This study investigates Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) and Saturday (2005) in terms of the Lacanian concepts of Subjectivity, Desire and the Symbolic. Along with these main concepts, other related ones such as the big Other, the Name-of-the-Father, object petit a, ideal Ego, ego Ideal, subject of the statement, subject of enunciation, subject of causality, das Ding, tuché and automaton are frequently referred. Lacan is famous for his ideas on the truth of man’s desire and his understanding of himself and of the world around him. According to Lacanian psychoanalysis, there is a significant link between subjectivity, the unconscious and language. The central objective of this research is to demonstrate the affinity between the Symbolic Order, in which the characters are positioned, and their subjectivity. The analysis of the two case studies, in terms of Lacan’s key concepts, showed that McEwan, as a novelist, records his characters’ psychological growth and the troubles they face in their attempt to locate truth. In an attempt to affirm and demonstrate Lacan’s famous statement that “man’s desire is the desire of the Other”, many scenes, events and descriptions from both novels are taken into account and analyzed. In Atonement, Briony moves from one field of desire to another in order to regain her lost object of desire or object petit a. Likewise, in Saturday, Theo and Daisy’s search for das Ding causes their entrapment in the pitfall of Grammaticus’ desire. Furthermore, two facets of Lacan’s traumatic Real, namely, automaton (the network of signifiers) and tuché (encountering with the Real), are demonstrated in relation to Atonement and Saturday respectively. The results of the analyses show that the main characters’ encounter with a traumatic situation is the harbinger of the truth of their lives, the objective knowledge of their position in the world as puppets at the mercy of the big Other.
