This essay explores the theme of fatal attraction to death, as portrayed in “The Comfort of Strangers”, one of the first novels of the great contemporary novelist, Ian McEwan (2006). The novel conveys a picture of morbid attraction to an abyss, or hole, which seems to be pulling the protagonists over its edge. Colin and Mary are attracted to a local couple, and they are finally entrapped in a fatal scenario of death. It is a tale of horror that turns on perverse erotic strivings mobilized for the purpose of destruction. The exploration includes a brief description of the plot, and an analysis of the protagonists from the perspective of the interplay between their disturbed gender identity, their narcissistic problems, and their perverse relationships This is followed by the examination of their fatal attraction to destruction and death in view of their narcissism and their erotization of aggression.

In this essay I wish to explore the theme of fatal attraction to death, as portrayed in The Comfort of Strangers, one of the first novels of the great contemporary novelist, Ian McEwan (2006). This novel conveys a sense of tremendous anxiety over an impending catastrophe. The inner mental geography of the protagonists connotes a picture of morbid attraction to an abyss, or hole, which seems to be pulling them over its edge. Colin and Mary are attracted to a local couple as “iron to a magnet” (Fromm, 1973), and they are finally entrapped in a fatal scenario of death. It is a tale of horror that turns on perverse erotic strivings mobilized for the purpose of destruction.