 Furthermore, he fails to suggest how Daisy's action might be construed as an ironic commentary on the failure of the modern imagination.