Atonement Handout

Themes in the novel:

Innocence At the beginning of the novel Briony is a young girl who believes herself to have adult views but is in fact very innocent of the real world, however at some point during part one she sees part of what the adult world is like (Cecelias and Robbies relationship) but she is still a child and so is almost trapped between the two worlds and she misinterprets the relationship and in doing so changes her life and the lives of everyone around her. Through this McEwan shows how innocence can protect us from the harshness of the world but also can destroy something forever. McEwan also shows how WWII takes away peoples then perception of the world. WWII ripped the entire country and the world apart. The bliss of innocence that was being enjoyed by Europe following "the war to end all wars" (WWI) is stripped away. This innocence is shown in Leon Tallis (Brionys brother), a character who doesn't think there will be a war, and feels all people are primitively good-natured.

Social Class The injustices of social class appear throughout the novel, the most obvious example being the relationship between Robbie, and Cecilia. It is because Briony thinks her older sister is in danger of falling beneath her class that she tries to protect her. Placing marrying well above love is common sense for Briony, and her accusing Robbies of raping her sister and the police believing her without any other evidence clearly shows this. Cecilia is the only character in the novel to accept that these social conventions are unfair and wrong. Even when Robbie is arrested, she stands by him, and soon disowns her family to become a nurse living in a "terrible flat" in north London. The only other person accused of the rape is the other servant, Danny Hardman. And even when his father provides an alibi, it is not believed by the police. Paul Marshall on the other hand, the rich guest who is actually responsible for the crime, is never even considered or questioned.

Identity Throughout the novel McEwan shows how Briony struggles with her identity and who she really is, as a child she had the ability to imagine herself as being anyone e.g. a fencing champion and this shows her uncertainty as to who she really is which is something a lot of readers can relate to. As the book continues Briony still adopts the persona of other people showing that as we grow older we can still be unsure of who we are and that we want to adapt our personalities to how we think others want to see us. This confusion of identity points out the confusion of realising who we are. The fact that we get Briony at three distinctive points in her life complicates this investigation into what makes up our own sense of individuality and identity.

Quotes

"'Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English: that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?'

They had reached the end of the gallery; and with tears of shame, she ran off to her own room." Preceding page to Chapter One.
This long quote that precedes the novel is from Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey. McEwan uses this theme of the process of the dangers of transferring fiction to real life, but also of the process of atonement for such deeds. When Catherine reads the letter, she has "tears of shame." Just like Briony, she becomes aware of her crime. Briony's atonement for her crime is to spend a lifetime writing her novel, condemned to write it over and over and over again. Once she finds out she is dying, she is can finally complete the book, but differently than she ever had before. As she sees it, she fails to have the courage of pessimism, and rewrites a fictional fairy tale in which the lovers survive. This could be seen by a reader as an attempt Briony to escape the true horror of what she did, however it could also be seen as a kindness to the lovers, giving them what they couldnt have in life.

"A world could be made in five pages, and one that was more pleasing than a model farm. The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word--a glance. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained." Pg 7

A major theme in the novel is the loss of innocence and change from childhood into the adult world. Briony, because of her passion for writing, is aware even as a child of the power one has with the pen. Even at the age of thirteen, Briony can "make" a world in as little as "five pages." More importantly, she understands that as the writer, she has complete autonomy to "spoil" lives and restore "love." Not only does the child Briony understand this capacity over her characters, it excited her--the story literally "vibrates" in her hand. This passage also shows Brionys innocent view on the world, she believes life to be simple and uncomplicated and doesnt yet understand the difference between fictionally created plots and characters, and reality.

"The very complexity of her feelings confirmed Briony in her view that she was entering an

arena of adult emotion and dissembling from which her writing was bound to benefit. What fairy tale ever had so much by way of contradiction?" Pg 106 This is the opening sentence to Chapter Ten, the chapter in which Briony discovers Robbie and Cecilia making love in the study. There can be no greater incident to lose your innocence to witnessing the man you have an attraction to making love to your older sister. The quote tells the reader that Briony was aware of her transient stage; she has a "confirmed view" of her "entering" adulthood. Also Bryonys reaction to what she sees shows the reader that despite Bryonys beliefs she is still a child. As difficult as this moment is for Briony, it is one "from which her writing was bound to benefit." McEwan draws reference to the personal sacrifice great artists and writers make for their art-trading complacency and simplicity for torture and brilliance. Also this quotation suggests that her writing is all Bryony thinks of and how it can benefit her, this wish in itself juxtaposes her belief that she was entering the adult world.

"This was her student life now, these four years, this enveloping regime, and she had no will, no freedom to leave. She was abandoning herself to a life of strictures, rules, obedience, housework, and a constant fear of disapproval. She was one of a batch of probationers--there was intake every few months--and she had no identity beyond her badge." Pg 260

At the beginning of the novel, Briony daydreams about being a famous writer, a name that is recognized throughout all of London for her magnificent ability at playwriting. In London, at the age of 18, she has been self-demoted to a slave, but what is even worse for her, is that she lives in a world where her name does not even exist. As a self punishment, Briony decides to give up all the luxuries of an upper-class life. Briony hopes that her duties as a nurse during the war will serve as some sort of penance. Yet the cost of doing so is a complete stripping of her identity--she fails to exist as "Briony"--with no will or freedom to go back.

"From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing that she had always known, and everyone knew: that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended." Pg 287

This passage is juxtaposition, Briony Tallis "easily tore" the lives of Cecilia and Robbie Turner apart, a crime that is "not easily mended." WWII is doing the same thing to all of Europe. Nursing during the war and witnessing body parts existing like the limbs of trees, Briony enters a new stage of experience--a person is just as susceptible to destruction (physical or mental) as any other object on the planet, and so much of the time, this injury is caused by fellow man (hers to Robbie, and Hitler's to the soldiers she cares for). It is at this point in the novel that Briony truly realizes the damage she has done to Robbie and Cecilia.