Pre-Birth Hamlet: Counterfactual Narratives and the Boundaries of Alternative History in Ian McEwan’s Nutshell

Abstract

This article analyses the function of counterfactual narrative within the theoretical frame of alternative history and moral responsibility in Ian McEwan’s Nutshell and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Both texts investigate the limitations of agency, fate, and moral responsibility through the lens of alternate history and speculative thinking. Hamlet portrays a protagonist that is paralyzed by uncertainty and torn between action and inaction, while Nutshell presents a narrator with omniscient insight who is unable to change the course of events. Therefore, this study aims to examine the different but parallel issues, revealing that counterfactual thinking does not serve as an emancipating activity but rather reinforces existential paralysis in both characters. It situates Nutshell within the wider context of counterfactual narrative and alternative history theory, analysing McEwan’s novel as a metahistorical critique and an extension of Shakespeare’s investigation into historical contingency. Besides, it underlines the impact of counterfactual reasoning on self-perception, demonstrating that identity is shaped by both previous experiences and hypothetical alternatives. In both texts, counterfactual thinking results in the tragic dilemma of the protagonists as counter-historical subjects as Nutshell and Hamlet overlap in their portrayal of speculation as an inherently detrimental aspect of human consciousness. Consequently, McEwan and Shakespeare present a frame to explore how individuals endeavour to reconstruct or resist their preordained circumstances and realities by revealing the boundaries of counterfactual thinking in modifying historical determinism.