This essay aims at exploring, from a Deleuzean perspective, the issue of ethics in Iris Murdochʼs The Sandcastle (1957) and how it is related to the central characterʼs struggles for making his life meaningful. The event that disrupts the subjectivity of the major characters of this novel (Mor and Rain) and poses serious ethical problems for them is an extra-marital love affair. The major concern of the “resistant” ethical analysis provided is the manner in which these characters strive to deterritorialize themselves through schizophrenizing love and actively create their own ethical values rather than passively surrendering to what the dominant slave morality imposes on them. Contrary to traditional, “dominant” readings of the novel, which are built upon Murdoch’s own philosophy, here it is discussed that Mor, the protagonist of The Sandcastle, is a weak character who is eventually defeated by his reactive dilemmas and resumes his subjective role of the good husband and affectionate father prescribed for him by the capitalist institution of the nuclear family and its Oedipal conception of desire. This reveals the forces of becoming underlying such minoritarian texts and how they could be liberated from the shackles of “being” imposed on them from without.
